Willing to be disturbed...

[ediemarie]

I had a brief run-in with H this morning. He still takes me to work in the morning, as his car is being worked on. This morning he was onery and I fell for the bait. I'm not quit sure how to avoid the confrontations - very frustrating.

In short, H feels unwanted/unloved by the folks in the church he was kicked out of. (and rightly so) To make matters worse, a lot of my family members are apart of that church. I haven't been back since he was kicked out. H feels he needs to go and clean up his name, so he's been going for the last couple of weeks. I get all of that and I actually respect him for doing so. It's something he feels important and necessary to do in order to move on. BUT, he is expecting them to show all sorts of love towards him. And to a certain extent, they should. They should recognize the fact that he is attempting to make restitution. Unfortunately, they couldn't care less. Add to this the fact that H defines his identity through others (and he went to church last night) and this morning was a recipe for disaster.

It began when H said that he just didn't understand the reaction of the church people (I didn't/don't either). I agreed and said, yes, it's frustrating. Then he proceeds to complain about how no one cares for him and everyone would be better off if he just disappeared (this is not a new complaint. he has said this for awhile - incidentally he's not talking about suicide, he's talking about running away and starting a new life). This is where I lose it EVERY time. I feel like he's saying it just so I say "oh, H, that's not true." But I just can't bring myself to say it ... so I said nothing. Then he proceeded to complain some more and I finally just responded with Oh, you'll feel better later on. You'll be ok. Don't worry about it. But I was really annoyed so my tone wasn't so good. I just don't know how to validate his feelings/control my own tone/words when he gets like this...any suggestions?