What a weekend...

[AlexEN]

Forgive me if you've already mentioned it before, but has your W ever been diagnosed with any issues similar to your S14s? I ask because they seem to have a lot in common in terms of their emotional responses to things - and I wonder if that might figure into her POV being so very different from yours at times...That said, I'm not trying to suggest analyzing your W, etc, just curious about her background in terms of how it might influence her responses to your S14's behavior.

...Also...as an aside...when I first read the email you posted, my thought instinct was to look for instances of projection - and also to think that disagreement makes someone feel ignored - but when I read your responses, I was very impressed with how much you acknowledged her point of view while still expressing your own.

Carlos,

Always nice to hear from you; how is the leg? Have you scheduled or already had the surgery? I'm putting mine off until S14 starts High School. So, it won't be any sooner than the 19th... Then it'll be tougher to physically restrain him anyways... Maybe I ought to wait to see how the first few weeks of school go...

While I hate labels (even for S14 as BP), W has been informally diagnosed by our former MC as being NPD... Or, minimally, borderline NPD... But yours truly has a severe case of LBSD...

W is hyper-defensive and has a great deal of trouble empathizing with others... He worries that her own self-interest "will trump doing what's right for the kids". I take all of these labels with a grain of salt because diagnosing personality disorders is such an inexact science. And, at the end of the day, it is what it is. It may give us more insight into how others MAY be thinking, but changing them is still largely out-of-our-control unless our own REAL changes have an equal and opposite reaction...

Thanks for the kind words about my e-mails seeming balanced to a presumably unbiased third party.

Best,

AlexEN


P.S. My thoughts are with you knowing you will be sending S12 off to school soon if you haven't already. Our time with the kids is so limited to begin with and our situations, by definition, will limit it further. Remember, it's the quality of those interactions more than ever that now matters most. What we may have taken for granted before takes on new meaning...