H's mom died 4 years ago. He was very close to her, and he had a hard time when she died. Evidently one of my failures is that I didn't somehow read his mind and say all or do all the right things. This has come out in his recent therapy. His midlife crisis began somewhere around this time, but has only really taken off recently.
After she died he brought several pieces of her furniture to our house. Honestly, I was very patient with it because I knew that it was important to him to have these things. I feel really shallow and guilty to say this, but these things don't fit the house, have never fit the house, crowd the rooms, and I'm tired of tip-toeing around them! Her china hutch has crowded my dining room and is covered with antique tea cups and breakable things. The kids are all terrified of it. Everyone knows no one touches it.
The whole house has been full of clutter for years. In the last few months since he first came out and told me he was not satisfied with our marriage, I've had a tremendous urge to purge the house of all the muck and detritous weighing me down. I think it's really good for us to dredge it all out.
I think the bottom line without making this too long is that my life and marriage feel really out of control right now. One thing I can control is my household. I want it to be fresh and uncluttered at least for me and the kids as H gets his issues figured out. Once the chaos has gone into the dumpster, maybe he'll even want to join us sometime instead of coming home from work after 9 every night.
I want most of his mother's furniture out of the house (especially that china hutch.) I broached the subject, and he looked kind of sad about it. He's a nice guy so he won't take a stand if I really want it gone. I've always felt that we should make decisions together, and that he has equal rights here, so I feel like a jerk saying 'put it in storage'.
But by gosh, he's a workaholic and barely even here. Part of the reason there is so much clutter is that the house got so crowded that I lost the will to keep order. I'm trying to make that right now. I'm also no longer putting dinner off until late "waiting for daddy to come home." The kids and I will be in the dining room every night at 7:30 if he cares to join us. My mother-in-law's death really hit him hard, and set this whole MLC in motion (albeit not on the surface for a while after.) I'm reminded of it everytime I sit down to eat. I don't think the hutch and the rest of it bring happy memories of his childhood. I personally think they just remind him of her absence, and they remind me of what her death did to him and consequently all of us.
Am I an insensitive jerk to nicely suggest we put his mother's furniture in storage?
(among other improvements, we just bought new seating for the family room, I got new dishes, and the kids and I are building a new gravel patio for a hammock and BBQ, along with a whole houseful of cleaning out closets and organizing. This is what's keeping me afloat right now.)
If it were me, I would carefully box it all up and put it in storage. Maybe let him choose one or two things that are meaningful for your H. Or maybe if you know exactly WHICH things are most meaningful, it would be kind of you to leave those "out" somewhere, on a shelf in a place of honor or something. It's not like you are trying to sweep his mother "out" of his memory or life then, but keeping her somewhere meaningful. Hope all that made sense!
Melissa
"Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst."
I agree. If they don't fit with your decor, they just harbor bad feelings in you, it is not inappropriate to put them away. It isn't like you are asking him to sell them or throw them out, just put them in storage cuz you want to declutter and they just don't fit with your style. And that is exactly how I would put it.
My H too is in MLC and I believe that his mother moving in with us for almost a year definately exaserbated it even though it was not the trigger. Although some days I wonder if it was the trigger. Actually, it probably was the actual thing that set him off even though he was a little wierd before that. It made the whole living situation here difficult. For all of us. When she left, I purged the house of everythign that she left. Or so I thought. It was a tremendous relief to me. Although I do still find an occasional remnant and that will get me aggravated all over again. But then I throw it out too and feel much better. So I would say as kindly as you can, to move it all into storage. It will do you a world of good.
If you focus on the past, you ruin the future. You can only live for today.
Thank you Mellenmack. You're right, I don't want to sweep his mother out. I just want our house to be about us reconnecting and living in the present and for the future. He spends so much time looking backwards that I think he's missing what is happening today. Meanwhile, his mother's shadow is looming in the dining room, in a big formal china hutch that has crowded the chairs, and dominated the room for 4 years, full of flowery delicate bric-a-brac which would be 100% at home with a 75 year old widow, but has no business in the warm, modern, functional nest of my heart.
