I responded to your thread in your thread. It sounds like you had a stressful weekend but not entirely negative. The important thing right now is recognize the positives and not let the negatives weigh you down. Remember your mood can reflect off of those around you. Sometimes "negative" things can work in your favor. For instance, you had a right to be angry about that woman sending you those emails. However, notice his reaction to when you backed off when he signaled you that he'd had enough. He apologized! The truth is (from a guy's perspective) when someone is assaulting us verbally or emotionally, there is a very small window where we continue to listen. After that point, "Flooding" occurs. This is where we become overwhelmed with emotion and it triggers a sort of "fight or flight" effect. We may lash back or we may just tune you out. We may even leave the situation. No matter what, we aren't hearing the rest of what you say. It's not just with women, guys do it with each other too. If you can remember any time when you've witnessed two guys having an argument, I bet the root of the issue was brought up immediately and the resolution followed soon after. Either they had it out verbally and walked away from each other or some sort of physical confrontation ensued. Either way it was over quickly.
But when he told you that he'd had enough, you agreed with him and gave him space. However, you still got out everything you had to say at that time and it must've sunk in, because he came back and apologized. Awesome!
I didn't want to post this on the other board, but I warned you his mother because I've made that mistake in the past. Not with her mother, but her friend. Eventually, everything I said got back to my W, but skewed through the lens of their friendship. In other words, plenty of things I said were made to look a lot worse than they were. And this friend didn't do it on purpose, she wants our marriage to succeed. However, when it comes down to the line, her interests lay with my wife. You obviously can't ignore her, your S is her grandchild, but I would be careful and take anything she says with a grain of salt. I'm not saying she doesn't care about you (I'm sure she does), but she is probably worried about her son and grandson, and that can often skew their take on the situation. I don't have the book accessible right now, but Michelle warns against that in DR as well. I'll post the page when I find it.
