Cold differentiation, fusion and stuff.

[fearless]

Okay, since you want to know about my marriage and how things disintegrated...

What I was going to guess is that he left you because you are much more highly differentiated than him.

A reasonable guess because it fits your concept of the issues with differentiation and it feeds your fear that if you become differentiated you will be left by the fused spouse.

However it is incorrect in my case. While it is/was true that I was more differentiated than my XH, NEITHER of us knew it through dating and the first 8+ years of our marriage. I began to suspect it after I found out about his affair and as I went through DBing. Around the 5th year of our marriage my XH started telling me and would have told you that I was the fused (although he did not have the word at that time it is what he meant)spouse who couldn't stand on her own. he started reading Seat of the Soul, the Dalai Lama, etc. and felt like he was miles ahead of me. I was the one who "wanted to do too much together," that I "did too much for him," that I "didn't have enough of a life on my own" and that wanted him to "do too much for me." He would ask me why I couldn't just "be happy." Which was puzzling since I thought I was happy. I thought I was confident about who I was. I didn't want to be joined at the hip with him. I liked having some separate activities and friends but I just felt that he was isolating himself away from me. At the time he pulled away from me he began bonding with a woman at work and began his first EA. It truly was only friendship but it was an intense friendship that excluded me. because I couldn't/wouldn't lead him in the direction he wanted (that elusive happiness), he looked to someone else to lead him and I think she found it flattering to lead him. When she married and moved away, he developed his next EA which unfortunately led to the PA. (No excuses for him because I told him that developing these close friendships with women was playing with fire.)

At this time he would demand that I make decisions but when I did he would fight me tooth and nail. I was either not LEADING enough OR LEADING in the WRONG direction, i.e. I was not "making" him happy. He would do things like ask me where I wanted to go for dinner. I like almost all food so sometimes I would say I don't care. Then he would get upset that I didn't have an opinion. SO I would name a restaurant and his first reaction would be "NO I don't want to go there" and usually my second choice wasn't right either. It was a crazy making time because I am someone who takes people's criticisms seriously until I have confirmation. And since I only had one husband I tended to dwell too long probably in trying to show him that I was really the person he wanted me to be.

As an analogy to how crazy feeling all of this was for me. Let's say your wife comes home and asks what you want for dinner. YOu say chinese food. She says No YOU don't want chinese food. So you say "well yes I do but obviously you must not so what do you want." Then she insists that it is YOU that doesn't really want chinese food and wants you to tell her what you really want. HOW do you argue with this?????? After all you sure as h@ll KNOW that you want chinese food, it's obvious she must not because she won't agree to it and yet she is making it about YOU. (this is not the best example because as a man you probably are more assured of yourself. As a woman I felt like somehow it must have been my fault and that I must not be communicating clearly enough or that I was somehow implying something with my mannerisms. SOMEHOW I should be able to FIX this problem on my own!)

My XH would do this all the time and within the last 2 years (since we've been separated) we figured out that he didn't believe much of what I said because he was an avoider and he just subconsciously treated me like one as well.

SO why did my XH think I was so needy, unvalidated and unsupported, fused, etc.? Well first the obvious is that he projected his issues onto me. The other was that while I have full support from my family we are also a volatile family in many ways. There wasn't a lot of positive validation for our actions and was there was negative validation when we did something wrong. My parents and grandparents from an early age critiqued and disagreed with is routinely. It was very common for us to hear that we had done something wrong. My grandmother (and RN and eventual teacher) would correct our thank you notes to her and critique our penmanship. My grandmother and grandfather complained of the way my mom kept house and of how dirty my brothers and I would sometimes be at the fair (when we were young!). I was a straight A student and National Merit scholar and NEVER received any reward or special kudos from my parents. (I was just doing what I should be doing in their minds.) My mom and I would argue vehemently about politics, etc. starting late in Junior High. I told raven of a story in high school where my mom was furious at me. I had gone to a teacher to get a grade I felt was unfair changed. My mom did not support me doing this and was furious when I did and the teacher changed the grade. She thought I was wrong in my actions. When I went to Europe at 16, I told her before I left that I would drink when I was there (of course I was a bit of a chicken because I did it over the phone!). She thought I was making a bad decision. Years later she admitted that while she was mad for awhile she did appreciate I TOLD her. In High School she would call me a b!tch at times.

