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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Don’t Let The Past Determine Your Future

Ladies' Home Journal

“It was past midnight when the neighbors called, threatening to phone the police,” says 28-year-old Lillian, the office manager of a small real-estate company. “Once again, my husband, Chad, and his hard-drinking friends were making so much noise you could hear them a mile away.”

Lillian pulled on a robe and ordered the freeloaders to leave at once - and no one has let her forget it.

“All my husband’s friends hate me,” she explains. “Most especially, Hank, Chad’s sister’s husband. He left shouting a stream of obscenities at me and accusing Chad of being tied to my apron strings. My husband just stood there and didn’t say a word in my defense.”

Now, Hank has turned Chad’s father and sister, Madge, against her. “My husband has fallen into the habit of stopping by his sister’s apartment after he finishes work at the construction site to have a beer with Hank and, often, his father,” Lillian continues.

What Lillian finds incomprehensible is her husband’s inability to stand up to his relatives and friends. At least twice a week, he’s hanging out with these low-lifes, she reports. And every weekend, he and this group of friends drive a hundred miles out into the country to fix up an old house that Madge and Hank bought. Wives are never included.

“Chad knows how strongly I feel that these people are a terrible influence, and I was so happy to hear him telling one of them on the phone that he would no longer be joining them on that project,” Lillian relates.

Chad, 31, a construction engineer, feels like a guy caught in the middle of a full-scale war. “Lillian pulls me in one direction; my friends and family pull me in another.”

Chad really wants to stand by his wife, and he knows he’s been bowing to Hank’s bullying for years. “If only Lily showed a little more understanding and a little more tact,” he says. “I have a certain obligation to these guys. We’ve been working together on these extra construction projects for years, and I’m the most skilled of the bunch. I don’t feel free to back out now just because I’m married.”

It’s also not easy to stand up to his friends’ taunts that he’s under his wife’s thumb, especially when he often feels that’s exactly where he is. “Lily can be very domineering. She nags and picks on me about what to eat, how I shouldn’t smoke and should cut down on alcohol. Enough already. When we bought this house, she made an itemized list of all the things she expected me to do and the order I should do them in. Hey, this is my field, and I don’t need anyone standing over my shoulder supervising.”

Now that he thinks about it, Chad is tired of being bossed around by everyone in his life. But he doesn’t have the courage or the confidence to say that to those who matter.

Breaking The ‘If only’ Cycle

“Because of her longtime distrust of men, Lillian learned to manage her life her way, but what she thought she had to do to survive emotionally was slowly wrecking her marriage,” points out Winifred Gahm, a marriage therapist in Los Angeles.

Whereas Lillian has too many rules for herself and others, Chad has none. He hates being the henpecked husband, but he’s been acquiescing to others for so long, he’s unable to break the habit.

Like many people, Chad often gets stuck in the “if only” trap - that is, he dwells on what he should do or could do - but never does it. Experts agree that such behavior can be unlearned.

The following are all types of “if-only” thinking:

There is no way to prove that the future would have been different if you took another path, made another choice or approached a problem differently.

If you think you can’t change yourself or another person because the problems loom too large, or your solutions feel more like stop-gap measures, switch that thought around and say, “Well, it would not solve the problem completely, but it might put us in a spot that’s better than where we are now.”

Chad felt that because he’d always been under the group’s influence he wouldn’t be able to change now. Ask yourself, “How do I know that my conclusion is correct? How valid is the advice I have been given by others?”

When Chad did this, he saw that one way to get out from under Hank’s negative influence was to stop dropping by their house every day after work for a beer. Simply driving straight home to Lillian resolved much of his problem.