Whenever my husband and i go on any outing i get mad cause he is always moving ahead of me and when i would tell him to wait up he gets really mad and would tell me he does not see why he needs to wait on me. . . .this really bothers me cause i like us to do things together and that make me upset with him and it spoils our outing cause he will not talk to me and i won’t talk with him. . . . how can i make him see that doing things together is important in our relationship. . help
The problem here is that your husband is resisting the connection with you. The more you push him, the more he resists and rushes ahead. He has an emotional problem, which means that until he recognizes the underlying cause of his behavior your attempts to make him see reason will be futile.It sounds to me like your husband has more than one problem. On the one hand he wants to be free and not controlled–a problem that results from having been raised by controlling parents. His need to be free results in his resisting whatever you demand, which in this case happens to be his walking with you.When he refuses, he unconsciously sets you up to be his controlling parent, so that he can vent his stored up anger by refusing or rebelling. You press him more, he rebels more, and voila, you’re locked in a major power struggle.Obviously your husband needs to be in therapy so that he can be helped to own his anger and direct it at the appropriate source. Since I don’t get the impression that he’s too open to looking at himself, you can try to do a bit a ‘therapizing’ of him on your own. To do this you could ask him if he knows how he feels when you ask him to walk with you.If he’s open you can ask him if this scenario reminds him of something that happened to him as a kid. If we’re lucky, he’ll take the bait and make the link between past and present. If he’s able see you as his wife and not his demanding mother he may feel freed up to be more responsive.To break the vicious cycle and help dilute his mother transference toward you, you need to stop falling into the role of his pushy mother by not pressing him. I know you’re thinking ‘but I’m entitled to have my husband walk beside me.’ Yes, you are, no question. However, the method you’re using to try to persuade him is only making matters worse.So what you need to do is a bit of reverse psychology. Stop the tug of war by letting go of the rope. Not only shouldn’t you ask him to walk with you, you try walking ahead of him! It will drive him crazy and I bet he’ll run after you to keep up with you.Even when you succeed in getting him to be more responsive on this issue, beware because his problem isn’t solved, which means that he will try to get you locked into new power struggles. Keep using the above technique and you will escape the battle before it starts, thereby helping him to be more responsive to you.
