You're Blue in the Face from Nagging

You say you've tried talking till you're blue in the face. I think you mean that you've been nagging him.

Yes, I understand that his unresponsiveness provokes you to nag, however, the more you nag the more he's going to be unresponsive. This is because a person who is nagged feels angry. Nobody feels like being responsive when he/she is angry!

You are now caught in a Mexican stand off. The question is how to break the cycle. The first thing you need to do is to find a different way of telling him how his behavior is landing with you. Read my book, Till Death Do Us Part (Unless I Kill You First) which will show you in great detail how to present your issue in ways that will make him want to listen and respond.

I obviously can't condense the entire book into this short answer, so do yourself a favor and read the entire book. What you want to remember is that you need to stay cool when you talk to him. If you come at him with heat (I understand that you feel like doing so since he's been so unresponsive for so long), he's going to ignore you all the more.

So, just make the resolution to speak to him in a cool way. Don't get your rocks off any more. You may feel better in the moment, but on the rocks is where your relationship will end up if you continue approaching him as you do. Just tell yourself that making this shift is taking care of yourself and seeing to it that your needs will be met in the long term.

When you speak to him, use my X, Y Formula (problem statement), which consists of describing what he's saying or doing and how you feel about it. Avoid the word 'you' so that he doesn't feel that you're attacking him. For example, you could say, 'I feel sad (or whatever you do feel) when we don't spend time together.

Since your guy is obviously defensive, you will want to preface the X, Y Formula with a Disclaimer, a positive support statement that shows him that you aren't out to deprive him of vital organs or bodily parts. The Disclaimer gets his guard down and puts him in a more receptive frame of mind. Your Disclaimer should refer to something positive about him, a trait that you admire or a quality that will prove helpful in your discussion.

Then finish with a clear suggestion for the future. This might sound like, 'It would mean a lot to me if we had one day a week together as a family. '

You are also going to want to engage in an open discussion with him to understand more about why he's behaving as he is. The goal is understanding, not trying to force him to change. If he feels that he's at gun point, he will become more resistant.

Your discussion might go something like this:'I notice that we're in a deadlock. I nag about not having enough time together. The more I nag the less inclined you are to respond. I was trying to understand why we're in this place--what purpose it serves you, me and our relationship.

You can then talk about how begging for what you want connects to your childhood (surely you were frustrated and deprived) and how this struggle with him makes you feel the same pain as you felt as a kid. You can ask him to talk about how being nagged at relates to his own history. Was he nagged at as a kid and is he used to being in the dog house? Is he furious at his mom or dad and expressing that anger by being ungiving to you? Was he neglected as a kid and is he giving you an emotional demonstration of how he suffered?

He also needs to ask himself how he feels when you nag him (angry?) and how this feeling relates to his childhood? He also wants to figure out how he wants you to feel when he doesn't spend time you (hurt, angry?); and how does he want you to respond to him (with anger)?

Then he needs to figure out why he wants you to suffer like this. Is he angry with you? Not being giving to you is an expression of anger and you need to ask him to tell you why he's so mad at you. There is something that you are doing or not doing that is infuriating him.

The point of the discussion is to break the deadlock, stop the finger pointing, and start understanding why you are both in the mess you're in. Both of you need to look at your roles in keeping this war alive and you both need to ask yourselves what you can do to make a better connection with each other.

Change will need to come from both sides in order to break this deadlock. In order for him to want to be with you more, he is surely going to need you to say and do things differently so that he feels more responsive to you.

If you get nothing from this letter, get the fact that you are going to need to approach him in a completely different way. Instead of nagging at him, get him talking about his anger that is being expressed through his ungiving behavior.

When you understand why he's mad at you, thank him for telling you and make steps to be more responsive to him. That kind of positive demonstration should invite the same responsive behavior in return.

Remember the Beatles song lyrics, 'and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.' If you can focus on giving to him (instead of demanding from him), you will be rewarded in kind.