A friend approached me confidently about realtionship advice and its a tough thing to address. What better place than to ask Lemmy given the broad scope of culture and more genuine reactions here. We figure what can it hurt.
Background:
A couple in my friend group have been together for 3 or 4 years who really seem to love each other looking in from the outside, are having some tension.
The lady doesn’t input the same effort for planning life events, making any sort of weekend plans or after work activities. It’s always the guy picking all the slack up and managing problems. Budgeting and making sure everything is in order. He cooks, does the cleaning, and generally does the relationship thinking as a whole. That is not to say there isn’t some input from his partner, it seems she’s very indecisive from how he describes when making plans or any sort of choices like where to eat or what to do during a problem of any magnitude, almost stress outburst behaviour from her. Defensive type lashing out against him.
He wants to know some advices on how to rebalance the effort scale and to generally improve the dynamic as she seems to be shutting him out according to him. It’s always been imbalanced in effort since the beginning he said but they are good together. They want to make it work but the stress and tension is building to unhealthy levels from what I understand as in he’s ready to break up. They don’t fight really but there’s some definite underlying issues, when he tries to talk about it or anything emotional derived she says things like she doesn’t know, doesn’t know how to explain the way she feels at all and says her mind is sort of blank and that is how he describes most of their deep talks. He described to me that their communication as he’s a very involved communicator and she can go off and be unresponsive or completely not answer questions he asks like they don’t exist.
There’s tension between them she’s snappy more often than not and deals with severe depression/anxiety. Hates her job. Is always in a negative mindset. While he is usually more upbeat and postive not bubbly but hopeful.
I’ve seen him have hard days and be tense and snarky as well who hasnt had a rough day? To me it just isnt like her where she always generally has smart comments towards anything. She’s not what I would say is an uptight removed but almost anything can ruin her mood.
I’m likely missing some points here it’s not my relationship nor am I good at these things but I’m trying so be easy on me here. The only thing I can tell is they genuinely seem to love each other. Sex life is imbalanced he has a high drive and her very low as in can go months then sometimes 1 to 4 times a month. They did get hormone testing but everything appears normal. Worth noting he said she sleeps excessively like after work all through the night most days. They no longer talk as much or text during the day. Where that used to be more common. He did mention she has a male coworker she works with daily that they are fairly close he is unsure of in-fidelity but they meet for work at his apartment every morning apparently it’s easier since they share a work vehicle. I was told that he wanted to quit in a rush a few months ago and they had an argument because he was about to leave and she irrationally seemed to want to quit with him. At the very least their very emotionally tied. It may be nothing he said.
She told him she doesn’t feel any different in the relationship for the way she views them when asked.
But just doesn’t show attention anymore when he gets upset her response will be Boohoo or similar.
Personally I believe she’s burned out and has anxiety on top of horrible depression but I have no real clue how to address that for them. It’s such a personal topic.
Lemmy give them some of your best advices they used to be so full of life and laughter. Thank you all! If I missed anything or any specific questions just ask. We both are excited to see what comes of this.
Edit and UPDATE: They have started to talk again after being silent yesterday all day and have decided to take the week to each write a long and well thought out letter from each of sorts that address how their thinking individually, how they view each other, concerns to address, and ways to meet on level ground to try to form and maintain structure during times of stressful interactions rather than both going in defense and bring more hate into the relationship.
She said she wants to try to speak with her doctor about mental health problems including ADHD, anxiety, depression, and also wants to learn to take time to focus on activities that she derives happiness from or did before the shutdown aspect (art most likely is my understanding but only she knows I suppose) and to spend less time sleeping. They are going to remain talking throughout the week casually it seems and plan to swap letters and have an more formal discussion at the weeks end.
If I hear more, I will update this and keep the help and advice good or bad coming!
There is 2 ways really: your friend needs to leave, or he needs to be fine with the imbalance, winding down as much as is necessary.
She’s not going to change unless things stop working for her. It’s a simple reality of the human mind. That doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed she will change, she might not.
Option 1, the real threat of him leaving will cause huge issues within her. She will either change to keep him, or fall into more misery. Both are very possible.
Option 2, him stopping to care, and (likely) toning down his involvement is the harder option for him. With toning down I mean, maybe just cook for himself, maybe just clean whatever is absolutely important to him and his own dirt, masturbate more, do less “relationship thinking”. Do everything necessary down to a level that he is actually comfortable with. You can actually be completely fine in an uneven relationship, it’s mostly a mindset thing. Of course being with someone else might be better, which is leaving again. I’m poly, so I’ve got that covered anyway, they seem monogamous, so no other people to fill the gaps without leaving, in my relationships everyone does just as much as they want and gets everything else they need from other people, which works perfectly. But that is likely not an option here.
So yeah, him toning down his involvement will also result in missing comfort for her (like leaving would, option 1), which will either cause her to change to more even involvement, or feel even more bad and lead to option 1 again.
