Why chasing - other things.

If you have adopted a life value of defining yourself as "the fixer", then there is an obvious question to raise (Dr Phil style)
"How is that working for you ?"

If the answer to that is 'very well' then it is a good life value to have.
If the answer to that is 'not well' then it is a bad value to have.

Maybe you need to hit the rewind button all the way back to this life value of 'the fixer' you have adopted and put it right under the microscope. Is it enhancing your life or is it depleting your life ?

Some things (like other peoples issues) are best left to the other person to sort out themself.
That's what functional people do, they sort out their own shit.

Most of us have quite an adequate amounts of our own shit to work out, let alone trying to take on someone elses' issues.

I've never done therapy, not that I have any particular aversion to it. Being "the fixer" isn't working for me and sorting that out with some help seems reasonable. Thank you all for your thoughts and advice.

@tooyoungtobeold2... “My name’s DC, and I’m a fixer.”

The trouble with being a fixer is that it makes one drawn to broken things. It causes someone to see the potential in things, rather than their current state. While optimistic, this seems to be extraordinarily bad when it comes to evaluating people.

Maybe it’s the challenge, maybe it’s a bit of “I can fix anything” hubris. The trouble starts when you can’t step back and say “Yep, this one’s busted beyond my skills”.

Therapy would help, for sure. One approach would be trying to find peace with the facts and not be anxious about things you can’t change. I.e., if you can’t change the facts, try to accept them. And maybe put distance between you and the situation, but even then you’ll still need to accept that some fixes aren’t within your power.

Yes, ditto on this.  When I was first married, I would say that we were equals looking out for each other.  We wanted to make sure that we had a solid marriage...as time went on, there was a shift.  The W pulled away emotionally and physically and seem to have very little tolerance for anything that I wanted.  I voiced my concerns and I was met with anger and accusation.  I am drama averse and therefore chose to avoid the difficult conversations by simply accepting things the way she had established them.  Today, I am her bitch...I hate to admit that but it is true.  At some point I need to regain my testicles if I could just find out where she hid them.

Coming back to this old post because it's the same again today only it's our 30th wedding anniversary.  I woke up stressed out, voiced that and it set her off.  Again, I recognize the pattern that she denies my feelings by getting angry because that usually makes me withdraw because I'm the peacemaker.  Being this age kind of sucks, you can see the patterns in your life clearly but can't seem to avoid them.  I just wanted to vent but it screwed up the beginning of our anniversary day.  That's on me.  Now she's going to stonewall, which I hate a lot.   Maybe my testicles are in storage somewhere..........they would be useful today (not for sex of course).[/quote]


I'm sorry that your anniversary got off to a crappy start. I just looked back at how you started this thread. Did you give any more thought to talking to someone, like a therapist/counsellor? Not to 'fix' yourself or your wife; just to have someone irl you can vent to. You always come across as such a fair minded man, I think you've earned the right to have SOMEone really listen to you for a change. I hope today gets a little better for you anyway.

You answered your own question in your thread. “I was raised that way, to worry about Mom's mood.”

When you were a child growing up within a family with dysfunctional dynamics, being worried about your mother’s mood was a survival mechanism. You didn’t have the power to change the dynamics or put a stop to the behavior so you did the next best thing, protect yourself and adapt.

At this point in your life, your adaptations to dysfunctional dynamics don’t serve you well at all.

Just my two cents, there is a ‘new’ type of therapy. I should qualify ‘new’. It’s about a decade old, but was developed after I finished my degrees in psychology. It’s called EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). Unlike traditional psychotherapy, it’s effective within a few sessions, not a few years. As with all therapy it is important to find a good therapist.

I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. The best way I can describe it, after a session focusing on a particular traumatic memory, the memory is still vivid. I can recall every detail of the event. But the emotional valence that used to be attached to the memory is gone. The hurt, the shame is just.... gone. And because that painful memory has been “healed” if something happens now that reminds me of that event I’m no longer triggered to react like I did then. Instead I can react with adult reason and logic.

If the parallels in my long-winded story weren’t clear... your wife is acting in ways that trigger painful memories from your childhood. You see it, you recognize it, but you are helpless to change the pattern until you heal the underlying trigger. In EMDR they call these triggers capsules.

I don’t know how accurate the explanation of how the therapy works is, but I can vouch for the effectiveness of the approach. Life changing.

But be forewarned. If you heal your past and change your half of the dynamic in your marriage, your dysfunctions won’t fit together anymore. She’ll also have to grow or things will implode.

Here’s a link to some info about EMDR:
www.mindfulpsychotherapyllc.com/emdr/

The greatest line Shakespeare wrote was "Thus could I do it, pat." It is from Hamlet. Hamlet needs to kill the king. He has right and duty in his side, to avenge his father. The whole play builds around Hamket's inability to act. As he stands over the sleeping king, he utters the line....... and fails to act. The whole play is a lot like many of our lives. We know what to do, we know how to do it and every day is our "thus could I do it." And we walk away. We all know, but finding the courage to turn and say "screw you" deserts us