The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
He thinks I am leaving him out & thatI am like mother becbecause I like to socislize out & about. I like even love my friends. He is no matter what my friend too. I still love him. Does he really know what he is saying?
We try to go to a movie at least once a month & dinner too. Yet he feels left out. The more I think about the more I thst we used be inseperable. Now that 15 yrs I guess sometimes I need my own life & friends.
I notice that when I get into a comfortable routine with loved ones, I get stuck in a rut. Changing my part of our routine seems to help give a bit of new life to our relationship and we seem to enjoy ourselves together a little more. Doing the same thing over and over again even in healthy relationships can get old, too. I agree that we do need friends and hobbies of our own. I've also discovered that primary relationships can be benefitted just by trying something a little different than I normally do in those relationships. I love to watch the sparkle in a loved one's eyes when I make a change that is a pleasant surprise for them. It's never a major change and often is something very simple but we both benefit from the change anyway. It also seems to spur the other to do something new in relationship to me, too. Let it begin with me works for me in my primary relationships provided the person isn't using or abusing drugs or alcohol.
,I think this is kind of common with a lot of men. They simply do not make friends and treasure them as women do. Even if they do have close friends, it is all kind of superficial with them and they avoid personal stuff. Then they see women sharing and caring and they are kind of jealous. My husband, the only son with a very manipulative mother who played' today you are the favourite, tomorrow it is one of the other girls" game with her children, felt left out a lot when I got together with my sisters because we are all close. I think he still feels that way after almost forty years- that he is missing out, that I am somehow neglecting him when I talk daily to my sibs. I'd make a little more effort to do things together but the sad thing is that often we women just have more fun with other women because we don't have to accommodate them. It's a balancing act because we women NEED other women in our lives.
