Better Days

[NoLongerHere]

Hey guys -

I haven't been on for a number of days, I guess in some ways I've been a little down and just pulling into myself. Had some stuff I wanted to do with the house this weekend and I'm not really doing it. Went to yoga yesterday - I've got one more class now that I've paid for, and then it'll be done - still want to see what I can afford. I've adjusted my W4 so I'm in a reduced state of alarm until I see the changes.

Anyway. The phone's turned off now. Couldn't get the antenna to work where I am, so took it back to Best Buy - worried about gas for these little trips now - but anyway, have hooked my computer up to the TV, it certainly will be a fair replacement for sattelite / TiVo as there's a lot of online content out there. Actually using it as a computer may be a little difficult, but will work that out.

I don't know, I've been in this manic phase the last number of weeks, with the home improvement and everything, now that I'm just letting myself be, kind of meloncholy again. I suppose it's good to feel all sides of this. The boys aren't here this weekend and being a alone is a little tough, not horrible. I guess I'm OK.

Anyway, haven't really been online for the past number of days. A little withdrawn I guess.

Hey - my boys got their Bear badges on Friday, that was really cool! XW didn't want to go with us - it's her weekend - I guess that's fine. I don't have any expectation here, but I'm aware of how seperate she's being. Her mother will barely talk to me now, which although isn't particulary troubling I guess, makes me aware of the extended family I've lost. Just strange. Heh - you know that saying you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. I guess that's not really true, is it? I have been de-chosen.

You know, in general I guess I've tended to be a fixer, doer - a problem emerges, and I don't feel right until I have a plan. I have no plan now. I guess my plan is to just adjust. Maybe I need to stop seeing my situation now as a problem.

My boys have been difficult lately. I miss having a partner in those moments.

What else. Well. Going to try meatloaf this week. I think the boys are tiring of grilled chicken breasts.

Karen - yeah, I see that, absolutely. Maybe that's true of all of us to some degree - I've thought about this. We get together, things are great, and get married, and then don't know what to do, expect it to work. And we all acknowledge "it takes work" - yes it does - so grit your teeth and bear down and try to endure the bad times. Your key word there is "tools" - it would appear skills are required here. And we don't discover that until we're over our heads. Maybe.

XW certainly has said things like that, she has been trying to become aware of her contributions to the problems, and she's said that she does not, has not, spoken up for her needs.

I guess the view I'm tending towards is that things happen. You don't feel a need to forgive a natural disaster or an illness. You just figure out how to cope. This IS different in that it's a result of another's choice, but yes if you can somehow see that some things are in their nature or somehow inevitible, them maybe it's easier. Maybe it's more true for me to realize that it's easy for XW to be the focus of my negative feelings as I cope with everything, in a blind kind of way, and the important thing remains to be coping.

SR - I don't know man. I just really don't know. I don't know what to think about trust or promises anymore. Most people out there, if they change their mind about something, it's human nature. When your spouse does it it's the worst kind of betrayal. I don't want to become cynical. But it happened. There are some learnings here to sort through about really how to understand others and be in a relationship. And maybe to - mmmmm - temper my expectations so that I'm more aware of where a partner is in what they want and what they're getting out of the relationship. Did we believe in the commitments to the point that we were blinded to our spouses? I don't know.

Ah hell. Plus, XW it a little crazy. I knew that up front.

Rambling now. Going to Safeway now.

[ImprovedRomeo]

I haven't been on for a number of days, I guess in some ways I've been a little down and just pulling into myself.

You're probably analyzing and paralyzing everything, it's hard not to and we each have our own way/duration of dealing with the loss. But you should start thinking about the future a bit more if you can find it in you.

The boys aren't here this weekend and being a alone is a little tough, not horrible. I guess I'm OK.

Same here but the weather was great and I got to go out both days with friends for a few hours and it made a huge difference. Look into doing some activities on the weekends so you don't feel alone. I have the same problem too I hate being alone and in my case I don't really have a lot of friends that I can hang out with either.

