My mom has imparted the wisdom to me about the care and feeding of my father.
When he's sick or feeling miserable...say, "Poor Thing" to him and he feels better.
I was telling Monkey how it really works when she says it to me too! He said if anyone said that to him, he'd think they were being sarcastic. But I explained that as silly as it sounds, it really does make me feel better! Of course, it has to be said sincerely.
So, when he brought me back home that night, my mom was whining because she was sick and couldn't breathe from being all stuffed up.
I said, "Poor thing", then Monkey said "Poor thing!" then my dad said, "Poor thing!"
Laugh.
It felt good having Monkey be part of the "Poor thing" posse. Hugs.
I can see where you might think telling your H about your feelings (about him working, a potential lie) might SOUND anti-DB, but what we all find here in piecing is that things that might NOT have worked earlier on...might have pushed them further away....are OK, in fact even NECESSARY to really put our M's back together.
In fact, things really only started to get better for us when I DID start telling CJ more of "the truth" about what I was going thru. Mind you, he DID ask me to do just that.
So I ditto the poster above who said DB is about what works...and your H could NOT have handled that better...it gave YOU a chance to see how deeply HE feels about doing it right this time!!!
Quoting ShinyBear: what we all find here in piecing is that things that might NOT have worked earlier on...might have pushed them further away....are OK, in fact even NECESSARY to really put our M's back together.
Ahh! This makes sense to me. I know if I had addressed this a year ago, he would have only gotten mad and defensive, so I couldn't figure out what was different this time.
Thank you Shiny. I had been wondering about crossing the line from trying to win them back to rebuilding a relationship.
Monkey brought up the book, "Rich Dad Poor Dad" in a talk about budgets. I remember getting all excited saying I had read it too and was thrilled he had read it.
The memory of our conversation gets blurry here, but we were talking about an article in Motley Fool's newsletter which was focused on Financial Vows. The example I remember is, "I promise to only have one credit card and to pay off the balance each month." The Motley Fool's were saying that in addition to the other vows a couple takes at their wedding, they should also come up with and agree to Financial Vows.
Monkey said we should create our own Financial Vows. He said, "We'd talk about our finances in the past, but we never came up with a plan. Instead, I just told you not to spend any money. That didn't help."
I responded with an apology of my past habits.
This was a great positive in that he recognized his contribution to the problem!
Well, Monkey called me last night and left a message on my phone.
Said he was heading to pick up his mom in her town (2 hours away) and drive her to the airport. Said he wanted to talk to me before he left. Said he missed me!
Also, if his mom is truly against me, I suspect that she'll use their time in the car to try to talk him out of moving back in with me.
I'm hoping if that happens, it'll be over and done with and that he'll deal with it without me having to hear any hurtful words.
The other half of me hopes that she was sincere in inviting both me and Monkey to her house for weekend visit.
