what your honey or you changed??

[savyandmanny 0]

I saw this on a website and thought it was a good conversation to start here......My honey tells me that I have change...that I did not worry as much before and that I was not such a "big mouth" but I think its part of the relationship, not to be "a big mouth" but to start getting clear on what you expect out of the relationship and the person you will marry or are already married to, and what your significant other should "tentatively' except when arriving/living in the states and with you. I dont want to sound like a wallstreet junkie but I personally have invested and still am investing a lot in this long-distance relationship (from trips, phone cards, paperwork AND TIME) and I do understand that a variety of that goes into any relationship so its all an investment. However, when you only see each other in either a 'made-up'/ 'structured' environment like a hotel or a 2 weeks trip, it can get hard to deal with 'normal' situations. For example, my fiance's english is basic. And I have asked of him several times to take an intense english course, but he has yet to find the 'time'. I think he feels that because we are both dominicans, with fluent spanish, he does not need to. However, I want him to understand that I will not take the role of his mother or babysitter when he comes here. And that I wont be his boss or the waitress at the restaurant or the receptionist at the doctor's office. I think slowly he is getting that, but slowly is not good enough for me, because I was able to invest and adjust right away in this relationship, and make things happen in order to make it stronger and I should expect the same from him.

Sorry for the long post...but do you guys think he is right for telling i've changed, or is it part of the ongoing/growing relationship?....should I not expect or let him know what to expect when he lives in the states....for the most part... any non-offensive input is welcome.

[Ta Ta 1]

I think you are more "invested' with and from your mind and not from your heart.

It is fine to suggest an English course but another thing to "expect" it.

If you have a lot of expectations you will set yourself up for disappointment .

The higher the expectation the higher the fall.

Your tone seems a little harsh with your SO.

Try to let go of the control and allow him to be himself.

It is perfectly fine to set your boundaries in that you don't want to take

on the role of mother or babysitter, but this can be communicated in a sweet

and compassionate way.

He needs time to adjust and find his way. Being controlling can be viewed

as a 'mother role' as much as being too helpful.

Integrate him slowly ...why the need to rush ?

With this process it seems you should be the one to "expect" of yourself

to be patient.

You say you have made adjustments in the relationship....ok.....but you have not mastered

the adjustment yourself of the compassion and patience that is required.

I can honestly say I can see why he made the comment that you have changed

by reading your post.

Take a deep breath and have patience ! life is too short to stress over the little things.

[babybunny 2]

I think you are more "invested' with and from your mind and not from your heart.

It is fine to suggest an English course but another thing to "expect" it.

If you have a lot of expectations you will set yourself up for disappointment .

The higher the expectation the higher the fall.

Your tone seems a little harsh with your SO.

Try to let go of the control and allow him to be himself.

It is perfectly fine to set your boundaries in that you don't want to take

on the role of mother or babysitter, but this can be communicated in a sweet

and compassionate way.

He needs time to adjust and find his way. Being controlling can be viewed

as a 'mother role' as much as being too helpful.

Integrate him slowly ...why the need to rush ?

With this process it seems you should be the one to "expect" of yourself

to be patient.

You say you have made adjustments in the relationship....ok.....but you have not mastered

the adjustment yourself of the compassion and patience that is required.

I can honestly say I can see why he made the comment that you have changed

by reading your post.

Take a deep breath and have patience ! life is too short to stress over the little things.

I agree..

my husband is from Pakistan and the culture is alot diffrent.

one thing is he comes to me as a full glass of water. I dont want him to change.

I have to agree you need to show your husband to be a lot compassion and certainly patience.

[savyandmanny 0]

Thanks for the replies but I wanted to explain everything clearly...I DO NOT TALK TO HIM IN A 'MOTHER' WAY NEITHER AM I NOT NICE AND EXPLAIN IT TO HIM AS MY FIANCE....but I also do not want to be naive...i want him to have an understading...maybe i did come across as harsh in my explanation but i actually think that because i have been so soft and nice with him..he thinks is alright...and its not...but thank you all for the replies.

[Yodrak 7]

savyandmanny,

I don't know if you are changing or not, but for sure he is learning more about you as time goes on. From his point of view that may very well seem the same.

