When you set limits on yourself, you create an environment in which your spouse can become free to choose and grow. It is tempting to try to change your spouse. Controlling, nagging, complying to seek approval, and blaming are all futile in helping your spouse to grow. Your spouse will only react to your control. He won’t experience his loneliness, need for love, gratitude, healthy guilt, or the consequences of his actions. He will be more concerned with staying free of your attempts to change him, or even with retaliating, to show you how it feels to be him.
Nagging and complaining doesn't achieve anything except self-gratification. When all we do is berate the other spouse, it gives them permission to keep doing the things they're doing. This is different, though, from an honest conversation about what's going on. But it doesn't take much to turn that into a struggle session.
