I have been reading the blogs on this site for the past 2-3 weeks and I have set up some boundaries to my WAW.
She is continuing to carry on by going out every night coming home when she wants, even as late as 3AM. She gets up for work at 6AM. I haven’t posted my sitch, but I need help with enforcement of the boundaries.
I gave my WAW 2-3 days to respond to my boundaries, asked her to respond a few days later,F/U: w/her. no response. I told her that she can’t continue to come and go as a single woman, she needs to move out! etc.
She has mentioned she spoke to someone about D. I just want to tell her to go ahead and serve me.
We are living in the same house w/ 3 children (S-13, D-9, S-7), she refuses to move out and I can’t afford to move out nor do I have a place to go. She has denied the A 3 times.
I ask myself if I would want to get to know or be close to someone who wont look at or talk to me? I ask myself if I would want to come back to someone who's ignoring me when a reason I gave for leaving them was that they ignored me/paid me little attention?
Of course my answer to both is "no".
My ex just dropped off our daughter, and from the time she got here to the time she left, I made no eye contact with her and hardly acknowledged anything she said.
I would never have deliberately done that when she and I were together...and yet now I'm becoming the big a$$hole that she says I was.
It was even sadder that when she got up to leave, twice she said bye to our daughter and our daughter just hugged on me and ignored her. I knew after she walked out the door I should have gotten our daughter to tell her by but I sat and said nothign.
And here I am again feeling like crap. This sucks because I feel like I'm going to hurt no matter which way I behave toward my ex.
If I keep this act up I'm essentially holding on to my anger indefinately...and thats going to keep me from fully healing/moving on. Plus...if by some miracle of God she and the OM did ever part ways, why in the heck would she ever want to come back to me? She would not only have hostilty towards me for being so hostile to her all the time, but she would probably believe that I still wouldnt pay her any bit of attention.
The flip side that is essentially the "High Road" is me being nice to her and going with the flow. But at the same time I feel like I'm glossing over my own feelings and sending the message that what she did didnt bother me...that its ok for me to be her doormat.
You can keep making these long rambling posts about your feelings OR you can decide to learn and implement the basics.
Becoming detached, setting boundaries, acting "as if" and a host of other tools to gain perspective do not equate acting like an ass hole.
Taking the "high road" is all about treating a human being (in this case your W and the mother of your child) with the same common courtesy you would treat any other human. If your W perceives that as you being a doormat then create HEALTHY boundaries for YOU and your daughter.
You can send your W any message you want but at the end of the day all that matter is what is going on with you (and your daughter of course).
It was even sadder that when she got up to leave, twice she said bye to our daughter and our daughter just hugged on me and ignored her. I knew after she walked out the door I should have gotten our daughter to tell her by but I sat and said nothign.
And here I am again feeling like crap. This sucks because I feel like I'm going to hurt no matter which way I behave toward my ex.
Oh, ok. So err on the side of "being rude and a complete dikk, and teaching my daughter to do the same" is what you decided to go with.
And really, how is acting like a d*ck head to your W going to make YOU feel any better about YOU?
Your daughter needs support and guidance right now. The only way to do that is to improve you. Showing her that it is okay for a man to act like an ass simply because his feelings are hurt and he didn't get his way is a very risky precedent to set for her.
There is plenty of free info on this site about validation and setting healthy boundaries. Ask your IC for resources on co-parenting. Take charge of you.
I did call her just now and apologize for the way I have been acting the last few days and told her I didnt want things to be like this between us. She didnt seem to be bothered by it and said she figured if I wanted to talk I would.
She said "not to put this all on you but it didnt have to be like this and that you were the one who made it this way". I told her I didnt want to start the blame game. She said that she still didnt really have any solutions to make both of us happy and I told her that the only one I had she would probably not be comfortable with as it involved talking and spending quality time both as a family and as two friends. She said she needed time to think about it.
With the way she's done me lately that likely translates as "I dont want to make you cry like a little baby (which is really how she characterizes my feelings when I express them) so I'll take a few days before I tell you no". Either that or she has to consult with the OM to see if he's ok with it. Either way the answer will likely be no. But I wont bring it up again...so if she doesnt I'll just assume the answer was no without any conflict.
I'll guess that calling her to apologize somehow wasnt right...but since I was such an ass and actually felt bad rather than good about it, and I probably wont see her again until Saturday due to her teeth extraction Friday, I didnt want this last bad interaction/feeling to sit with her all that time.
Learn from this. This is a pattern YOU must break.
You act like an ass, you REACT on emotion then you call and apologize and the cycle repeats. Quite simply STOP IT. You now know it is a problem and it is getting you nowhere.
LISTEN TO YOUR W. She does not, at this time, have any solutions for you both to be happy. She has no desire to find solutions so you can both be happy. Spending time with her without having any tools to change the dynamic is pointless and will keep you in the cycle I mentioned.
When she said "it didn't have to be like this and you made it this way" you missed a very good opportunity to validate her feelings. But you don't know what validation is. Instead you decided to pursue more by even MENTIONING spending time together YET AGAIN.
If you keep feeling bad about being an ass then stop being an ass. Period.
When she said "it didn't have to be like this and you made it this way" you missed a very good opportunity to validate her feelings. But you don't know what validation is. Instead you decided to pursue more by even MENTIONING spending time together YET AGAIN.
alright well my task for the evening will be to get a grip on validation reading threads here.
however from your response I think I may already know what it is and have actually done it before without it being called "validation".
A book I recently read by Burns called "Feeling Good Together" has 5 communication techniques when talking to someone who is at odds with you. Essentially you agree with what they say and then empathize with their feelings without necessarily offering a solution to their issue.
