I picked up the book "Boundaries with Kids" by Cloud and Townsend. They have several books in their "Boundaries" series. The books are all an unpacking of what could be distilled down to "You do you"; Boundaries with Kids, with Teens, in Marriage. Good books IMO. They come from a Christian perspective.

Reading in "Boundaries with Kids" recently...

When you need someone's love, it is extremely difficult to confront or deprive him, as you risk losing this love via withdrawal, anger, or guilty feelings. As a result, the child isn't disciplined properly and learns the lesson that he can get what he wants if he pulls away the love. Though neither is aware of it, the child is emotionally blackmailing the parent. The parent tries to keep everything pleasant between them, so as not to cut off the flow of relationship.

Ask yourself a tough, honest question: "Am I afraid that if I say no to my kids, I will lose the love I need from them?" If that is the case, begin taking your needs for relationship to other places.

This is "No More Mr Nice Guy" (NMMNG) with a flavor of "When I Say No I Feel Guilty (WISNIFG) in a nutshell. WISNIFG deals with a much broader subject than the dependency talked about here. But sometimes that "I Feel Guilty" component is an unhealthy, dependent-type loss being felt ... not a feeling of guilt. That's what NMMNG is all about. Feeling the need to make others happy and to NOT make others UNhappy drives so much of the Nice Guy's life. That's not love. This is the programming us Nice Guy's must break.

It's not my goal to get called an asshole once a week by my wife. But if I'm doing it right (especially after how long I did it wrong), then it's a decent enough metric that if I don't hear it once a week or so I probably need to re-evaluate.