Yodrak

I saw this on a website and thought it was a good conversation to start here......My honey tells me that I have change...that I did not worry as much before and that I was not such a "big mouth" but I think its part of the relationship, not to be "a big mouth" but to start getting clear on what you expect out of the relationship and the person you will marry or are already married to, and what your significant other should "tentatively' except when arriving/living in the states and with you. I dont want to sound like a wallstreet junkie but I personally have invested and still am investing a lot in this long-distance relationship (from trips, phone cards, paperwork AND TIME) and I do understand that a variety of that goes into any relationship so its all an investment. However, when you only see each other in either a 'made-up'/ 'structured' environment like a hotel or a 2 weeks trip, it can get hard to deal with 'normal' situations. For example, my fiance's english is basic. And I have asked of him several times to take an intense english course, but he has yet to find the 'time'. I think he feels that because we are both dominicans, with fluent spanish, he does not need to. However, I want him to understand that I will not take the role of his mother or babysitter when he comes here. And that I wont be his boss or the waitress at the restaurant or the receptionist at the doctor's office. I think slowly he is getting that, but slowly is not good enough for me, because I was able to invest and adjust right away in this relationship, and make things happen in order to make it stronger and I should expect the same from him.

Sorry for the long post...but do you guys think he is right for telling i've changed, or is it part of the ongoing/growing relationship?....should I not expect or let him know what to expect when he lives in the states....for the most part... any non-offensive input is welcome.

[Fandango 1,439]

I think you are more "invested' with and from your mind and not from your heart.

It is fine to suggest an English course but another thing to "expect" it.

If you have a lot of expectations you will set yourself up for disappointment .

The higher the expectation the higher the fall.

Your tone seems a little harsh with your SO.

Try to let go of the control and allow him to be himself.

It is perfectly fine to set your boundaries in that you don't want to take

on the role of mother or babysitter, but this can be communicated in a sweet

and compassionate way.

He needs time to adjust and find his way. Being controlling can be viewed

as a 'mother role' as much as being too helpful.

Integrate him slowly ...why the need to rush ?

With this process it seems you should be the one to "expect" of yourself

to be patient.

You say you have made adjustments in the relationship....ok.....but you have not mastered

the adjustment yourself of the compassion and patience that is required.

I can honestly say I can see why he made the comment that you have changed

by reading your post.

Take a deep breath and have patience ! life is too short to stress over the little things.

I agree..

my husband is from Pakistan and the culture is alot diffrent.

one thing is he comes to me as a full glass of water. I dont want him to change.

I have to agree you need to show your husband to be a lot compassion and certainly patience.

I disagree completely.

I think it's perfectly fine to have expectations of your partner...we all do, really, just this one is a little more noticeable. It would be a terrible thing imo for her fiance to not learn English, and it would create a very big dependent strain on the OP to constantly have to be his translator. He's moving to the US...he should learn English. And there's nowt wrong with the OP saying as much.

and for someone to even suggest from ONE POST that the poster is not emotionally invested in her fiance is ridiculous, ignorant, and judgemental. We don't know them...and a post saying that she expects her boo to learn English is hardly a red-flag otherwise. It's neither controlling nor indicative of having 'too high' expectations...it's when people lower the bar as to not be disappointed that life becomes unsatisfying.

Long story short...if OP expects English, nowt wrong with an effort to move in that direction. I doubt OP is expecting him to recite Shakespeare in one day, it seems to me she just wants to see effort.

[Ta Ta 1]

I am all for learning English. I am German , now USC and am always striving to

better myself, it is vital to having a well rounded life here and professionally very

important to speak English well.

I did not mean to imply that the OP is not emotionally invested at all but thought to explore

if she may be a little unbalanced lately in compassion versus " making things happen ", we all

shift our compassion and heart around with trying to get things accomplished on any given day and that is

not neccessarily negative. Sometimes we are in overdrive and so highly motivated to overlook

the important aspects of a relationship that are heart driven, compassion, patience and tolerance.

Yes, it can be very emotionally draining to translate all the time for the SO.

My perspective with the OP was the following:

She stated that she thought he was slowly getting it but that was not good enough for her and

that she was able to invest/adjust right away. ( Phone cards ? )

There seems to be a little tension as to the expectation of timing to take an English class.

We can't force our SO into someone they are not or doing something they don't want to do.

We can suggest this or that and expect certain things that we agreed upon and founded

on good communication. We should not attempt to force someone else's timing or readyness

because we have done so in the speed of lightning.

He is not even here yet.

