Thank you for posting to me again. I hope You realize that if I didn't value your opinion, I wouldn't bother replying. I'm extremely upset today and I would just blow it off if I didn't think it was important enough to try to work through.
"But what I see you doing, and what I see as the source of your frustration is that you are determined to force him out of that pattern. And you see what he's doing as wrong. "letting him get away with it"--that's pretty strong judging language."
Why in the world do you think I went to the effort of putting "letting him get away with it" in quotes? I am at the end of my rope today and I went to the trouble to set it off visually. Well, here is the answer. Because I damn well knew that it was more judgmental than I actually felt or believed, but couldn't come up with the words and, as I am doing now, was typing extremely quickly.
Annie, there is no-one on this board who gives the impression of doing more self-monitoring than I do. I KNOW it sounded judgmental, and it is not a genuine reflection of how I felt. Over the years, I wanted him to be happy and I gave in to things that I didn't want, without insisting that we communicate effectively about why he wanted it, what the effect would be on me, on our family, and so on. It was as much my fault as his. I just don't want to do it anymore.
