Muddle's Waters V

[MuddleThrough]

Another thread locked ( Last Thread ). It was a decent weeekend. We took S4 on a really fun outing and that made everything worth while.

This morning W and I were going to S4's school for a harvest party (all the kids in costume and singing songs, etc). I went to take a shower and afterwards got yelled at by my W because I hadn't asked her about how we were going to work out 2 showers in the morning. I basically shut her out all morning. I really pretty much ignored her. Her arguments were all basically saying "why didn't you check with me to see what I wanted to do?" If you wanted something, you should have made it known - there's no way I'm going to check with you to see if you want to arrange something with me. She then puts this under the umbrella of courtesy, saying I don't comunicate and I'm not giving her simple courtesy. To me this is all about her not taking responsibility for her own needs. She didn't get done what she wanted to do, how and when she wanted to so she needs to blame me. Silly. I'm done catering to this stuff. I don't have anything to apologize for. It's crazy. So I'm going to completely ignore this manipulative nonsense. I don't really care if I come off as P/A. I am happy to comunicate and discuss anything she brings to my attention, but not when it comes to blaming me for something I could have or should have done. I'm not interested.

On Friday, W told me that she was going to the store on Saturday morning to grab snacks for our outing. I went to my MIL's to work on the car. On the way home I stopped at the store to grab a 6 pack and I got my W's favorite pastry breakfast as well as some cookies. On Saturday I got a call - W screaming at me because I didn't pick up the snacks while I was at the store. W wanted to be in control of what we got, and she was planning to go, so I didn't make her do anything she wasn't planning to, and on top of that I got her something she likes! But I could have saved her time by getting in touch with her and picking up what she wanted. I know this and she does too. She's angry that I didn't - I guess she still hasn't accepted the difference between husband and estranged husband. She expects the same out of me as if she were my wife and that's where her hurt comes from. She wants everything her way - she acts like she's entitled to everything she's ever gotten from me and still doing whatever it is she's doing. Well, I'm not going to allow myself to give in a way that creates resentment. I will only give what I want to give as a gift, nothing out of obligation. If she can't look upon my gifts as gifts, then she's the one missing out. I'm tired of being told what I should do, or what normal people do, etc, in a sad attempt to make me do something differently because she expects it. I am who I am, and I certainly welcome opportunities to grow and learn, but I am not here to be molded by someone who clearly has no sense of what's good and right in life.

[grasshopper]

Muddle, at some point it simply has to stop mattering how she feels about something or what she wants. You can't keep living THIS life the way you are.

Yes, if you take action "A" or fail to take action "B" then she may do "C" but who gives a damn. At some point she CAN'T have it all her way, which BTW is destroying your marriage.

I know you have to be tired, at your wit's end over all this. I am and I am not even there. She SCREAMED at you for not doing something she said she was going to do? I bet if you HAD picked up the snacks she would have screamed about THAT too because SHE wanted to pick them!

Over in piecing Ali has talked about her H's verbal abuse in terms that made it seem like she was trying to either figure it out or cope with it. It seemed like the fact that her H's behavior was TOTALLY unacceptable no matter what the circumstances were wasn't a prevalent theme.

I think your W is out of line and when she does those "out-of-line" things, and no I don't mean having an affair, I mean treating you with total disdain and lack of respect, I think it's perfectly ok to just go on about your day until she decides to approach you differently.

Don't be an a$$, even if she accuses you of being one, you know the difference. Just live and do it with love and honesty, especially towards yourself. If she wants to join you, then fine, if not, well she will learn what it's like to be without you.

GH

P.S. Sorry if this was less than optimistic or positive. I am just tired of the way she treats you Muddle. Take me with a grain of salt today.

[MuddleThrough]

GH, that's exactly where I am. As much as she walks around talking about how her feelings don't matter to me, they have to stop that much more. I'm no longer going to concern myself with how my actions impact her life. I'm going to do for me what I think is right, and that includes being kind and good to her. If she wants to twist not getting what she wants into me hurting her, she can. I'm not going to listen to it any more. She's so angry at me that I do for myself. She's so angry that I want what I have and I set realistic goals for myself and end up getting what I want out of my life. She's angry with herself and her inability to live her life in a way that brings her happiness. I'm not responsible for this - even though this is the biggest reason she doesn't want to be married to me. Well, if I'm not doing a good job at this, why do you continue to rely on me and fault me when you're not happy? Wait - I don't want an answer, because it's none of my business. I still care about her and want to see her succeed and be happy with herself and her life, but she's on a path that will bring her nothing but unhappiness, and I don't really see her motivated to change. I'm not sure I want to have any part in it anymore.

