How would you hande it?

Welcome to the club, Craig. There is a thread here for interpersonal problems around triple E; I'm afraid I'm a charter member. You're lucky your wife's eyes just glaze over, my wife gets angry. I returned from the Rowe conference for a pretty bad time. I don't even want to make significant changes such as moving, etc. It was the idea of storing food and "doom and gloom mentality" (her words) that makes it impossible for me. 

I have started making a list of people in town to give a copy of the CC DVD and will try to form a group here and see what happens. I can just see the reason for divorce: refuses to recycle.

SG

craig

the way i would handle this is i would do my research and include the whole family in it.

personally i would not build a log cabin. log cabins are the romantic expression of an old failed paradigm. it is a tremendous waste of a precious natural resource. the lesson of the crash course is to me we have to be wiser in our uses of our resources. my guiding light in this journey has been bucky fuller who i saw in 1975. his mantra was to do more with less. there have been great strides in building technology which will be less impactful and more energy efficient. i would start looking at recycled materials. find people in your area that are building green.

engage the family in exploring all the options. make it fun make it an adventure. i would drop the talk of economic collapse............doesnt sound like much fun ya know. i would frame it in terms of how we can make our lives better, more resilient, more flexible, more enjoyable. how can we enrich our lives and make the world a better place at the same time and what is it that is important to us.

"be the change you wish to see in the world"

gandhi

look into finding people who are like minded and talk about community. there are many options in intentional community. eco-villages, co housing, etc.

"love does not dominate it cultivates "

goethe

om shanti

joe

I have to start out by saying thank god I have been blessed with a spouse who embraced the crash course.  I see so many people on this site say that a resistant spouse is their biggest obstacle to change.

You should take a look at Chris's analysis of the 6 stages of Awareness

http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/six-stages-awareness

Sounds like you have a spouse in Stage 1 - denial

I think people in denial will hold out as long as they see no direct evidence in their lives to the contrary.  Has your life been directly affected thus far by the recession?  Are your jobs at risk?  Is your house losing value?  Is your 401K shot?  If she doesn't have the patience for the Crash Course, you'll need to introduce this information yourself.  Make the connections between real life and what's happening in the economy.  Bring it on slowly and in a logical way.  If you start out by saying "Honey, the world is coming to an end.  I'm going to start building a log cabin out in the boonies and you should probably learn to churn butter.  I'll also need help planting the wheat in a few weeks"  it's not going to go over well.  People need to be eased into the idea that their lives may require change. 

There's a good chance that you found the Crash Course because you already knew that the world was changing and you were searching for answers.  I found it on my own while I was researching info on the Fed back in September.  I sensed that something in my real life wasn't right, and I went looking for answers.  If your wife believes that nothing in her life seems out of the ordinary, she has no reason to believe that life can't keep going on as usual.  Truth is, sooner or later we will all soon face events in our lives that make us question what we thought we always knew about our economy.  Make the connections easy for her. 

When she does eventually come out of denial, be prepared for Stage 2 - anger.

Amanda

My wife used to get angry as well. I decided that trying to dump everything I had learned on her at the same time was a mistake - it's overwhelming for people who are unprepared. You have to remember that most of us have come to this over a period of months or years, researching and talking and reading as much as possible.

You can't expect (I discovered) someone to respond well to, "Hi, honey, guess what? The world as we know it is ending soon and we need to stockpile food and guns," without doing a little prep work.

I revised my approach, reading articles to her occasionally, pointing out things I saw online, etc. Gradually she started to see what I was seeing. I was rewarded when, one day, she arrived home with 50 pound sacks of flour, rice and beans and storage containers for all of it.

I'm still further along the path than she is, but she is now a willing partner in our ongoing learning and preparation process. We're planting a garden together and even getting the boy (10) involved. It's a process. She'll come around.

Arthur 

You're fortunate, Arthur.

I am actually hoping for a crisis leading to empty supermarket shelves, no oil, or no electricity for a fair amount of time. I suspect that will happen as my own thought is that things rarely fall off a cliff, but more often saw tooth down, if that's where they're headed. Sure, it would be better to begin some type of preparation now (I have, a bit, on my own) but there will be time after the minicrises. I'm sure various items will be more expensive butstill obtainable.

Sometimes you do what is possible, not what is optimal.

SG

Amanda,

 Let me put it to you this way.....  My wife is one that takes a great offense when I criticize anything that is said on the news or reported in a congressional hearing etc..  It's as if she just can't fathom that what gets spread to the majority of people in the country may not be correct.

 I have at times seen some light in her bravado in these regards, but it is always short lived and she always returns to her view that our way of life is so set in stone that it won't change.  I don't barrage her with information either, I've tried at times to approach it differently, but she's a teacher and is actually really good at detecting an alternate maneuver from me.

I have to admit, if you aren't open to the idea, then it is hard to swallow.  I just don't know exactly how I relate things to her in a way that will "bring her around".  It may be a mountain I just can't climb.  It's the same with firearms for her.  I've wanted some firearms for a long time, nothing major, just one handgun and one rifle.  She always insisted on not having any because of threat to children.  Well our kids are 22,20,11 now and my youngest is a smart boy and knows the difference between right and wrong.  So when I tried to talk to her about some recent things that happened relatively close to us, and slipped in a comment about perhaps we should think of a firearm, she simply dismissed it with "I don't believe in guns". 

I don't know how to handle that type of thing, when it seems no argument or proposal I can make makes any difference.

Craig

Are you sure your wife isn't my wife's sister?

SG

Both my mother and my husband are this way, but I see their eyes opening up.  Opening their eyes still doesn't mean they are open-minded about this issue, and I think you should be careful about how you approach the subject with her.  Ask her what her opinions are and listen to what does and does not concern her.  You might learn a little from her as well.  Then only after she starts talking about it you might want to argue (very passively) about the issue and give her correct information about what she is speculating about.  You don't need to give her information about what she doesn't care about, though, because... she doesn't care.  The biggest hurdle is getting them to care.

Good topic.  I think most of us have gone through variations of this.  My wife at first did not want to hear it, and used to get very angry.  I did not push it, just reminding her that my concern was not for myself but for both our futures, and our future children.  Well, she has finally come around, pretty much after Iceland collapsed, and each new headline makes it clear that I (and the entire Martenson gang), Schiff, Ron Paul, were not so crazy after all.  Her eyes still glaze over when I get too technical, so I distill it down to the most pertinent facts for her.  My siblings are all starting to come around as well, kind of.

My advice would be not to push it. Try to avoid talk that sounds overly radical- guns, log cabins, heading for the hills.  Focus on the tactics that make sense under any context- reducing debt, getting in shape, educating yourselves.  Be prepared to shoulder the burden all by yourself- it is good practice for extreme conditions.  As long as she isn't spending your savings on absolute frivolity, this may be the best you can hope for- fighting does not do anyone any good.  Setting a strong example speaks louder than anything.

"Be prepared to shoulder the burden all by yourself- it is good practice for extreme conditions. "

That is where I am, yosh. My wife will never change. There are any number of people who will find themselves in immediate dire circumstances and say "this can't be happening". If alone, whatever happens to them, happens.

SG