All of this to say that NOT having constant validation for my actions was NOT an insignificant thing. By not getting validation for most of my actions AND then by feeling acceptance for myself as a person is what has given me an advantage.

In contrast my XH has a very kind and loving family. Certainly no one in his family has screamed the words "B!tch", "SOB", etc. at anyone. No one even HINTS of disagreement. There was/is constant positive validation and no negative validation. (When one of my brothers left his wife for another woman I was furious at his behavior. My XMIL was so uncomfortable to hear me critique my brother. I couldn't understand why at the time. It seemed obvious that his behavior was reprehensible) All of my XH's friends thought his family was perfect. My XH swore up and down that he also had total acceptance from his family for who he was. (They were our neighbors too!)

BUT my ILs are strong Methodists who do not drink or smoke. Yet my XH drank and dipped starting in HS. As far as he knows his parents don't know about it. When he and his best friend were fishing at my FIL's pond one day with a 6 pack of beer, my FIL walked up on them kind of quickly. My XH tried to throw a t-shirt over the beer but missed. Nothing was said then but a few days later my FIL said to my XH "I am really disappointed in YOUR FRIEND for bringing beer to the farm." AND my XH said NOTHING and let his friend take the blame. Now my XH was 23 at the time. Does anyone else see this as abnormal? If my XH was truly SURE of his parents acceptance, why was it so important to hide the fact that he had chosen to drink? He INSISTS it is to protect his parents and of course he would. Again I would wonder WHY it is so important to protect them if they can truly love and accept him for himself?

This is where I start to see getting your SELF-validation from others as possibly destructive because you see yourself as only being worthy if you can APPEAR perfect.

For me, I knew I was imperfect and that everyone in my family knew that and yet they still loved me. my mom and grandparents could argue and fight and still LOVE each other. We were all imperfect but acceptable people.

I'm afraid I have painted a much rosier picture of my family than it would have appeared at the time but I think that when you are in a great place as an adult it is easy to look back fondly without giving the edgy details. Another example is that my parents NEVER let us use others as an excuse. In my XH's example, even if a friend HAD been the one to bring the beer (and we were underage) and we hadn't drank it ourselves my parents would have expressed disappoint in US. The always said this "It doesn't matter what ANYONE else does. YOU are responsible."

I have no idea if this makes it clearer or muddier but my differentiation did not harm our marriage in the least. If I hadn't been as differentiated as I was, I doubt my XH would have even ASKED me to marry him. And I certainly don't think he could have handled me at all if I really had drawn my self-worth from him. Just THINKING I did drove him away.

And I will repeat as I consistently have, that I KNOW I am supremely lucky in the family that I have.

I could certainly go into more detail about them also. My dad is a self-validated and differentiated man. My mom struggled a bit with herself but I think my dad's differentiation was a great thing for her and them. She was very aware of her insecurities but was not someone who projected at all. So my mom although she was insecure was still confident in her insecurity because my dad could deal with it. After a long day milking and working in the field, he would sit down to dinner and be bombarded with her reading the paper aloud to him and discussing all of her issues with the latest political news. I know he wasn't interested but he still listened. It was important for her to feel listened to by him because it let her know he loved and cared for her.

ETA: AND that's probably why I am so sensitive to the idea of you listening to your wife. NOT because I think you should cater her or be responsible for her. Because I saw the loving way my dad "put up" with my mom's moods and how loved she felt because of his strength. I don't know why it makes you so angry to read my SUGGESTION of trying to listen to her more but my intention was never to insult you. I also wasn't asking you to be "sensitive" guy (my dad sure wasn't); I was asking you to be the rock she can depend on and trust. It seems different to me than what you have accused me of wanting you to do.