Wrangler,

I think you are totally right about this
And I think that might even be part of the shame and guilt about needing therapy? That there's nothing big to pin it on? I mean, cheated on your wife, okay, therapy seems reasonable. Huge, dramatic nervous breakdown, sure, go to therapy. But unable to manage the mental stress of daily life? WHO goes to a doctor for THAT? :rolleyes:

Wrangler, I fear that this next is an "easy to ask, hard to answer" question. But I'll try.
I think there are two needs here that work against each other. There is a need to feel capable and independent, and there is a need to have our fears and desires recognized by someone who will take care of us. At first it seems that one of these is something you do for yourself and the other is something others do for you, but it's not that easy. To feel capable and independent, we have to be given the opportunity... that means that we need to be given/trusted with tasks that are possible for us to complete. It also means that we need chances to make mistakes and to be taught, so that we can complete more tasks on our own. And often it means that someone else must validate our efforts. And before someone else can recognize our fears and desires, we have to a) find the Someone Else who we want to share with (for example an older child might choose NOT to give an abusive parent any extra info. about their fears/desires), and b) give that person the information they require to fulfill our need, and c) accept the recognition and efforts at caretaking if they are given.

I am much more focused on independence than my boyfriend. Part of this is our childhoods-- my family was neglectful and I had to do a lot of things for myself. I only got help for things that I COULDN'T do myself, and I was shamed and put down for needing the help. So for me, if I needed to get professional help, I would have to do it all myself because if my boyfriend tried to make appointments for me I would take that to mean that he thought I was incapable of doing it myself, and I would feel shamed and put down about it.

I can certainly see a lot of this unhealthy background in my reasons for not helping my boyfriend to get therapy. I want it to be HIS accomplishment. I want him to be able to own his recovery and feel proud of what he's done for himself. I know that it might be hard for him to make phone calls, etc., on his own, but after he's done it, won't it mean more to him than if I did it for him? Isn't he tired of being underestimated and put down by the people around him? My stepping back from this was an act of trust and an affirmation of his abilities, not a withdrawal of support.

Here's why my boyfriend might not have seen it that way. His family taught him dependence more than independence-- actually they sacrificed his need for independence because they needed him to make THEM feel needed. When he tried to do things on his own, he was made to feel guilty and ungrateful about "abandoning" and "rejecting" their help, or too stupid/lazy/etc. to do it in the first place, or both. So for him, allowing himself to be taken care of in a way that I (and probably he too) would find demeaning, was a way to show a willingness to meet someone else's need. He expected me to "take care" of things for him over and beyond the unhealthy line, because to him, that's what I would do if I wanted a relationship with him. For him, acknowledging the desire/ability to do it himself would be mutiny.

I think it's fairly obvious how this developed into a pattern of withdrawal over lots of issues, not just my boyfriend getting therapy. He neglected his own needs because he didn't want me to think he was ungrateful or abandoning me. I didn't jump in and take care of his needs because I didn't want him to feel ashamed. When I didn't take care of him, he felt that I wasn't living up to my end of the relationship. I felt the same way about him expecting me to care for him, because I didn't want a dependant, I wanted a partner....

Where's the unhealthy line? Well one place is in the confusion of what you need with what someone else needs you to need. If my boyfriend had asked me for help doing things (see "what we have to do to get someone to recognize our fears/desires"), I would have helped him. If he'd asked me, will you help me find a therapist, I would have made the phone calls. But he didn't know how to ask for these things because the "taking care of" he'd gotten as a child was never about what he needed. If there were needs of his that didn't correspond with what he was already being given, they conveniently disappeared. So he didn't understand that being taken care of requires give and take. He's so used to being told what he wants-- if I'd pushed him into therapy, would I have been giving him what he wanted or what I wanted?

I don't think I've ever gone 'silent' for days at a time, but hours certainly.
Usually over some innocent remark my wife made about "you've put that pan in the wrong cupboard again "

And when I was feeling worthless, useless and generally the lowest form of life it was enough to crush me, especially the "again" bit.
I'd think to myself "now I can't even put f*****g pans in the right place, f**k it !" and go into a big sulk and not say anything for the( probably ) unfounded fear of appearing even more useless.
"Our" favourite scenario was when I'd be laying the table and ask "what's for dinner then ?" and she'd say "I said an hour ago what I was going to cook, have you forgotton already ?" - and I would put 'everything' on the table in silence.

She didn't understand me and the silent treatment, and I didn't understand her. Why couldn't she just say "pizza, you forgot already ?"
Now we've got sorted out, after this eventually led to a bit of a row and we talked about the 'communication' that took place in incidents like this. We then discovered that she was frustrated at my poor memory / lack of paying attention, and I got angry about feeling stupid.
Neither of us were intentionally setting out to create these feelings, but we did.
Now we try to compensate for / accept each others 'behaviours' and work around these situations.
I'll come out of the dining room and look, and try to pay attention if we've discussed dinner earlier. And if I do ask she tries to answer simply. If it's something different and more important we both try to think about the other persons reactions to our response to their questions. Problem solved.

A Transactional Analysis based therapist would call it a "crossed transaction" that was a possible result of our "life>

I get this all the time! He is constantly telling me how and where to put stuff, but as soon as I say something along this line, I get my butt in a sling!!! It just makes me feel that there's no point in even trying to bring up my issues and concerns and needs because they may trigger or upset him, but his about me are always fair game.

Tearing my hair out...

P