| Yes, of course you can make a difference. But the real question
is to what degree, and in what direction. Sometimes the difference
a person makes in anothers life is unintentional. Often if
fostering a change is intentional, the change made is not the
one intended. Life is an art, not a science.
Tom_K
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| Yes, you can make "a" difference. Question is, which difference, to
whom.
You can't change your wife. Only she is in control of that, and it
sounds like she doesn't recognize yet that she has choices in that
matter, because she hasn't yet worked through enough of the "stuff"
from her family-of-origin and previous relationships.
I noticed in the SRO string several references to doing specific
"little things" to make her happy. I've been there. It doesn't work.
I came from a pretty heavily dysfunctional family. My husband tried
the "little things" routine for YEARS and it didn't work. You see, a
trust problem is self-perpetuating: for every one nice thing you do,
there are always 20 or 100 "not nice" or even "didn't know it wasn't
nice" things that the nontrusting person holds on to.
Someone else's reply got at the issue of "why did you pick her". It
takes two: in the case of myself and my husband, he was acting out a
"family hero" routine...not in touch AT ALL with his own pain, and kept
it that way by rescuing me. That is, all his good intentions of
helping me/supporting me ALSO contributed to keep him focused somewhere
other than his own recovery process. Cruel sort of paradox, isn't it?
Not an easy problem to work through; includes lots of pain and
self-examination and more pain. Keep working at it. How long have you
been in counseling? If you don't feel it's working with that
counselor, have you considered finding another? (Not all are created
equally competent).
Best wishes,
Lynn
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