Overcompensation can hurt, too

Q: My wife and I have been married for 11 years and have a son, 7, and a daughter, 5. One thing that attracted us to each other was we both came from dysfunctional homes, where we got very little emotional support from our parents. My dad was alcoholic and provided little financial security. Her mother was emotionally abusive to her. So, when I finished graduate school I got a good paying job here in Huntsville and we were ready for our ideal family life.

For six years I worked long stressful hours, until my wife's appeals got me to realize that the money didn't provide the security to my family that my time could. Finally, I got another job that pays about 70% of my former salary, but I have time with my family.

In the meantime, my wife became over-involved in our church and was room mother for our son's class last year and committed to be room mother this year. The result is that she gives little energy to our home. Our sex life diminished, then when I started pressuring her about how out of balance her schedule was, sex stopped.

I feel lonely and desperate. I've expressed my concerns that she is not prioritizing her family and she says she is providing a wonderful experience in the community for our children. Cut off emotionally and sexually, I find myself thinking about other women more than I should and I don't want to go there. What can I do to help my family?

A: When we are deprived of fundamental emotional needs in our developmental years, we often feel a powerful drive to fill those needs in adulthood, both for ourselves and for our children. However, sometimes the almost desperate intensity of these needs may cause us to overcorrect and end up creating the very problems we feared most....