Cold Diff. cont.

[fearless]

Mojo - I don't know why I thought you had indicated that you were bulimic as an adult.

Well 19 is kind of an adult, right? But I know what you mean...

I'm just anal enough to look back through and find the thread where solidmechanic and I had the exchange where I admitted to my past issue with bulimia. I think the reason you thought it might have been concurrent with my marriage was my comment that I felt my XH probably viewed my (past) bulimia issues with a bit of disgust and a lack of understanding. Of course I continued (and still continue although I believe I am making constant progress) with the body issues that led to the bulimia in the first place. I let my XH know about my past struggles with bulimia early in our dating. All of that to say I can see how you could have assumed that the bulimia was concurrent with my marriage and I am glad to straighten that out.

There is so much more to say about this AND about Burgbud's comments about the difference between a wife's "testing" and out and out abuse. I just don't have the time!!

And I still don't have adequate time! I guess I just see the behavior of the woman in Dieda's Chapter 15 examples as fairly mild. While she didn't react to hew news of making a million dollars with praise and cheers, she also didn't degrade and say anything derogatory about it either (i.e. sure you did but you'll still never be anything but a loser, etc.). Instead her reaction was a mild "that's nice dear" and then on to the question of the milk which he has forgotten the past 3 days. To me there is nothing CLOSE to abusive in her behavior.

I still wonder if all of this questioning shows how hard it is for people that don't respect themselves to really be able to judge accurately how those around them react. If the husband is still feeling somewhat insecure about himself even though he made a million dollars, then relying on his wife's reaction to make himself "happy" is probably a losing battle anyway. Even if she tried to praise, she still might not praise him "enough" or the "right way." That's why Deida stresses not to look for her reactions to lead you and says "But you don't want her to settle for some bozo who depends on his woman's response to be happy." This might be a harsh sounding statement I would imagine for people that are all ready feeling unhappy. Please understand that Dieda is trying to GIVE you the power to make yourself happy instead of looking for others to do it.

On a similar subject of trying to understand why it is so important for a person to know themselves and to feel validated by themselves is that I feel if you are not able to validate yourself than truly how will anyone else be able to??

I tried to give this analogy to Raven. I know enough in my every day life to know when I am having a bad day or bad week. For whatever reason I can have a day where I wake up and nothing feels right. Intellectually I KNOW this is not reality. How could I feel fine one day and feel fat or ugly the next? Obviously this is NOT reality but feelings. SOOOO in my analogy I told Raven that I have now learned enough to know that I will NEVER get my hair cut on a day when I feel badly about my hair. Men may not get this but I think women will understand. The problem is that the hair stylist will only be able to understand that you HATE how your hair is looking and will react to that negativity. The problem is that you may not REALLY hate your hair AND also in your negative mood you will not be able to give your stylist the best POSITIVE information about what you want because you are only focused on what you don't want.

Corri made this excellent point earlier (And I think Blackfoot has mentioned it also) that using I am and I want are much better than I am not and I don't want statements and thinking. There's the obvious power in positive thinking. But it is important to know that our brains don't register the negative words as much which is why thinking "Don't trip, don't trip" will usually result in you tripping. Because your brain only registers "Trip, Trip."

Anyway... I am feeling a bit philosophical after attending my 20th HS reunion. REALLY REALLY glad I did. I have great memories of HS and there are a lot of people that I considered friends that I had not seen in a long time. I almost didn't go and now think that would have been ridiculous. The only bad thing of the evening was that so many didn't come. I think it's just the shock of hitting the 20th year. It's just hard to believe that it's been that long ago.