The "i would like you to work on" box. Will this work?

[whatwillbewillbe03]

Me and my fiance of two years have had horrible year of what feels like none stop fighting. It all came to a head at the weekend and i decided enough was enough and i ended it.

The main root of all our fights seems to be the the fact with both harbour negative emotions and then when it all blows up he goes verbally crazy and I stonewall. We both harbour for different reasons but both love each other deeply but this way of communication is breaking the both of us.

Yesterday and he (finally) apologised for his part in why i harbour and keep things from him, he cried and told me he couldn't lose me. He asked me to go to the shop with him to buy two boxes and to please have faith in our relationship and love.

In the evening we both discussed that every two weeks we would write down one thing that we would like the other person to work on and the reason why that was important to you. This cannot be questioned and the other person must accept this and for the next two weeks work on what their partner has wrote. During the two weeks we each write appreciation notes to put in the boxes if and when we feel we have been heard and how it made us feel. At the end of the two weeks we read out loud the notes we have been given by eachother and then write the next "i would like you to work on" note.

The idea behind it is that we bring up anything we feel the relationship is that we don't harbour and that our feelings HAVE to be heard without judgement and the other person gets to understand that whilst some thing may not be important to them they are important to the other person.

Is this a crazy idea? after an awful year will this save our relationship?

Seriously love, leg it. Get out of this horribly desructive relationship.

My and my DH have gone through some horrible times but we are still together and happy. Our son had cancer. Twice. I don't think that the pair of you are equipped to deal with something so difficult.

Look up Daily Temperature Reading ( dtr), it’s a really simple communication tool that has saved lots of relationships, and you don’t have to do it daily. It can take 5 mi it’s or two hours, really flexible.
Good luck with it op.

At first I thought fair play on you both for trying to save your relationship. And by all means I think you should do it if you believe it’ll help/save things

However I then realised you’ve only been together 2 years you shouldn’t be having to do this so soon

If you truly believe it’ll help your relationship then go for it. But to be honest it shouldn’t be this hard so soon

That sounds awful!
Why not have individual counselling to address your personal issues with communication, and follow it with couples counselling?
I especially hate the “I want you to work on” faux positivity.
I’d rather have a box that was more honest and “tbh, I flipping hate it when you...”

Bad idea. Really bad. Don't do this. It sounds really controlling and based on criticism, not support and communication.
Don't get married for the next couple of years, at least. Clearly you both have some sorting out to do, and if you're going to be together forever, it'll be OK to wait a while to get hitched.
Agree with Ellisandra that some counselling - both individual and together - might be of benefit.

Honestly, for most couples, if they want to increase communication, they set a date night, not a '10 things I hate about you' night.

I agree with everyone else that this is a terrible idea, but just wanted to pick up on the fact that it's his idea and that he goes 'verbally crazy'. This idea in theory allows each of you a huge amount of control over the other, as apparently you 'must' work on the named issue, ie does what the other one tells you. That he thinks this is desirable makes me quite uneasy. If you're completely honest, is he emotionally abusive? What does him going 'verbally crazy' look like?

No, it shouldn’t be this hard. You haven’t been getting along for almost half of your relationship and the whole of your engagement. That’s not a bad patch, just a bad relationship.

I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that nobody in their 80s who's been married for 50+ years has ever used this technique to keep the love alive.

My ex husband did something similar - his cousin sell or told him that he must tell me what I needed to change and that I must promise to do it. One such thing was coming to the door as soon as he got home to greet him...no matter what I was doing.

It was controlling and annoying, but I felt I had to do things I didn't want to do - becuase it was part of his counselling.

Honestly there is a reason we are not together - he was just controlling and could not understand why I didn't put him first.

Your box will be filled with reasonable requests and his will be filled with demands - I pretty much guarantee this.

Absolutely no - “this cannot be questioned and the other person must accept this and for the next two weeks work on what their partner has wrote”. This is an abuser’s charter. Every single thing he writes will take away your freedom of choice.

You think because you get to write stuff too, it will be even handed but don’t fall for that.

It sounds controlling and awful.
Anything “You can’t question” is not a good idea.

It shouldn’t be like this at all at this stage.

Get counselling. alone. For yourself.

This relationship is not healthy also you’ve been dating

Waaaah pushed send too soon.
You’ve been dating for two years you should be fully loved up and happy, not miserable and flogging a dead hourse

You should absolutely be able to question things. That is fundamental.

I don’t get the significance of the boxes and I think I’d feel like I was in a permemnant relationship appraisal.

After 2 years it should not be this hard.

Can I ask how old you both are?

I, too, would like to know what 'verbally crazy' looks like. I know what I think it looks like - my EA ExH used to put up a whole fucking wall of words whenever we argued to ensure I couldn't get a single one in sideways - and he was extremely controlling too, of which this no-question box idea bollocks also bears all the hallmarks.

It seems to me that you might be in the extremely privileged position of having a controller show his hand before you are married, pregnant or both. This whole idea obviously doesn't sit right with you and I'd advise you to explore your gut instincts here.

Guarantee you this man will tell you things in the "box" straight out of the abuser handbook. More sex. Dress differently. Kinkier sex. Being more at his beck and call. Spending less time with your friends/family.

If you want to see what kind of man you have, do it. See if I'm right. If he's cautious, his first requests will be innocuous and he'll spring "you need to lose weight and make more of an effort with your appearance" on you after a month or so.

Where did he get that idea from anyway?

Relationships should be based on mutual respect and understanding. This idea of his, it pretty much means that once a fortnight, you will both be open yourselves to potentially unfair and unwarranted personal criticism, that apparently you just have to accept (? why?). And then you will spend two weeks twisting and turning to try to change yourself into someone you aren't to please the other person. No. Just no. One thing I have learnt in life is that if you aren't accepted for who you are in a relationship and you are trying to change yourself to fit, then that is a giant neon sign telling you that this relationship is not right for you.

