Thank you for your sharing, that is helpful. I will put those words into action in my life. We started with that today.
For her the biggest issue is that she is the "boss", not so much of me, but of the staff (9). She does the admin, she does the HR, she does the oversight of managing the firm. I am a lawyer, as is she.
When I came to work with her, I was clear that I did not want to run a business as it is not an interest of mine. I told her clearly that I would work hard with her and help bring money into the firm so that the financial side of her stress, which was huge, would ease. It has done exactly that.
Unfortunatley, she seems to need assistance with the other stuff and I just don't want to do that. She wears it all. IT is a great stress for her and I am struggling. Part of me is like, well, it is her company and she was doing that before we got together; but the other part of me is like, she is my sweetheart, she is stressed and I want to help. Problem is that I do not handle hugely long hours well any more. I work my 10 or 12 and then go home. That's it. I need rest to keep from burning out.
I don't do weekends unless it is for trial preparation. She has finally started doing weekends off too. This has helped other than that she is clearly on edge b/c she is always picking at things. She is insecure about things and at times I get frustrated with it. I ask her, why don't you go see a counsellor or something to help you deal with this stuff b/c I can't deal with it all... that's not what a spouse does. Her resposne, the local counsellors, etc., are not great; can't talk to pastor b/c it is a small town and he will spill stuff out... he's not good at keeping confidences.
These all sound like excuses to me. I get frustrated with it. This all reminds me of me when I was trying really hard not to deal with my problems. There was always an excuse. The reality was that I simply didn't want to accept help.
Wow, this is really insightful, she was previously married to a man that thought it was perfectly alright to sit at home and be supported and to not offer anything in return. She became over compensating to deal with that. She worked incredibly long hours to pay the bills, a lot of which he racked up, and to support both her and him. The list of crap from this fellow is long.
The insightful realization I had just now is that she probably grew to only rely on herself, but at the same time to resent the other person. She also could not talk to anyone b/c as a Christian, she grew up with a disfunctional christian father - schizophrenia - and all that entails she could not detach from this abusive man, could not discuss his flaws (tried with her sisters and they all told her to work harder on her marriage, to give him more sex, etc.). In short, she stayed in a loveless disfunctional marriage for five years b/c of her Christian obligation to the man she married.
A further realization, she likely has a lot of baggage from that relationship that she is needing to deal with and like it or not, she has to go to counselling to get it out.
Its funny, just writing this stuff out helps!
Thanks all. Levi