Yes, she screamed (over the phone while I was getting tires put on the car which she later referred to as me "playing" with the car) and actually said something about how I was hurting her because I didn't get the snacks. I basically shut down when she treats me in this way. This is problematic because she escalates when she isn't heard, eventually throwing a tantrum. She never takes responsibility for her feelings or actions. I don't want to play into this game anymore - so I will just let her rant and ignore her. Sounds healthy, right? I can't cater to her and I can't really argue that she's putting her stuff on me when she firmly believes that that's where it belongs.

I just don't understand what she's thinking about when she plans to get divorced. I'm not sure if she thinks that because then she'll need to do everything she'll be able to or if she's grossly miscalculating her life, but she keeps blaming me for not being good enough, etc. She even tells me that I don't do things unless she stops doing them around the house. Well, if you've already done it, it's kind of hard to do it! It's not that she doesn't do anything, it's just that what she does do is done with a huge amount of resentment - and nothing I do is good enough or recognized as being on the same level as the work she does. She's totally in a narcisistic bubble.

I'm tired of the way she treats me too. I liken her behavior of late to someone on a rowboat in the middle of a lake that has decided she doesn't like the design of the boat, there's a problem with it. So rather than row it to shore and put it up in dry-dock and inspect and repair it, she just picks up her trusty sledge-hammer and starts bashing it to bits. The expectation is that if this one's destroyed, she needs another, never mind that she's going to have to swim and she has no idea whether the new one she might get will compare to this one. If it ends up worse, well, this one's done and gone, too bad. I think this is what she's used to in life, being rescued from an endeavor she chose and then regretted because her feelings made it difficult for her to endure it. So if her feelings were bad enough (maybe even name these feelings a disease to validate them) she could get out of it, nevermind that this was something she wanted to begin with. Destroy the current situation with your feelings and then you and everyone in your life who's there to save you is compelled to change the surroundings that are having such a negative impact on your feelings. The unfortunate thing is that she has enough people around her that validate this perspective that she thinks it's normal - so she gets the short term benefit of relief for her ailing feelings, but in the long term her self esteem is shot because she never completes anything. How does this make her feel? So then these feelings have to be blamed on something in the present - so guess what? I'm to blame for making her feel inadequate. I make her feel like a bad parent and like she's not really an adult, etc, etc, etc, never mind that if she had actually put in the work to be all of these things, it wouldn't matter what anyone thought of her, because she'd know she was a great mother and that she was an adult and my (and everyone else's) equal. But if she blames me she might be free of those feelings without expending the effort to work through the painful period of feeling inadequate in the current project. . .

None of this helps me, nor her. I don't know why I try and figure her out anymore. She's not interested in what I have to say. All I can do is look to the part of myself that understands this because it actually is this way itself, and try and grow and better myself because of it.

[12102006]

Muddle;

Forgive me, but can I interject here? It seems that your
W is about to explode...anytime soon. She has a great deal
of anger "towards herself" that she is clearly projecting
on you. It is clinically called projection. You are
receiving all the anger from her, but she is angry only
at herself. By not reacting to her outbursts or walking
away, it will make her more angry...but she needs to hit
rock bottom before she'll stop.

Just an observation...

[MuddleThrough]

Yes, I agree she projects. She's told me her therapist thinks so as well. I'm not sure whether me ignoring her and in a sense earning her anger is an effective way of forcing her to take responsibility for her anger or if it will allow her to continue to avoid it by blaming me for it. I agree about hitting rock bottom before she can rebuild in a healthy way, but right now she has people supporting her in a way that seems to prevent her from hitting bottom and I don't want to be one of them any more. I'm just not sure where I'm helping and where I'm hurting.

I do appreciate your input BTW!

[toughlover]

Man, that's rough, Muddle. I applaud you for hanging in there like that. Hope it doesn't drag you down too much.

I confess, I used to have a similar kind of anger...when someone is in that kind of place, it's sort of like a constant lava flow under pressure just beneath the surface...the slightest crack and it explodes out. More like rage I guess. I can remember my mind constantly scanning everything my W said or did and just looking for the slightest excuse to be angry, harsh, and critical, similar to what your W does.

I used to be that way, and it was my fault. I got that way by handling things with my W very poorly in the early days of our M, and after a few years, I got to where I was angry all the time and fought a losing battle to keep it at bay. My W did plenty back then that wasn't helpful to our M, but all I did was make things worse. My anger is what really killed my R with my W, and then she used that to justify her A.

