Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Midlife Crisis GALing and Boundaries with XH

Thanks Kaffe and cat--and my sister actually has CoD no more as I loaned it to her! So I'll read it again.

My dad is actually in his best mood if he drinks, and I'd say when he does drink, it's usually late at night after mom goes to bed. All the time he is abusive is when he's not drinking, and the best way to describe his behavior then is to say he has severe mood swings.

My mom's biggest problem is that she has tried to make us all "appear" to be a perfect family my whole life, and I guess in dad's way he has too, and they have always placed the bar for me and my siblings SO high to be SO high-achieving and perfect. Our parents live to brag about us. It took me a long time to figure out that a significant amount of the blow to my self-esteem when XH cheated on me came from THEIR reaction to this. They kept saying things like "things like this don't happen in OUR family." And it's not like once my mom ever said "Antonia you are beautiful inside and out, he doesn't know what he's doing, this is not your fault." It's not that they said it WAS my fault, but in a way they did by acting like I wouldnt' have gone through this if I'd married the right person, who came from "a better family that wasn't physically abusive."

If I or my siblings ever failed at anything, we were never taught to fail with grace or that failure was ok. Instead, we were told "well you'll simply TRY HARDER next time, and you will KEEP trying or you're a quitter." To me, this sends a message that somehow you failed the first time because you were not good enough. Result? Low self-esteem, beating yourself up when anything goes wrong.

The SHAME of what XH did in cheating was what kept me stuck for so long, and the shame I felt didn't come from my friends' reaction to what he did, but my parents' reaction. It also led me to keep saying XH was "crazy" and "never had a point about me ever being WRONG in our marriage" way back when he first cracked. I came off entirely self-righteous to him when he first reached out for help. I told HIM to just press on and "do better." I treated him the way my parents treated me when he fell apart. I had always had the bar too high for him. And I'm sure for someone who was in the early stages of MLC, I made it worse for him with my holier-than-thou attitude.

I did exactly what I was raised to do. I can't take it back.

So now I see all too clearly how their expecations on me made me treat my XH the same way, and how even now, they still have these absurd expectations. I can't start to tear up without my mom thinking I'm having a breakdown. Everything I've been learning talks about how you should move through the phases of depression and acceptance and all that and accept them and let them pass as they cycle. No matter what I tell her or show her in a book about that being normal, she will say things like "well, you've been down the past few weeks, WHAT DID YOU DO TO BRING THAT ON?" "You talked by email to XH, and that made you sad, YOU SHOULD NOT TALK TO HIM EVER."

The really ironic part is that they are Catholic. And they both profess how superior they are in terms of a religion because they are Catholic. And yet they are the most unforgiving people I've ever seen. They just do not forgive or forget if anyone makes a mistake or isn't perfect, and LIFE is about learning to live with ups and downs. Not with them.

My mom many times will say "well I think everyone can benefit from a little therapy." Then I say "but you have never gone to a therapist." And she says, "well I have good friends and I have God so I don't need to go."

"Overbearing" is exactly the right word. My siblings and I get a guilt trip laid on us if we try to go together anywhere without my mom or we get flat out told we aren't allowed to go out and do adult things, like have a few drinks at a bar and NOT take the kids. My sister's kids are 14 and 11 and my mom acts like my sister is a negligent parent if she leaves them alone for an hour.

Basically my parents treat us all like we are still teenagers and they won't allow us to be grown ups and independent. It's really messed up ;-)

oh hey... thought I should toss in the standard disclaimer here, I know everyone knows... but I'm not a Dr., therapist, nor any professional qualified to instruct nor direct your actions in your life... These are strictly my opinions and not necessarily some guide that will solve anything...

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It is so tough... knowing we don not have to behave as victim, yet with such deeply ingrained behaviours, we don't see things as quickly, if at all, in ourselves...

It all begins with a choice... and a step... and then followed with course corrections...

You will agree that you are not looking to change your parents... you will need to begin with simple DB principles... NO EXPECTATIONS... keep your hope in check... we cannot control anyone but ourselves...

Even 20 years back when I began my own separation from the "madness" of my parents... I accepted that if a wedge got driven between us... well, that would be what it would be... I was the black sheep, so it was pretty easy to disappear for a year and then pop back in and say "hi"...

Get your boundaries in place, talk to your sister and let her know your boundaries and help her, support her, to create and hold her own boundaries...

Your mom (and your dad, too) will begin by getting a better understanding of the reality that their kids have grown up and will make their own choices... if they haven't before, they will begin to deal with empty nest...

They probably both feel they have the power stick and control others around them... the boundaries that you have will help cleave that long standing belief that YOU have... that they control you... they'll figure their part out, on their own...

Have your read "The Road Less Travelled" by M. Scott Peck? Also, you might want to look at a couple books by Richard Bach, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah". Awesome books for self reflection and discovery...

Thanks for the book recommendations! I will add those to the list!

Interesting...my sister finally got the stupid router for her computer and emailed us all to say she's now wireless. Within 3 hours of this development, my dad wrote me and my two sisters individual emails with pics of candy he is mailing to us, and lovely little notes about how he just thought we might like a nice present, and guess what? He signed his emails "love" again.

So I just wrote him a thank you note and acted like nothing ever happened.

Crazy stuff.

Just an update as I haven't updated in about a week...

Issues with the helicopter parents are in flux...basically DBing my dad in that I detach/don't react when he gets aggressive, and as a result he's suddenly sending nice emails and gifts to me...with mom, I'm not calling her anymore at the drop of a hat, letting her call me...and she is actually calling less. Had a long talk with my brother who had good boundaries with my parents (though of course my parents see him as the "worst" of my siblings simply because he is so "mysterious" and "detached"...) He gave me several examples of times he saw me give my mom TMI and it bit me later...so that was instructive. It's such a learned behavior that it's hard to see where you go wrong and then you screw it up. But I'm learning.

