Jaime, I know how you feel and your friend is right about the chess game analogy. I keep reminding myself I need to be nice yet to the point in my interactions but other than that I really shouldn't care what she does, how she feels about my actions etc. In practice I scrutinize my own actions am I being nice enough? not nice enough etc. Combating the negative stuff is hard. Besides, I'm the type who feels better if I can prepare myself for the worst and then hope for the best as opposed to a lot of people that only focus on the positive side of things. I hate getting caught off guard.
I *totally* get this. I think we share a mind. It's interesting, when I arrived home after my nice weekend away, I thought "haha! he probably had a lonely weekend at home; maybe he realizes how much he'd miss us if we were gone". But he wasn't home when I got there and there were some indicators I interpreted as him having been gone for several hours (he rarely goes anywhere except to work). I FREAKED out. Where was he? who was he with? were there any clues around the house??? I spent a very uncomfortable half hour until he arrived in sweatpants from the gym... Amazing how my first thought of "where is he?" made my confident mind do a 180 and focus all on him instead of me. I need to try to remember that and how the shift from thinking primarily of him to me makes me feel better, and the opposite is true.
Quote:
the previous time things were pretty bad but in my mind I was committed to having her back and she did come back. This time I'm not sure if I want her back if she'll be the same way as last time so I'm having a tough time telling my mind to commit to her.
this is interesting- and I would be careful about attributing the reason she came back last time solely to your attitude, if you're doing that. I don't know if I want my H either. When I'm able to make the shift from focusing on whether he wants me, to just focus on me, he seems a little less appealing. It's probably a hallmark of the LBS to always ask "do they still want me? If they don't, what will I do then?" instead of the other way around.
Quote:
Jaime, I'm not the one who left, the signature is about her actions. She moved out 3 times for 3 different reasons she gave me, used to be 'your anger is out of control', then it was 'you're too controlling' and the last one is 'you criticize me all the time' with a few other things thrown in the mix each time. She hasn't said what she wants other than "I've found a place to live so we're not always fighting in front of DD". It's intersting how she uses words like "always" and "never" when she wants to justify things to herself. That's all she wrote me in an email last time and when I got home she'd already moved a lot of her stuff. Then when I asked why she said "you're being mean to me and you always criticize me for everything". Partly true about criticizing; I am anal and structured - something that helps me at work but not at home and I try to be mindful of it but just can't seem to let go of it completely.
Ah, ok. My H uses black and white words like that too. And it's all about me, not him, in terms of why we're where we are. It's so much easier to blame us than look at themselves.
Quote:
OF, LOL, I wish I was smoking something good. I'm upset at times and not so much at other times. It comes and goes in waves. I guess I won't. I'm just not sure if going dark gray has done anthing at all or if she takes it as if I don't give a damn about anything so she should just move forward with what she's doing.
Don't know about you, but time seems to move so slowly for me and I'm impatient. When in reality, we've only been trying our behavior for days or weeks and want to see a result- NOW! :-) Then we obsess about why we're not seeing one.
Hope you're feeling on the mend today-
When the men on the chessboard Get up and tell you where to go; And you've just had some kind of mushroom And your mind is moving slow; Go ask Alice... I think she'll know.
