Wow, you're right. I never thought of it that way but I AM rewarding my W for being "weak" every time I act nicer than I did when she was "strong". I feel much of my progress has been due to my understanding that I need to be loving and nice no matter what her mood is, i.e. detach. When I manage to do that, act either loving OR simply walk away when she's angry, or otherwise upset the strangest thing happens. Just like Mars/Venus says, she eventually just goes back to being "normal".
The "old" me would react to every mood/vent she had and when I did THAT, it was very hard for me to get past it. Usually once I got in a mirrored bad mood, it was for the rest of the day/night. I somehow don't have her ability to just get it out of my system unless the problem is solved. Typical male.
Anyway, all this is just to say that I think you are on the right track in terms of putting emphasis on consistency and detachment.
This morning my W called me at work to tell me the teacher called and our son was throwing up at school. She was home with a car, yet she was so upset she was incapacitated. I told her I was on my way. When I got home she upset, pretty openly, with herself for not just getting in the car and going to pick him up. I told her that I thought she did great in getting through to me. Again I suggested she not be so hard on herself - the end result was that our son was picked up and is fine. I just see her falling apart - she's so down on herself and this can't be helpful to her in any real or healthy way.
Muddle,
You thought she did "great" in getting through to you, and you told her not to be so hard on herself? What did she have to do? Pick up a phone and punch 7 or 11 numbers to call you? Am I missing something here? With all due respect--and I have a tremendous amount for you--your situation is getting nuttier and nuttier by the day.
A sick relationship has a way of perverting a person's sense of what is normal. I am sure that if you print out the excerpt above and re-read it exactly one year from now, you will then be shocked by the things you were willing to put up with now.
You are stuck in a nightmare. You need to wake yourself up.
Whether or not you stay together, your wife is going to continue to drag everybody down until she gets some serious professional help.
One of the weaknesses of DivorceBusting is that, for all its emphasis on keeping a marriage and a family together, it so totally focuses on the couple involved that the kids necessarily get mariginalized in the equation.
For that reason, I think a very helpful exercise in a parent's case may be to go to a quiet space for an hour and drive out all thoughts EXCEPT thoughts about your child.
I think if you do that, you will come away with some very fresh and important perspectives about how this mess is destroying your son and what you need to do to protect him, even if that means doing something counter to your own current desires.
At worst, you've only lost an hour of your time. As it is, I'm sure you spend much more than that each day agonizing over this situation, so I would say you have nothing to lose by trying this, and it just may save your sanity, because it may give you a clearer path and a cleaner purpose.
MC, I really do appreciate your frankness. As always, it's great to have your perspective on my situation as you tend to always offer the voice of reason from a different perspective. I agree that my acceptance of my W's behavior in that situation is not normal - but then again, I have had to accept that my W limits herself because of her depression and anxiety issues. I'm torn when it comes to this because I know I can't push her further than she pushes herself, and when she gets down on herself I don't see any benefit to pushing her further. So, yes, I was telling her that she did great in just getting accomplished what needed to be done - she got our sick son picked up from school. I was looking to the positives for her sake. In the moment, she was so clouded by her anxiety, and actually pretty frantic. She had to dial out for an operator to get through to me too. This is difficult for her, as strange as that sounds. We all have to adapt to our situations and circumstances.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
I agree, Muddle. I don't see any other way of having dealt with it except to provoke a blow out, and how good is that for your son? Of course, in reality how the heck can your son not feeling well bring on a full force anxiety attack, but it did. Human beings are complicated creatures, as we all well know. You are dealing with a woman whose cheese is not stacked properly on her cracker right now (meaning no disrespect), so you do what you have to do to get through the days and nights until there is some resolution in your sitch, IMHO. Carry on, Muddle!
Quote: You are dealing with a woman whose cheese is not stacked properly on her cracker right now (meaning no disrespect), so you do what you have to do to get through the days and nights until there is some resolution in your sitch, IMHO.
But, guys, this is the point: the endless catering and doing what you have to do to get "through" the situation is not going to get you and your children out of it in any healthy way.
There is a point where a person's "adapting" to a situation becomes extremely unhealthy for their kids. That's why I strongly recommended that Muddle take an hour to meditate on his son.
I think Muddle's wife is sick in a serious way, and I'm not saying he needs to get mad at her and engender a blow out, and I'm not saying she can't heal, but I am saying that I think he does need to have a very frank discussion with her and say, "Look, you are unable to care for our son in even the most basic way right now. You can't even get off the couch and go get him when he as a little stomach bug at school because you are so immobilized by depression, anxiety, etc. You need to get help and ˇpronto! This is not normal. Our relationship and what happens to it is one thing; or son is another. We need to take care of him regardless."
I don't mean to be a voice of reason from the opposite perspective, I just think it's a little easy to get swamped by the momentum of these boards and get lost in the surreality of the situation you are living unless you have some truly healthy "outside" contact.
MC - not that I'm disagreeing with you here, but my W is in therapy and thinks it's pretty successful. She has commented many times and in many places about how much progress she's making. Her mental health is not something that I can control - and I'm very wary of pushing her. I know that this can backfire. I've seen her take a lot of steps forward with regard to our son's care. She has been more engaged with him, creating fun routines, etc. I don't think she's unable to care for him in the most basic way - she clearly is - it's just certain circumstances where she is overwhelmed by her feelings and incapacitated.
I do agree that doing whatever I can to get through the situation is participating in and possible perpetuating this unhealthy dynamic, but what then really is the alternative? We are meeting with a couples/family therapist for the purpose of doing what's best for our son. I think this will really provide the outside, objective guidance to help us get back on the right path for his sake. Until then, her issues are really her issues, and I can't make her work through them or overcome them if she doesn't take the steps necessary to do so. As far as I'm concerned, she could be avoiding all of her issues with her therapist and just talking, having her feelings validated and walking away no better than before. I can't make her change therapists. We've established a healthy forum to get things out in the open so they can really be worked on.
I'm not totally sure how to change this situation for the benefit of my son - and I'll certainly be doing a lot of meditating on that specifically (even though I do so quite often). It's difficult to do a cost/benefit analysis on this. Clearly something must be done. She needs to face her issues for his sake, if not her own. The situation as it is now is keeping her right where she doesn't need to do anything. In fact, she's sitting at home doing craft projects. Fine for a married, stay-at-home-mom, but a little out of place for someone who is trying to escape the life that's making her miserable, isn't it? The fact is that I really have to make the changes here, because she won't if left to her own devices. She'll do whatever it takes to escape her depression for the day, so she doesn't feel bad, but never look to longer term goals for her life. She's tried to shake things up and force herself to change by changing her external situation, but unfortunately that didn't change the part of her she was hoping to change. So now I need to somehow push her to do so, I guess.
Thanks again, MC. I didn't mean to imply you were here advocating divorce, just that you always seem to approach the situation from an angle that is underrepresented here.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
MC, my concern re Muddle confronting her about pretty much anything right now (that doesn't concern son's safety) is the fact that she gets violent! This is a major concern in any intervention that muddle attempts. for now I think Muddle lying low and trying to get by is the way to go. It is encouraging that they are going to couples C'ing and W sees someone individually, so giving that time is appropriate. Any more violence and this sitch could become unmanagable. Muddle has chosen to continue in this for now and must remain mindful of his W's inability to control her physical aggression when confronted in almost any way. How long Muddle can continue like this is the question but only he can really answer it. That's my 2 cents, anyway.