OP here is what you wrote on another thread three weeks ago:

I have been with my partner for 2 years..engaged but we don't live together. Every few months we have a huge argument that ALWAYS ends up a much bigger deal then its should and totally out of control. I will ignore him for days/weeks even because i don't want to deal what the argument has become and so i just block it all out, put my emotions in box and get on with life as if nothing happened. This obviously makes my DP think that i don't care and actually that i don't love him, which couldn't be further from the truth.

I believed i showed him i love him by doing all the lovely practical things i do for him but he pointed out that whilst i am faultless at those things the core relationship things that are important to him i show nothing. In the two years not ONCE did i ever bring up the conversation to move in together, talk about our future or have i brought up our engagement since i said YES... EVERY time was instigated by him. At no point in two years have i ever really tried to repair our arguments i just leave it all to him

Following our latest blow out he has explained (without blame or talking AT me) to me how my actions affect our him and our relationship. I said noting whilst he was explaining and i just listened and for whatever reason i now UNDERSTAND. I do not want him to feel i don't love nor care for him so i have no choice but to change how i react if i want to move forward in this relationship or any relationship for that matter. I UNDERSTAND that its emotional abuse and it hurts that I have inflicted it on someone I love

Personally, I think your idea will not work. From reading the rest of that thread, due to your past issues, I think you need to have some more counselling for yourself. But this relationship is probably dead in the water, to be honest. Who wants to be in a relationship where you argue regularly? I was with my ex for 10 years and we never shouted at each other once.

It really shouldn't be this hard at all, let alone 2 years into a relationship.

Get out now. You'll one day meet someone nice and realise how awful this relationship is.

What do you get out of this relationship now?.

What did you learn about relationships when growing up as well?. What sort of an example did your parents show you?. I think you have no idea at all what a mutually loving and respectful relationship is because no-one ever bothered to show you.

Yes this is a crazy idea from him and the two of you should never have got together in the first place, let alone become engaged. One person with a troubled background plus another person with a troubled background simply equals two people with troubled backgrounds. I would also like to know what verbally crazy looks like too; that sounds like emotional abuse.

Wow i didn't expect such a responsive. Thank you all so much.

@Racontuer you hit the nail on the head - It sounds like you are in a anxious / avoidant relationship or pursuer / distancer relationship. Both react in your own ways but that inadvertently triggers the other. Start of relationship it's not as obvious but as relationship develops so too does the pattern and reactions.This is exactly it.

Our first year was fantastic. We didn't argue we had fun, it was romantic, easy and we fell completely head over heels in love with eachother. My DD adores him and he her. Then the first argument came over something ridiculous and then the second and then another. They all start with one of us not telling the other how they feel and the resentment building and then exploding and getting out of hand. He wants to talk/shout and get it out and i want to hide and i in turn stonewall and ignore making things worse.

As i understand it the box is not to criticise eachother but to have a voice that you feel is being listened and the other person cares what is important to them.
For example my first note will be I would like you to work on being more affectionate (he was super affectionate the first year and with every argument it got less and less from both sides really). His will prob be he would like more quality time with me ( i feel like we spend a lot of time together but actually a lot of the dis not of any quality).

He's not controlling in any other way in fact he is very supportive so i don't think this is a controlling thing just a tool to help us communicate until it goes back to being a natural thing we are able to do without worrying about the other persons reaction if that makes sense.

Maybe you are all right though and i would be flogging a dead horse and we are just not right for each other.

Like I said OP...it is just not supposed to be this difficult. I agree with the PP who said it would be like being in a permanent relationship appraisal. If you were to visit an elderly couple who had been happily married for 50 years, what do you think they'd have to say about a system like this?

You've now been fighting non stop for as long as your honeymoon period lasted. How much longer is it going to go on? The sunk costs fallacy springs to mind.

You have a child in the middle of this.

Honestly, this isn't going to work.

Take the 'being more affectionate'. I wouldn't always feel like being affectionate to someone who regularly freezes me out. Not all the time anyway. You can't demand that and a person have no response.

If my dp said he wanted more time with me and I couldn't respond, the only way to do it would be to get even less sleep than I do now. Between work and my son, I am exhausted anyway. I make time to see him as much as I can but it's not always possible. So in your situation I would have to agree then fail miserably.

It's not realistic.

Seriously, if you have got to the point where you have to use notes in a box to communicate openly with one another, your relationship is dead in the water.

So you’ve just articulated perfectly that you want more affection from him, and he probably wants more quality time.

So you can either:

• stick a note in a box and then have a misunderstanding as to whether affection means sitting on the same sofa for Netflix or more sex

Or

• you can get on and actually book a babysitter and go for a drink for uninterrupted chat where you hold hands

If you are poor communicators in life, you will be poor communicators via a box.

Seriously though, I would consider whether you’re bottling things up because you have issues of your own in communicating, or whether it’s because he’s an arse. Because it was fine for the first year!

What are you ACTUALLY arguing about? Could be that these issues are not resolved NOT because you don’t communicate, but because one or both of you doesn’t have the interest in changing it. Could be one of you is being an arse - or, not wrong, just different values and you’re not compatible.

I could have stuck “I want you to do more housework” in a box for my XH. I could even have gone more emotionally intelligent in my box entry about “when you leave the dirty plates in the sink, I feel...”

Bottom line, he didn’t give a shit about my feelings. If he’d been forced by our box rules to wash up for a week, he’d have shown his lack of regard for me in a myriad other ways, and I’d have been no further forward.

I’d suggest a REALLY good think about what the arguments have been about.