Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is he a police officer? ICE agent?

This is an odd question.
She clearly said her husband has no friends, and cops typically spend a lot of time outside work with their colleagues.

Anonymous wrote:Is he a police officer? ICE agent?

Anonymous wrote:He is emotionally immature. People miss the signs of emotional immaturity in men because they are treated as children until they are 30 or so, and then suddenly they are expected to act like adults and have no skills.

The rigidity here is the big problem. Look at his family dynamics and how he and his family talk about his childhood and young adulthood. When he would run into difficult people (other kids, teachers, early bosses, etc.) would he be encouraged to find ways two work with them or simply told "yeah those people are bad, they don't get you"? Are his parents good at conflict resolution, do they have a dynamic where his dad is very rigid and demanding and his mom is a pushover? All of this will help you understand why he's like this.

Also I suggest going to therapy and talking through these issues. It will help you figure out your own role. Are you unwittingly playing the role of enabler that his parents played before you? Have you been making things easier for him socially for years by apologizing for him, managing a social schedule that plays to his strengths, etc.? You need to look at your own role because none of this will change unless you also change.

Then you need to start talking with him about why this is a problem. He might surprise you and be willing to do the work. My husband was. But he'd also shown the ability to do the work in the past -- he'd learned social skills in college and had a good group of friends who reinforced those skills, he'd just reverted to his upbringing with we got married and had kids. So for us it was a question of leaning into the behaviors he'd already started to learn and just getting him to apply them in a family context. And I had to work on my people pleasing tendencies and learn to speak up sooner when his rigidity was becoming hard to deal with, instead of enabling him until the problem was critical.

It's possible it's not salvageable and you need to move on. Do you have kids? That will influence how you handle this. I was highly motivated to make it work because we have kids so we are tied to each other no matter what. I also think our kids helped DH motivate because he realized he didn't want to repeat negative family dynamics and also realized that if he didn't change his behavior, our kids would not want anything to do with him as an adult, just like doesn't want anything to do with his parents.

Anonymous wrote:Tell him to his face

Anonymous wrote:He is emotionally immature. People miss the signs of emotional immaturity in men because they are treated as children until they are 30 or so, and then suddenly they are expected to act like adults and have no skills.

The rigidity here is the big problem. Look at his family dynamics and how he and his family talk about his childhood and young adulthood. When he would run into difficult people (other kids, teachers, early bosses, etc.) would he be encouraged to find ways two work with them or simply told "yeah those people are bad, they don't get you"? Are his parents good at conflict resolution, do they have a dynamic where his dad is very rigid and demanding and his mom is a pushover? All of this will help you understand why he's like this.

Also I suggest going to therapy and talking through these issues. It will help you figure out your own role. Are you unwittingly playing the role of enabler that his parents played before you? Have you been making things easier for him socially for years by apologizing for him, managing a social schedule that plays to his strengths, etc.? You need to look at your own role because none of this will change unless you also change.

Then you need to start talking with him about why this is a problem. He might surprise you and be willing to do the work. My husband was. But he'd also shown the ability to do the work in the past -- he'd learned social skills in college and had a good group of friends who reinforced those skills, he'd just reverted to his upbringing with we got married and had kids. So for us it was a question of leaning into the behaviors he'd already started to learn and just getting him to apply them in a family context. And I had to work on my people pleasing tendencies and learn to speak up sooner when his rigidity was becoming hard to deal with, instead of enabling him until the problem was critical.

It's possible it's not salvageable and you need to move on. Do you have kids? That will influence how you handle this. I was highly motivated to make it work because we have kids so we are tied to each other no matter what. I also think our kids helped DH motivate because he realized he didn't want to repeat negative family dynamics and also realized that if he didn't change his behavior, our kids would not want anything to do with him as an adult, just like doesn't want anything to do with his parents.