Hey again... seems I've been spending more and more time online these days. Work just seems to be slowing down and getting boring lately, that'll be my excuse.
I wanted to write a little bit and let you all know what happened this last weekend (Mother's Day) when we went to visit my parents...
A few days before the trip, Ceb still hadn't decided whether he was going to go with me or not. I hadn't been pushing the issue because honestly, I didn't want to confront it and was hoping he would come to some resolution himself. Unfortunately he was thinking the same minus the resolution part. So I brought it up and he thought about it for an entire evening - literally.
Finally, he made the decision to go with me. He said that I'd taught him so much and he was so proud of me for that ... that he was going to take a lesson from everything I'd learned and go with me because it would make me happy and it would benefit our R. So he decided to put the R first (yay!) and that alone made me so happy... but it only gets better.
We headed up to my parents on Friday night and got in real late so we went to bed pretty much right away. I got up early (as usual) and he slept late so I had some time there to talk to my parents - especially my mom. She tried to make me understand that it wasn't that she didn't support me (because she does) but more that she didn't want me to see myself waste so much of my life trying to make my husband happy because she did that for so long and it wasn't worth it when you weren't getting the reciprocation. I assured her that wasn't going to happen and Ceb was as dedicated to making things work as I was. I think that made her feel better.
I also went over the issue of how Ceb doesn't feel very accepted at our house and we discussed it for a bit. I have to disagree with my mom's thinking unfortunately. She believes that if you're ok with something and someone else has a problem, it's their problem, not yours. While I agree with that to an extent, I think if you care about that other person, there are things you can do to help them.
For example, Dave doesn't feel accepted by my family because sometimes my mom just invites me to go places, not him... or we talk about people he doesn't know, etc. My mom said it was his problem because we weren't excluding him (true) but I feel that there are things she could do to help the situation like specifically trying to invite him along etc. Anyways, I couldn't get through to her on that point so I let it drop... for now.
I figure that by being this new, more compassionate, validating, empathic person, I can slowly work on my parents, family and friends with my own attitude and solutions to problems and maybe teach them something along the way. I know my parents and grandfather have issues with my uncle and in the past always end up in yelling matches so I've been suggesting different solutions and trying to impress upon them that when one approach isn't working you need to try something else. (My mom really liked that concept when I put it to an example.)
But anyways, back to Ceb... I told him all of this after he woke up and told him that my parents weren't excluding him and I think that part of the problem is that he felt excluded. I explained to him how my family works and the differences between his family and mine (basically my family expects you'll just speak up or go along with something if you want to do it, not invite you...) and he told me he would make a bit more of an effort to include himself.
It worked amazingly... we did yardwork at my grandpa's house, karaoke at a bar with my parents and her friends and spent the entire night at the casino (yes, the entire night with my mom ... we got NO sleep ... and I was the party pooper who wanted to leave at 5am and take a nap!). After the weekend was over and we were on our way home, Ceb said that he really had a good time and had fun! He's never said that about being at my parents. Plus my mom was just about crying when we left because she had such a great time with us.
