Originally Posted by
LaTeeDa 
Pardon the snip, but what I've quoted above seems to be the pertinent part. I think you might want to ask yourself what this means. Because I was at the same crossroads when I began therapy. I wanted my marriage to work. What I soon realized, though, is that my "marriage working" really meant "him changing." If that is what you want, then you may as well give it up now and save yourself a lot of heartache.
If you really want your marriage to work, the only way is to accept him, exactly as he is and stop expecting him to live up to your standards. This was a hard one for me, because I couldn't understand how you cannot have expectations for a husband. What I learned was, it's okay to have expectations for a husband (the role of husband), but it's futile to expect a person to fill the role just because you have cast them in it.
So really, it's your choice to make. You can accept him as he is and modify your expectations of the husband role, or you can uncast him in that part. There is no molding him into who you want him to be, no forcing a square peg into a round hole. I believe that is why you are angry and you have total control over your own expectations.
L
Ditto again. This was such a hard lesson for me to learn. Took over a year and a half to get it through my thick head that it really was unfair to keep going to the hardware store for bread and berating the owner when he didn't have any in stock. Ever. And to top it all off - the owner made it clear to me over and over again he had no intentions of ever selling bread. Yet I kept going back, and being pissed off, and going back, and on and on...
He didn't have bread, but he tried with other items he
could sell. It just wasn't what I wanted or needed. In the end, we were not doing each other any favors by beating each other up because the other didn't have it to give in the first place.
I couldn't not have expectations of a husband. I tried...really. tried. damn. hard. But the life I was being offered, that I knew I had to accept, was not a life I wanted.
I wish I had a better story to tell, Lizatola. I wish it would have been what I was promised it would be when I got married. I signed up for
that life, not the one he ultimately ended up offering. I would have liked to hold him accountable, but what purpose would that serve?
God I hope your marriage is one of the rare success stories here. I pray that for you and your family. But if its not, best to be realistic about it all, right? Maybe counseling would help...we tried both marriage counseling and individual. I got a heck of a lot out of the individual counseling.