My boys have been difficult lately. I miss having a partner in those moments.

I can agree with that 100% - we should compare notes on cooking, taking care of the kids, activities etc.

[ClingingToHope]

Worried about money with the support payments.

I spent the first 10 months out of the house saying yes to everything that came my way just to keep the walls from closing in on me.

I started to run out of money fast and was contemplating bankruptcy. A friend told me to take the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University class before making a financial decision.

I thought it would be a waste of time since I know the concepts. I've read countless wealth building books.

Still, I said I would and it's helped tremendously. The biggest being making and sticking with a budget.

I've gone through three bi-weekly budgets (six weeks) and managed to make it under budget twice and only $7 over on the third.

I've had to get creative at times ... but I realized I can do this and as life goes on it will get better.

Look to see if the class is available near you through one of the churches.

Now that I'm not freaking out about the finances I'm feeling much better.

[NoLongerHere]

Some pieces clicked into place for me this morning.
Had a moderately tough morning at work, and had that stress response, and suddenly I understood a lot of things.

A number of years ago a councilor said to XW and I, she understood why she was with me, but didn't understand why I was with her.
A friend recently said something similar, when she first met us she didn't understand why I was with her.
My sister said yesterday, and she's said this before, that seems like I've tended toward the girls who picked me out as someone that could "save" them, and I'd just kind of go along with it.
And based on unrelated observations, I recently found myself musing to someone that I married the wrong women. Just looking at the things you’d want in a relationship that weren’t there.

And looking at myself - I was the kid that graduated from high school with a 4.0, I chose the hardest college in the area, chose one of the hardest majors, then got a job with a company that has a reputation for chewing people up and spitting them out. Every choice I made was to take on something really hard.

And this morning, I had that sense of despair that I was failing. I experience that over and over again. I never really put my finger on it, but it's clear to me at the moment that a big theme in my life is dealing with a sense of inadequacy. It's clear to me that this has motivated me. For that matter, I remember my mother commenting when I was a kid that I was afraid of failure. I think my dad described it as “easily discouraged.” When I worked so hard in school, then chose a career, it wasn’t for any other goal to overcome something difficult.

I know why I was with my XW now. She believed in me. There I was in 1998, banging my head against this job, working nights and weekends, I guess trying to sustain some sense of worth maybe. And when she came along, she just completely believed in me. She had really bad baggage, and I seemed to really matter in making her life better.

She questioned when this D process began why I even wanted her around based on how the R had been. Seemed like I was happy just having her in the house, that was enough for me. And I'm starting to realize what I got out of the relationship was some reprieve from self-doubt. If she loved me then I was OK.

Over the past two weeks, she has been upset that I was in a good mood after we signed, and then frustrated that when I had a bad couple of days that I called her, basically distraught. She said that while she's legitimately grieving, I only seem to show it when I things are going bad.

We had a deep connection. But I think there was something very needy about it from both sides. Her belief though is that something was missing; missing from our intimacy specifically, that we didn’t have chemistry, that we weren’t compatible, she’s said these things.

I read in a thread somewhere that this process seems to indicate that our “people picker is broken.” Maybe that’s true. I don’t think I picked a horrible person or anything. But in examining this, I’m not sure that I really knew at the time.

So right now at this moment, I realize I’ve got to figure out two things:
1) How to deal with this trait I have and
2) What I want out of a healthy relationship

So much stress in catastrophizing, so much energy. You’ve seen me do it on this thread about money over the past week. And that hole I feel, it’s not just that XW is gone and I miss her, I realize that it’s also because nobody is there that is telling me it’s going to be OK, that I’m going to be OK.

And maybe the upshot here is that going through this process is teaching me how to do that for myself.
You know, I think maybe I did know how to do that for myself when I was 28 years old, and I got lazy using her as a crutch.