As far as XH, no word from him since I emailed and talked about how his bringing up the set of friends who abandoned me was hurtful. I told him that I wasn't angry at him because obviously he didn't know it hurt, but I was saying that it did, so that we needed to stay off the subject in the future.

So no word after. I am not bothered, though, because I am trying to write an entire analytical book in 8 months, and I was really falling behind and I've gotten caught up in the past week or so. I'm really a research/reading/writing machine right now and that's what I need to be if I'm going to make my deadlines. So this book is officially WAY more important than him now ;-)

Still going to meditation group and signed up to do an online retreat in a few weeks where I can learn some things with live streaming video...and socializing here and there when possible.

In short...I'm pretty happy and content :-)

You sound very good. Work is a great blessing isn't it?

With the WAS - they seem to do a cycle. Flurry of activity, and then radio silence, especially if we talk about our feelings . . . .

I have been thinking about control versus boundaries. It is a fine line, but I think boundaries are about how we want to live our lives, and be treated by others, and control is about how we think/want others to live theirs. So you telling your xh that his actions upset you is a boundary for you, in that you are not in a place where it is comfortable to hear about the festival. [and that is fine]. Giving him guidelines about what you are happy about hearing is helpful imo, because seriously, these people often do not have a clue. It is when we start telling them how to live their lives that I believe is controlling.

A good friend of mine whose xh is also going through a long MLC called me to say her xh called her about some personal problems, and then said, rather resentfully, that she had gotten her life together after all of this, and why was his such a mess? She said it was as if some external agency had caused all of this, not his actions. But the good thing was that we laughed about it for about 5 minutes it was so ludicrous.

Such a blessing when we get to that stage, of seeing how crazy and unrelated to reality they really are.

Thanks Beatrice, for writing. I think that's a good way to find the line--what reinforces our peace is a boundary; what tells them how to live their life is control.

Here's a very small thing that I realized would be controlling before I said it as I was tempted to back when he and I were talking:

I had been telling him about how much I was enjoying learning meditation and how it was making me feel really clear and not react so angrily to even little things. Because I feel so good about this positive change for me, and because I know him well enough to know that he REALLY needs to learn some anger management/stress management, I had SO much desire to tell him "you should try this." (Frankly I have done that with others--my one sister, for instance--but she's not in MLC and she's receptive to "big sister" giving advice and always has been).

Anyway I caught myself thinking that I should tell him he should try this or "he would like it or find it beneficial" and I held back.

See the old me would have rationalized telling him "do this" because she would have said "but it's a GOOD thing I'm telling him to do, so that makes it ok." But to an MLCer, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad or indifferent, it's still a way to suggest that the one telling it "knows better" or is the "parent", which would put them off. So I was glad I could see my old pattern in time to stop myself.

Oh wow, your friend's XH's comment is definitely ludicrous. I'd have laughed at that too.

Hi! I just wanted to comment that I agree with Boundaries vs. Control. This morning I was thinking control isn't a bad thing, but the word I was searching for was Boundaries!

Just because you set up Boundaries, does not mean you're controlling! It's ok to say " Ok stop! This makes my uncomfortable."

Which is what I've done with my stbx, yet it appears as controlling to him. This has always been an issue with us. I did google and yahoo search controlling behaviors, which Ive done in the past. Yes I saw someone....but it wasnt me.

So hooray for boundaries and making them clear!

Kimmerz I probably oversimplified a little up there...I guess to clarify, I'll give you an example from a convo with XH a month ago.

He brought up something that hurt me and I don't know that he knew it would hurt. I think he thought it was harmless. But I was hurt as it dredged up old memories.

My response to him was to say "let's not talk about this subject as it hurts me" but I also defended myself to say why it hurt me, and in so doing, I'm sure I caused him to feel like crap.

To me where I screwed up is that I took a boundary and made it controlling.

If I'd just said "this subject brings up bad memories; let's talk about something else", or even just ignored him altogether, showing sort of passively that I'm not interested in the discussion, that would be a boundary.

By laying a guilt trip, I turned it into manipulation or control. I felt sad and I wanted him to feel like crap.

Do you see the difference? What I'm trying to say is that defending yourself can ALSO be a way that we very subtly control others, depending how we do it.

Sometimes I think that when we state something very simply, it's a boundary. But when we start to work in a bunch of detail and explanation, it turns into control.

Hi, I read on another thread that you wrote a book on the analysis of fairy stories. My youngest son did his undergrad dissertation on Little Red Riding Hood. He is influenced by Angela Carter [who I like very much] and the French post modernists like Lyotard and Derrida.

He is just finishing his masters and thinking about a PhD . . .

One thing I have noticed is that 'should' is a controlling word - of ourselves and others. I am trying to avoid saying it internally or externally, and you know, it has changed the way I interact, and deal with stuff . . . Words are powerful.

Beatrice, you must be across the pond, as you called them fairy stories! Yeah my book is called Fairy Tales Reimagined. Carter is referenced a good bit in there as her feminist revisions were so important and set off a slew of others in the past 30 years. Kudos to your son on the dissertation topic! If he's interested in a Phd then he already has a leg up if he'd interested in Lyotard and Derrida. My good friend is in a Phd program in English and focusing on British lit, mostly contemporary, and most of what she deals with is theory. She was interested in post modernism before she went into her program so parts of the program are coming more easily to her than they are to her classmates. Anyway you must be familiar with Philip Pullman, then, as he's huge in England from what I understand. The book I'm writing now is on almost everything he's ever written, and most of it has been untouched by critics. He is my favorite writer of all time :-)

I think the idea of remembering that "should" is a word to avoid simplifies things a lot!