LisaD, your comment of when we lower our bar of expectation life becomes unsatisfying, that

is right on when it comes to ourselves and our own high standard by which we measure ourselves but to have high expectations of another person within the

timeline that we want things done is not a good idea.

People are too different to expect them to adjust as fast as we have done.

The relationship will go through constant changes, growing and shifting because when

the reality of life together every day hits, it is very different from the long distance way of life

as the OP realized.

To avoid getting drained , if he refuses to learn better English there is always the option

to refuse to translate at every moment allthough I would chose the route of patience for

a reasonable lenght of time rather than being frustrated because things don't happen fast enough.

Now if that does not clarify my perspective than maybe I myself need to take another

English class ! And I realize I am leaving myself wide open with that statement.......

[Karen_L 1]

I think you are more "invested' with and from your mind and not from your heart.

It is fine to suggest an English course but another thing to "expect" it.

If you have a lot of expectations you will set yourself up for disappointment .

The higher the expectation the higher the fall.

Your tone seems a little harsh with your SO.

Try to let go of the control and allow him to be himself.

It is perfectly fine to set your boundaries in that you don't want to take

on the role of mother or babysitter, but this can be communicated in a sweet

and compassionate way.

He needs time to adjust and find his way. Being controlling can be viewed

as a 'mother role' as much as being too helpful.

Integrate him slowly ...why the need to rush ?

With this process it seems you should be the one to "expect" of yourself

to be patient.

You say you have made adjustments in the relationship....ok.....but you have not mastered

the adjustment yourself of the compassion and patience that is required.

I can honestly say I can see why he made the comment that you have changed

by reading your post.

Take a deep breath and have patience ! life is too short to stress over the little things.

I agree..

my husband is from Pakistan and the culture is alot diffrent.

one thing is he comes to me as a full glass of water. I dont want him to change.

I have to agree you need to show your husband to be a lot compassion and certainly patience.

I disagree completely.

I think it's perfectly fine to have expectations of your partner...we all do, really, just this one is a little more noticeable. It would be a terrible thing imo for her fiance to not learn English, and it would create a very big dependent strain on the OP to constantly have to be his translator. He's moving to the US...he should learn English. And there's nowt wrong with the OP saying as much.

and for someone to even suggest from ONE POST that the poster is not emotionally invested in her fiance is ridiculous, ignorant, and judgemental. We don't know them...and a post saying that she expects her boo to learn English is hardly a red-flag otherwise. It's neither controlling nor indicative of having 'too high' expectations...it's when people lower the bar as to not be disappointed that life becomes unsatisfying.

Long story short...if OP expects English, nowt wrong with an effort to move in that direction. I doubt OP is expecting him to recite Shakespeare in one day, it seems to me she just wants to see effort.

I agree completely. My husband and I communicate without any problems at all in Italian, and in NYC, one CAN survive and get by only by knowing Italian, Albanian and VERY basic English, and despite this, I still expect him to learn English and he expects that of himself too. He's been taking one of those intensive ESL courses and in only two months, omg, you should see how much he's learned. I'm so proud of him! I think wanting your SO to learn English shows that you want them to succeed in the US, not that you're a controlling harpy bent on destroying his life (I may indeed be that, but for other reasons, not this lol). Also, if you put your mind to it, learning another language isn't all THAT hard. It just takes patience, practice and the willingness/desire to learn.

[Rob and Melinda 0]

Melinda changed as a result of being here in the US, but nothing that is not workable. Also you get to know someone better over time and it is not that they changed, it is that you just know morre about them now.

Rob

[Dan J 277]

I don't think you've changed. You still care about him that you want him to be independent by learning english so he could survive once he's in the US. But some people just hate to learn and read lots of books. It's boring. You could always stop talking in Spanish and start to always talk in English with him. Who knows it could help him to be motivated.

[featherB 1]

Melinda changed as a result of being here in the US, but nothing that is not workable. Also you get to know someone better over time and it is not that they changed, it is that you just know morre about them now.

Rob

Rob... why do you keep bumping up ancient posts from months ago?!?

[Dan J 277]

Melinda changed as a result of being here in the US, but nothing that is not workable. Also you get to know someone better over time and it is not that they changed, it is that you just know morre about them now.

Rob

Rob... why do you keep bumping up ancient posts from months ago?!?

omgwtf... didn't realize it.