Ahhrrrgghh. Crappy day so far.
OK gotta go

[BobbiJo]

Great revelations! Even if they don't exactly make you feel all warm and fuzzy...

Henry Cloud, co-author of the "Boundaries" series of books, mentioned that people-picker thing when cautioning people not to rush back into looking for a new mate without first doing some serious introspection....

Sounds like you are doing some serious self-examination, which, in the long run, is definitely a good thing.

[kat727]

I have a recurring dream. I can't really say how often I have it but it seems to me to also indicate a fear of failure. I am in college and doing extremely well but then I find out there is a class I was supposed to be going to and failing it because I never knew I had it!! I actually had it last night and this time it involved a couple of classes that I was missing.

The other dream along the same theme is from my flight atendant days...I would wake up late and miss the van to the airport. Or I would miss the flight all together.

Maybe these dreams are common, I don't know. Usually ther people I have talked to that had these same themed dreams were high achievers and under quite a bit of stress. Try to find a way to relax if you can.

kat

[ClingingToHope]

I am in college and doing extremely well but then I find out there is a class I was supposed to be going to and failing it because I never knew I had it!! I actually had it last night and this time it involved a couple of classes that I was missing.

I have the same dream. Seriously. I've also had the dream of going to high school naked. That's a weird one.

[NoLongerHere]

I've had that recurring dream as well. Weird.
Thanks guys for the responses.
Struggling tonight. Not going to go into it, you all know what its like.
I guess that's it for now.

[NoLongerHere]

Well I guess you guys are my therapists this week.

Just really examining the way I'm feeling and responding to things.

I really think that I have a hard time feeling good about myself unless everything is perfect. Like I mentioned before, this was achieveable at various times in my life when things were under control, yeah I was able to carry a 3.8 GPA through college; I have had many times at work where I was very successful. But when problems arise, things go wrong, I have some amount of self-doubt, I really struggle with that and obsess to fix it. have a hard time dealing with things not being perfect.

I remember a couple of things I told XW through the divorce process; one, about challanges at work I was facing, and telling her in almost a state of dispair "I don't think I can do it". And the other was, I had this feeling like she could only respect me if I was excelling in my career.

Yeah, I think I was trying not only to overcome my own self-doubts, but feeling like I needed to continue to prove myself as a provider and a top-notch success.

I didn't hear her that, that's not what she wanted from me. SHe wanted me, she wanted my attention, my time. Not someone she could be "proud" of based on being hellbent on success.

And the kicker is, I said this before, I immediately asked for a reduction in scope at work when she asked for divorce. At this point, the past year has been pretty bad due to my ability to focus, and I'm in recovery mode now. And it's still making me feel like s#!t about myself. And I get it now. Now I really feel like there's nobody that even cares, nobody that is invested in the way I guess I imagined she was. But she never really did care about that. She actually wanted to save me from this job completely chewing me up. She worried about me. Yeah, she tried to take care of me. And when she started to get mad at the team, managers, company on my behalf, I finally told her "this isn't helping." I took her voice away.

[kat727]

So you have 2 different issues going on, 1) Your driving needed for sucess and perfection and 2) what you want from your partner. The thing of course not being looked at is what your partner needs from you.

There is nothing wrong with driving yourself to do the best possible job that you can. When it becomes a problem is when it is the driving force of everything. Your family becomes second on the list and you, well you have just disappeared off the map.

The next thing is what you want from a partner. She supported you and got angry when she saw or felt they were taking advantage of you. Most people are looking for at least that trait in a partner. Apparently this wasn't the support that you wanted. So you will need to find a way to express what kind of support you DO need. Think about that one.

I will let you in on a secret. Womaen love to know that their guy is doing a good job and can support them(emotionally and finacially), but once the job becomes your main focus...you need to change something. What is the point of having money and sucess if you aren't able to share it with the people most important to you? I would rather be living pay check to paycheck and be with my guy then have lots of money and be alone while he is away working. Just my thoughts, you can file them where you see fit.

kat