congrats for talking about the 800-lb gorilla in the living room
I'm not so sure about that. More like we talked about the 200lb pile of steaming stinky crap in the middle of the living room, not the gorilla that dumped it there. We are not separated/separating yet. He's ready to go with that if that's what we need to do - we got that far at least and we both know we mean it. The "more emotional honesty" part was something I felt was a pretty huge step. I've talked to him about honesty before and he has always deflected it and read it as me wanting to just get away with berating him and never having to cushion my language. BTW I don't berate him, I think you'll remember when I said I'm constantly surprised at his ability to hear blame when there genuinely is none. I feel a lot braver. Even the insight into what ILY has really meant has made me feel braver. I can say to myself "that's just your fear of abandonment talking" but I'm a big girl now, I'm no longer that 2 year old that got dumped on an aunt she didn't even know so her parents could go off on a jaunt etc. If he goes he goes, and I am standing in his way if I try to cling to his legs - but I'm over doing that. Now it is more like he that is desperate to keep ahold of me. It's amazing the emotional maturity that man can pull out of the hat when he really needs to, and just makes me realise how much PA game-playing has gone on. How much game playing I have allowed to go on. Well it stops right here, I'm going to call him out on every sigh, every eye-roll, every needless spiteful remark. There was a time when I reacted to them with bewilderment and hurt and tried to do better, then there was a long time when I just ignored them, now I'm not going to let a single one pass without saying. "What was that for?" and then when he evades "how some emotional honest here?" And if I don't get it then we're done. I'm really starting to see the damage S8 has already sustained by having an emotionally absent father, well an absent father really, a workaholic alcoholic doesn't have much time left over to hang with his kids.
I do fear that the alcoholism won't allow us to get very far. I'm glad we both at last acknowledge the work there is to be done, acknowledge that we probably could survive separately and are ready to go ahead and do that if the work can't be done together.
I found a bunch of stuff about passive aggressive behaviour on iVillage, which I can't find now so can't post the link, but it was very insightful to me. A long thread with several women posting things about their H's which just made my draw drop. The similarities were just incredible. I know I've spotted people on this board with H's "just like mine" here but this is a whole different league.
What's needed is for him to get right in under the nub of his so-called "happy childhood". There is no way he had any such thing. I believe he was brain-washed by his parents' propaganda and that the emotional abuse was subtle - that's why he can't see it. I think it's about his dad's R with his older brother and lack of R with him and his subsequent identification with his sainted type 2 mother. Very often when we are with his folks I hear subtle put-downs coming out of their mouths. Also stories he has told me about things he did as a kid are re-told by them except it was his brother. I don't know which is true and which one of them has a need to fabricate, but he is in serious denial about the health of his upbringing. I'm not in denial about mine, I know it was crap. Unfortunately he has used that as a stick to beat me with in the past "you're the one with the dysfunctional family ergo you're the crazy one".
I wouldn't say he was eager to move out of the house. I think he knew when he said that that I would want to preserve what I could of a happy Christmas for the kids - it was more like his last ditch attempt to get me to back down on the idea of a separation. And I guess it kind of worked.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