Your friend can’t control what his wife does. He can only control what he does and get comfortable with how his wife is. In my opinion, this whole situation from what you said is pretty much his fault, and not hers, as you’ve said this inequality has been like this from the beginning. He knew what he was getting into, she doesn’t seem to have misled him or changed majorly. He should’ve either never entered/deepened this relationship or have been truly fine with the inequality, if he was, there would be no problems now.
He just responded that he is trying to pull back a little and see how she responds they haven’t talked since yesterday even though she sent him a message today about an errand she wanted him to do. He wants to fall back but is so emotionally attached that it’s hard not to go back and just keep eating the problem until burn out again. U guess torn you could say. Love is a wild emotion is all I have to say.
Do you think he should go totally dark on contact until she comes around to wanting to talk or how should he approach? To me it seems like he’s a bit overly hopeful or sees the good in people too much. Which is why I struggled to offer help and advice.
If it was my friend, I would ask him what he would do if he was absolutely sure that his wife will never change. And then tell him that this is what he should do, because 1. in my opinion it is toxic to be in a relationship and expect the other person to change and 2. her not changing is the most likely outcome, people do change, but they always resist it very much, and often that resistance is too great.
His response was if he could be poly with her he thinks it would work out where his sex drive being high and hers really low that he could get his needs filled and she’s very quiet and shy that he needs more social interaction the scale could balance out and they can still have love and enjoy one another when they both want to on each their own time. They are monogamous. She would definitely have an issue with that.
As far as the toxic aspect he said he does think it’s sort of toxic to want her to change but he feels her being so severely dreoessed and anxious it’s for the better. Not to turn her into someone else but to re-ignite her life and enjoyment again. He wants to be less harsh about it on a day to day basis but told me she won’t do anything if he doesn’t stay on about it until it’s done. To me that seems uhh understanding and also messed up like she needs to learn adulting for herself. I hadn’t previously had that info that he was sort of always pushing her daily. He had just told me he could ask a a question or a few and she wouldn’t even respond as if she thought about it but from his view it didn’t exist. Kind of wild to think about from my view.
Personally I don’t think she will change. He wants to fall back cease contact as much a possible for a week or a month and just give her space to see what comes of it all.
This is exactly what it sounded like. Glad you’ve got this information, now I’ve got more things to say.
What he’s doing comes from a perfectly nice and helpful place. He actually sees her behavior hurt herself and wants to help her hurt less.
But you should never “help” someone in this way. It’s the worst thing he can possibly do, it actually only makes things worse.
The only way you can help people is by being there for them and assisting them on their own path. In other words, the only way you can be a positive force is by letting them do whatever the fuck they want, and helping them with that. If “whatever the fuck they want” does not include “getting out of the depression” and “getting rid of anxiety”, then there’s literally nothing you can do. If you try to get them to do actions that you think might be good for them, even if they actually were good for them if they wanted to do them, if they don’t want to do them by themselves all you’re doing is just making them feel worse for “being wrong”.
It might even be the case that she wants to get out of depression or get rid of her anxiety, but she’s taking the wrong actions for it. And he may be trying to get her to do “better actions”, that actually accomplish what was set out to do. Even that doesn’t work. She has to get to the “better actions” herself. You can maybe ask questions, or point out that the “current action” doesn’t seem to be working, but the idea to change her actions has to come from herself.
That is the only way people change. People change by their own will, or they don’t. As another person, you can basically just be with them and watch. Anything much more and you’re starting to fuck things up more instead of help.
Then she should be doing nothing. He should be doing his own thing. She either comes out of it by herself, or doesn’t. “Staying on about it” gets things done, but it also makes them both more miserable.
I’m not even sure it was helping as much as it was riding her ass to get shit done. Like banking stuff or typical life things.
So they haven’t talked since yesterday basically she messaged him today but it was about an errand and be didn’t respond.
He thinks it’s best to fall silent and wait it out maybe for a week or a month I guess time is arbitrary. Basically until she comes back to him with something of substance and is at a place where they can talk it out. I’m sure they could talk it out if he initiated but it wouldn’t be as fruitful and allow her time to think on the situation as a whole. Do you think the silent approach is good or? If he tries to initiate a deep conversation she sort of rejects it like ughh sigh type vibe.
Edit: Second question. How do you deal with someone completely glossing over important questions as if they don’t exist? And carries in with some random topic.
As long as it is clearly communicated by him what he’s doing and why, any approach is fine really. So as long as he tells her his exact purpose of the break and what he needs to stop it, all good.
If that is not done, and it’s just a one-sided decision of his to stop talking, not even explaining anything, then it is very bad. It’d basically be like a parent punishing their child and not telling them what for, mentally very problematic. Of course it should be able to be implied by her in some way, but it’s very easy to come to the wrong conclusions.
Second question, you simply don’t let them. You calmly keep repeating your question, pointing out their intentional ignoring, stating that you will only talk with them about anything else after this question is answered, until they either get so mad as to run away, or they respond to it. But you have to actually stay strong, and not allow them to do it. Depending on other things that need to be communicated, and how stubborn they are, that will hurt yourself as well as them since other important stuff for you might not get communicated. But that is something that needs to be tolerated, because breaking from the original intention is worse for the future, it shows that ignoring the question works, and they’ll repeat it.