No longer feel important

[brissiedad0f2]

I am hoping for some guidance with regards to how to manage feeling unimportant to my spouse.

I always feel like I am the least important person in my wife's life. I have never cared if my wife spends time with her friends. I understand it's healthy and I encourage it. I have no problems with my wife spending time with her family. 

To get the main reason of my post is, just once I would love to feel like I'm important to my wife. I'd love to just once be a reason why my wife can't go out with a friend and her to make me feel like I was important enough for her to say no to her friends just that one time. I am not asking that she stops seeing friends and family, not at all. As I said I encourage it and I know she enjoys it and has fun but just once it would feel really good to feel like I was put first.

There has been an instance where I had organised a weekend away for our anniversary and a girlfriend had advised her that she bought them tickets to a concert for that weekend. I was then expected to change the dates of our getaway. To me I think an anniversary is important and so is having some romance, we have kids so any romance is better than none. It just made me feel like how I felt didn't matter and that I was not that important to my wife.

I try to talk to my wife about it and she gets defensive and it turns into a fight. 

Is it wrong for me to feel like I should be important enough to be put first at least on one occasion?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Juliet_84]

Hi Brissiedadof2,

I’m sorry to hear that you aren’t being made to feel like you are a priority in your wife’s life. Does your wife go out with friends etc a lot? Or are there plenty of other opportunities where your wife could be making you feel like you are important to her but isn’t? I suppose the thing I’m trying to see is whether you have the issue that she is a) going out quite a lot, b) isn’t picking you over her friends, or c) that she just doesn’t seem to make you feel like a priority at all? If I was in your wife’s position I may have also been inclined to have asked you to move the dates of your weekend away, not for any other reason other than you can’t change a concert date  but you can change check-in/out dates a bit easier. But she should have explained this and made you feel secure in that. The fact that when you bring up the issue, it’s met with defensiveness and a fight isn’t great either. I think there definitely needs to be more/better communication between you and the willingness to see the other persons point of view. Have you both friend couples counseling before, how is your communication otherwise?