I realize your sitch is different, but I guess I post this just cause I'm sure it must get you down, and even though this probably doesn't help much. As a "recovered angerholic" myself, looking back I recognize how wrong I was, how it wasn't really anyone's fault but mine, certainly not my W's.

Sounds like you know that isn't your fault, you're not whatever she wants to think you are when she's like that. I know that when I wasn't around my W, I deeply regretted my angry, harsh treatment of her, but I didn't think I could do anything about it. Of course, the truth is I wasn't willing to.

Hang in there, bro. You're a good man.

[MuddleThrough]

Thanks TL, it's good to hear your story. It gives me hope that my W will one day recognize her part in all of this and will be willing to change - if not for our marriage (which at this point may well be too far gone) but for herself. It's difficult to deflect all this stuff without feeling like I'm tossing away responsibility for things that I do own. I really do want to learn from this experience and not be caught somewhere down the road realizing that something I attributed to my W was more my issue than I acknowledged at the time. It takes two.

One thing that I took away from your post is that it seems it took your W's affair to see your anger as a problem. I wonder if this is the sort of traumatic event that it takes for someone to see the errors of their ways. My W is very angry - more and more each day, and yes it is with herself. She's angry that I'm going to be looked at as the good guy in this. She's angry at me for the choices she made throughout our marriage and those she continues to make. Is it going to take living with her choices without me for her to recognize that her anger is her problem and that she MUST do something about it? I don't know.

Thanks for your input - it really does help to hear. It sounds like you are in a really good place right now, that you're really honest with yourself and making good progress in your life. You're right about the will being the most important thing of all, and now that you have the will to change, you are going to go far. Hopefully my W's desire to change things will become a desire to change herself and therefore her life in a meaningful, healthy, good way.

[toughlover]

Muddle

I had already started the change. We were temporarily separated for two months while we made a complicated move to a new city two hours away. I'd go home on weekends.

Being by myself all week during that time really got to me. Despite my anger, my life revolved around my family, my W, my kids lives, sports, family stuff.

That's the rub in my sitch...I had started trying, but she was having none of it, and I couldn't understand why, and that sense of helplessness (and ensuing hopelessness) ended up kicking the anger back into gear. I thought, if I could try as hard as I was, and it still does not good, then what's the point. I've said before that I was headed for my own MLC (was kinda already there) when my W dropped the bomb.

I do think it sometimes takes hitting rock bottom, or getting pretty close, to close the deal. I think she could have accomplished the same thing years ago just by forcing the issue, or by separating briefly by maybe living with her parents or something until I straightened up. Of course, she didn't, for character issues of her own.

I can honestly say in my sitch I was always waiting for my W to come to me and just say she was sorry for the things she'd done to hurt me (pre-affair). I always wanted to make everything up to her, but I made it all contingent on HER making the first move. When I finally got around to making the first move, it was really too late. So when she dropped the bomb, none of that mattered anymore.

I just wanted her and I and our kids to live under the same roof and truly be a family. I didn't think that would happen. I figured she was gone. I'm a Christian and figured she was out of here and the only thing left for me to do was get right with God and be strong and loving and together for my kids.

Then when she saw what I was doing she said she was willing to recommit fully and do whatever it took. She followed my lead, which I think restored an important dynamic to our M...namely, that I was no longer tying my well-being or my behavior to what I got or didn't get from her. And that I was showing her the way through both her mess and our mess.

She initiated and maintained NC with OM. We got into MC.

There's a lot of hurt and pain we're dealing with. But we're dealing with it, so it CAN happen when both parties are finally motivated and committed at the same time. I'm almost hesitant to say that about us, cause I've seen a pretty rapid improvement in the last 6 weeks and am afraid expect too much or talk too big.

But all of the stuff that seemed to make it so easy for me to get angry at her is just gone. It's not so much that I have to fight it, it's just not there.

[MuddleThrough]

It's so clear to me the power of taking responsibility for your anger has. It seems like you realized that you were angry and wanted to change this - and part of this change was that you no longer held someone else accountable for making you angry. For you, your wife apologizing for how she wronged you would have made it easier for you to let go of your anger and resentment. In my case, my W has heard my apologies and they are meaningless to her. But, of course, you are two very different people with different causes for your anger. In my case, it seems she is waiting for me to change to match or exceed her expectations. She wants me to make her feel better about herself and take away all the anger and resentment she has for herself. Clearly not possible. It does get more and more clear here that she does need to hit bottom, she might need to lose everything in order to realize that she's falling, that she's the one that's needs to change in order to feel different about herself and her life.

