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Acetylene · 03-13-2007, 05:28 PM

I don't want to make you feel even worse, but I do think I should share something similar that happened to my mother.

She was violently raped and abused for much of her young life and has not yet regained full control over her personal boundaries--that is, she still feels like if she says "no" she will be harmed in some way, and that her "no" will not be respected anyway. This was a problem for my father and myself as we would often discover that we were doing something wrong to her only when it became unbearable and she either burst into tears or screamed at us.

For example, when I was 12 I got a particularly exciting videa game that I would play in the evening. My mother would call me for dinner but this game could not always be saved and quit immediately, and I sometimes forgot that I was supposed to stop playing and come to dinner. Eventually she would have to remind me. I thought nothing of it until one day she cried over dinner because she was sad that the food she worked so hard to make was always cold by the time I was done playing. Obviously I never meant to harm her! We set up an egg timer to remind me to stop playing and all was well thereafter.

Anyway, the point of this long example is this: the "can't-say-no" thing might be a problem for your wife, too. I don't know if her trauma was such that it would affect all her other daily interactions with you as well, but definitely in bed you need to be careful.

03-13-2007, 05:28 PM	#16 (permalink)
Acetylene Addict Location: under a rock	I don't want to make you feel even worse, but I do think I should share something similar that happened to my mother. She was violently raped and abused for much of her young life and has not yet regained full control over her personal boundaries--that is, she still feels like if she says "no" she will be harmed in some way, and that her "no" will not be respected anyway. This was a problem for my father and myself as we would often discover that we were doing something wrong to her only when it became unbearable and she either burst into tears or screamed at us. For example, when I was 12 I got a particularly exciting videa game that I would play in the evening. My mother would call me for dinner but this game could not always be saved and quit immediately, and I sometimes forgot that I was supposed to stop playing and come to dinner. Eventually she would have to remind me. I thought nothing of it until one day she cried over dinner because she was sad that the food she worked so hard to make was always cold by the time I was done playing. Obviously I never meant to harm her! We set up an egg timer to remind me to stop playing and all was well thereafter. Anyway, the point of this long example is this: the "can't-say-no" thing might be a problem for your wife, too. I don't know if her trauma was such that it would affect all her other daily interactions with you as well, but definitely in bed you need to be careful. __________________ There's no justice. There's just us.