#3 Expect him to fill all of your emotional needs and be clingy about it.

Let me set the scene for you.

A young woman marries a man she loves and imagines that now she will be truly happy. That lonely feeling that she used to get sometimes will no longer bother her because she has him. Those occasional feelings of insecurity will vanish as well because this man she loves wants her. She now has a companion to spend her days with and an emotional support for all of the times when she is feeling low.

photo by Thristian

And then, oh horror of horrors, that man of hers turns out to be human. He has bad days too, sometimes at the same time as her. He is not always emotionally supportive and empathetic. He doesn’t have the energy to cheer her up with roses and silly limericks in the bubble bath. And she wonders what is wrong.

• Why is he pulling away from her?
• What happened to that special feeling of closeness?
• Why does he seem to want to get away from her for a while?

He may announce one evening that he’s going out with the guys after work, and she may panic, and feel that she is losing him. He is pulling away from her and she needs him. She needs him to be there so she can tell him all of the details of her day. He is such a good ear for her when she’s over analyzing every single interaction and unloading all of her pent up negative emotions into his patient and ever supportive lap.

She fears the way things are changing. She fears that the loss of that initial close feeling is the beginning of the end. She fights for it. With tears and harangues and sulking she manipulates and convinces him to come home instead. Then she talks and talks and talks to him. He sits sullenly and quietly saying little.

photo by pnoeric

She feels his lack of enthusiasm, so she talks some more, suggests more togetherness activities. She is convinced that with enough talking everything will be alright again.

But the feeling of loneliness only increases, even though he is still right there in front of her. She still feels a rift forming between them. She falls asleep with a forlorn tear dripping into the pillow, convinced that something is terribly, terribly wrong with her marriage.

Does this sound familiar? Oh, yeah, me neither. [whistles]

So, since you’ve never been in this situation either I can assume that you know the same thing I do. It’s silly for a woman to expect her husband to be her only source of emotional support. It’s sillier for her to try and force him to be her constant emotional support by clinging to him and acting needy. And it’s even sillier still for her to treat him as a dumping ground for all of her emotional baggage and not expect there to be any repercussions. Marriage was never meant to be your only relationship. It’s impossible for one person to fill all of the emotional needs of another. You both need other relationships.

Get thee to some girlfriends, and maybe a therapist, and definitely a wise older woman or two, whom you respect, to be your mentors. And stop expecting your husband to do all of the emotional heavy lifting.

photo by puroticorico

For most men, it is heavy lifting to deal with the constant, ever changing, and shifting swirl of female emotion. It wears them out.

They may understand your unhappiness as a criticism of them. Why else would you be telling them all about it if you didn’t think it was something they ought to know how to fix? That’s how a guy generally thinks. He doesn’t want to be your shoulder all the time. He’s happy to do it when there is a crisis he understands, but day after day complaining is draining and he begins to want to get away from it all, from you.

Women usually process their emotions out loud. Men don’t usually understand this concept. To them your emotional processing sounds more like complaining. So don’t do it with your husband.

photo by misha.pics.word.’s

Try talking to some other women instead. If you pray, do that as well. Then when you see him again you will have already put things in perspective a bit and you can greet him with a smile, a cheerful hello, and the time that you two spend together can be enjoyable for both of you.

Carrien has many adventures to read about at She Laughs at the Days

Read the other posts in this series: #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10.

Have you experienced this situation in your marriage? What relationships do you have apart from your marriage that allow you to “blow of steam” and relieve stress so that you can be an Extraordinary Wife? Tell us about it at The League!

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