flowmom | need to commit to myself

[flowmom]

Does he have any understanding or empathy for why you stay home?

Yes, but he compares our family to guys at work where the W makes a professional income. Of course, those families have different parenting values than we do, and few have special needs children. H has a tendency to want to say "yes" to things that resonate with his core values (like homeschooling), but not accept or recognize the the fact that homeschooling families do have lower incomes and that they can't go on a family trip to Cuba whenever they feel like it (something that H insisted on when we were still dealing with the last financial crisis). You can't have it all. That's where identifying values and priorities as a family comes in, and that was a point that we got stuck on. H is not a team player. He's found a niche as a trainer and "expert" in the firehall, but he's the guy who hated group projects in school.

Does he understand your issues with your homeschooling and your procrastination? Ideally, you could have empathy for his desire for you to be "working mom" and he could have empathy for your desire to be "homeschool mom" and nobody would expect the other to change.

Really, H expects me to do both. I'm not clear if he understands my issues really. MC has an ADHD husband and she clearly explained to my H that his expectations of me needed moderating, esp if I was demonstrating that I was making an effort. But he didn't get to the place of showing acceptance. But just the other night H was talking about my procrastination as a "dealbreaker" in our M (overheard convo).

And H hasn't really spelled out his expectations of me. I'm not clear if it's about me *trying* to earn more, or about me meeting specific expectations (earning $XX,XXX/year). I don't think that's clear in his mind either and it's totally influenced by whatever our short-term financial status is that week.

In my mind, if you really tried in MC for him to hear you and if you gave him the listen and validate stance and it is STILL an issue, then you can do no more. If you never got to that place, there's work to be done!

I'm not sure if his needs and expectations ever got spelled out clearly in MC. And I'm not sure if I ever got to truly listening/validating. He was basically complaining about me, not making statements like:

"in order to be happy in this marriage, i need you to be more of a partner in earning money. i need you to earn $XXXXX/year. what changes would we need to make this possible? would you be willing to do that?".

I don't think that he could have done that on his own though. I guess that would have required a lot of coaching from MC. They had a few sessions alone together and i wonder what they really talked about. My guess is D since when I saw her after the separation she said she wasn't surprised and that we were headed that way even though H didn't express any desire to separate or D in our joint sessions.

Instead of blaming yourself and feeling you have to fix yourself to please him, try just listening and validating "I could see how you might feel that way." It does help. He may follow suit.

No chance to do that...no R talks are happening at all.