{"id":68,"date":"2008-06-01T10:53:52","date_gmt":"2008-06-01T17:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/2008\/06\/01\/answering-a-students-burning-question\/"},"modified":"2008-06-01T10:56:55","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T17:56:55","slug":"answering-a-students-burning-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/answering-a-students-burning-question\/","title":{"rendered":"My Wife is &#8220;Done&#8221; and Unwilling to Try&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;Steven asks:<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o>&nbsp;<\/o>&ldquo;<span style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"del3714873\" \/><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">How do I handle it when my wife breaks the &quot;rules&quot; it seems trying to implement anything she keeps twisting the topic to something else, making things my fault, ultimately blaming everything on me, but stating she doesn&rsquo;t do what she is doing. I&#8217;m working on this alone. My wife is &quot;done&quot; and unwilling to try anything, she left so we are separated but she hasn&rsquo;t asked for a divorce. I want to save us, I feel she&#8217;s killing me for trying to.<\/span>&ldquo;<o><\/o><o><\/o><o><br \/>\n<\/o><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The important thing to remember in a situation like this is that you&rsquo;re trying to connect to the other person&rsquo;s feelings and needs &ndash; always the feelings and needs from the 4 Step Communication formula <span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span>&ndash; no matter what they say to throw you off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Using the Magic Relationship Method takes a lot patience and persistence.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>It requires stepping back from a situation and the words being directed toward you so that you can see the overall situation.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span><o><\/o><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">When your wife turns the discussion back to how wrong you are, ask her, &ldquo;Are you feeling ___ because you&rsquo;re needing ___.&rdquo;<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>As you&rsquo;re learning the 4 Step Communication Formula, you&rsquo;ll probably have to keep your lists of the feelings and needs right in front of you during one of these conversations.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>It&rsquo;s difficult to remember all of the feelings and needs <st1>AND<\/st1> keep your perspective at the same time.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>Here&rsquo;s a link to the lists &ndash; look at the right hand column of the page:<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.magicrelationship.com\/articles.htm\">http:\/\/www.magicrelationship.com\/articles.htm<\/a> .<o><\/o><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">I&rsquo;d like to give you some empathy for the pain you must be in around this situation.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>You say &ldquo;I feel she&rsquo;s killing me for trying to work on the relationship.&rdquo;<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>What is the true feeling here?<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>What you&rsquo;ve given is a thought &ndash; that she&rsquo;s trying to kill you.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>I&rsquo;m wondering if you&rsquo;re feeling some anxiety, disappointment or frustration?<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>Do any of those hit home for you?<o><\/o><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And then I&rsquo;m wondering if &#8212; around your efforts to save the relationship &ndash; you&rsquo;re needing understanding, acknowledgement and maybe some appreciation for how hard you&rsquo;re trying?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;Steven asks: &nbsp;&ldquo;How do I handle it when my wife breaks the &quot;rules&quot; it seems trying to implement anything she keeps twisting the topic to something else, making things my fault, ultimately blaming everything on me, but stating she doesn&rsquo;t do what she is doing. I&#8217;m working on this alone. My wife is &quot;done&quot; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[334,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-relationship-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.magicrelationship.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}