"Ted thinks I'm too aggressive and pushy," says Jody, 30, the mother of a 2 1/2 -year-old daughter and a 4-month-old son. "But that's the way I've always been. I can't change."
Even as a child, Jody was outgoing and determined. "I had a lot of friends, but they were all cute little cheerleaders. I was two feet taller than everyone. The way I fit in was to study hard, be the class clown and pretend nothing mattered."
Her outgoing nature also served her well in her former job in sales. "But while everyone else praises me for being assertive, Ted says I embarrass him," she says.
Jody is perplexed by her husband's attitude. "Ted is the kind of guy who orders a steak medium-rare, and if it arrives burnt to a crisp, he'll eat it anyway."
Throughout their five-year marriage, Jody has always had to give her husband that extra nudge: "When Ted was offered a terrific new job, he worried he couldn't handle it. I convinced him he could." Now she can't believe her marriage is over. "I'll do anything to make him love me again," she says tearfully.
Ted, a 34-year-old businessman, thinks Jody has given him more than a nudge over the years: "I don't know if I fell out of love, or I was pushed out," he says sadly. "With Jody, I can't get a word in edgewise. We never just talk anymore. I'm fed up with her orchestrating our life."
His wife, Ted insists, is like a bulldozer. Instead of calmly pointing out a mistake, she makes a scene. She scolds him in front of others. When they first met, Ted was mesmerized by Jody's energy and independence. But as time went on, he found these characteristics less attractive. "I guess I never put my foot down when I should have," he continues.
"I never let her know when her behavior made me angry." The few times he did, Jody would take his comments so personally that he stopped saying anything.
"If Jody loved me," Ted says sadly, "she wouldn't treat me the way she does."
Negative accumulation
"Strong-willed Jody has set the pace in this relationship for so long that Ted is being squeezed out of the picture," notes Dorothy Buckner, a marriage and family therapist in Atlanta, Ga. However, over the years, Ted allowed himself to be pushed around. Though he made a few feeble attempts to voice his feelings, most of the time he followed Jody's lead. As a result, hurts and resentments piled up until they overwhelmed him.
Like Jody and Ted, many couples allow negative feelings to accumulate until it becomes impossible to see any good in a partner at all.
But no couple is a perfect psychological fit. And, once the initial attraction fades, many spouses discover that the qualities that attracted them to each other in the first place can, in time, tear them apart.
This doesn't mean you have to either accept the status quo or race to a lawyer's office. Rather, you can learn to build on the differences that divide you. To do this, you need to remember that you can't make your partner love you, as Jody wants to do, but you can change your behavior as well as the way you treat and respond to your partner.
In Jody's case, this means sitting quietly and listening when Ted speaks; learning to answer him calmly and without tears; seeking and acknowledging his opinion. For Ted, it means summoning the courage to tell Jody how much he hates the way she embarrasses him in public as well as how overwhelmed he feels by fatherhood.
By initiating these simple changes, you'll find yourself once again focusing on your mate's positive attributes rather than being blinded by the negative.