I think what you said about making your changes contingent on hers is really profound, and it's something that I have tried to be aware of myself. I have made changes in my self and my life - changes that I'm really proud of. But on some level I think I'm waiting on her to come around to really change in regard to the relationship. It doesn't really exist right now, so I can't do much of anything to address it. She, on the other hand, seems to really be holding out and waiting on me to change. She points the blame at me for everything and anything - I mean she really has more misery in her being than I have seen before, and I think she's got a pretty nice life. For example, I have to go to a conference next week that I found out about today. I told her over the phone that we need to arrange transportation for S4 to school while I'm gone. She said "why do you have to say it like that?" blaming me for not telling her using the same words she would have or understood what I was saying (I "should have said" that she needs to ask her mom to borrow the car so she can take him).

She got angry because she needed to interpret what I was saying into something more personal for her to be able to take some kind of action on, and she got angry that she had to put her self out to do this. She feels she should have been spoon-fed the information, and it's my fault that she didn't get it the way she thinks she should have. This kind of interaction is very common, where she tells me how I should have said something, and she's actually angry that I didn't formulate my sentence the way she thinks I should have.

To me, this is just an extension of the issue that started with my communicating on her behalf. Because of her social anxiety disorder she basically wouldn't talk to people if we went shopping or we went out to eat, etc. So I spoke for us both. Fine, but the trouble was that I never said things the way she thought I should have. The way I formulated my sentences got the job accomplished, but it made her feel some way she didn't want to - probably inadequate because she wasn't carrying on the conversation herself topped with a bit of embarrasment because I diverged from her idea of normal. I always told her that she was far better at social things than I am and that I thought she should start having these conversations because she's so good at them. Well, in the end, I'm just an inadequate extension of her because I don't do what she thinks I should and I am associated with her feelings of anxiety and inadequacy as well as deficiently carry out her tasks. So I must be responsible for all these feelings, right? The sad fact is that I'm not. She is, and if she wants to be rid of the feelings she's got far more to do than just be rid of me.

So I have accepted responsibility for her feelings in this way because I agreed with her that I could have done what I did better than I had. I guess I should have told her "If you want it done differently, do it yourself" but I generally responded by agreeing with the fact that I could have executed the interaction better and then shrugging it off. It was what it was.

Now we have this real issue of right/wrong. According to her, I can't ever be wrong. I think this is projection. I am willing to be wrong, in fact I look to it as an opportunity to learn, to improve myself. Through being wrong I have gained wisdom, and learned things that I firmly believe to be right. So if I stand my ground on something because I believe it to be right, then is this wrong? Well, if I don't accept responsibility for the totality of what my W sees as a problem or issue, than I am refusing to be wrong, even if I have good reasons to back up my opinion. We all have our opinions and a good debate is something we can all learn from, unless being wrong about something makes you feel really bad. It's a battle (my internal battle to understand and see hope in this future) that doesn't seem worth fighting - it seems so fruitless. Well, I guess one never knows what is possible in this lifetime. People can heal and grow at amazing rates, and while I'm not expecting anything, my W might come around at some point and recognize her part in all of this. I just don't expect her to. She's got too many people in her circle that validate her opinions and perspective because they think that's what being a friend is - just catering to the immediate feelings of the other rather than to look for truth and healthy understanding. Oh well, you can't change the world, only yourself.

[believing_isaiah43]

Oh, Muddle. This woman. I could rip her face off.

Now, I still see parallels between the pre-A me and your f-ed up W (although, thank God, I was not beating anyone up!). But every time H would try to talk to me about something, I would get so defensive and blame HIM b/c he didn't SAY IT THE RIGHT WAY. Oh, I just cringe at reading these things your W says to you b/c it's so familiar. BECAUSE THERE IS NO WINNING WITH HER. I know. I was her in that area. You should have said it this way. SO. Next time you DO say it that way, and it's still wrong. You should have done this, or that, or it wasn't the right time to bring that up, or SOMETHING that deflects, deflects, deflects the blame/responsibility for the topic away from me (W).

God. It's awful. Leave her a$$, Muddle. There is NO winning or ANY way to change her mind. Her changes HAVE to come from the inside. There is NOTHING you can do/be/say. My H did/was/said all he could (well, a good bit) before he was a WAH. NOT excusing/condoning/etc. the A he had, but I don't know that anything would have changed without some serious plate tectonic shifting under my feet. Sadly.