Glad to see that u are enjoying the kids. Great line and I saw the movie as well. Keeping still is good...very good.
"The difficulties of Life are intended to make us BETTER,not bitter". "Fear is a prison, where you are the jailer. FREE YOURSELF!" "Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B." - Jack3Beans
Still: Eric has some good advice; listen carefully. Stillness is so important; we learn so much when we just stop. Many people don't want to stop--they fill their lives with activities, noise, work, people, etc. but in the process they are cut off from themselves. Go inward. M Go Blue had a wonderful post several years back about how this inward journey will be the most beautiful thing we ever experience, provided we have the courage to go there. It's easier not to go there, but life is better if you do. It's a long process. I'm still on it, more than three years after my marriage blew up, and I will be on it the rest of my life. But I am happy to be where I am. I never would have imagined that when things fell apart.
Detach, detach, detach. One moment at a time. You will backslide with her, with yourself. Forgive and get back on the horse and do it again. It will get easier but you have to stick with it.
Try letting go of judgment, as it applies to yourself and her. Her actions may make you mad, but as Snodderly and others have said, behind the texting, etc. is a whole lot of pain inside of her. It may be hard to see, but it's there. That's her work to address, not yours.
Your work is something different. I think M. Go Blue had it right when he said that what is critical is to see what happens in our lives as learning opportunities. What is it you need to learn from this experience? Until you figure that out, you will keep spinning in circles filled with anger, frustration, and sadness. Let that go and figure out what you need to learn. We are bigger than our roles as spouses, parents, workers, etc. Inside each of us there is a core. Move toward that core and the other stuff shrinks in importance. It's not narcissim. Rather, it's an essential journey to wholeness. You will be better for yourself, your kids, and anyone else in your life if you have a deeper sense of yourself.
Look out for yourself financially. That is essential. A few months/or a couple of years and a life's effort can be wiped out. Try to keep that from happening; do what you need to do. Be firm.
M Go Blue had a wonderful post several years back about how this inward journey will be the most beautiful thing we ever experience, provided we have the courage to go there. It's easier not to go there, but life is better if you do. It's a long process. I'm still on it, more than three years after my marriage blew up, and I will be on it the rest of my life. But I am happy to be where I am. I never would have imagined that when things fell apart.
I couldn't agree more. I've written a couple of times about truly being grateful for the journey. I certainly didn't feel like that when the B dropped. But I do now, and look forward to doing the work forever ... it's a gift. It really is.
Originally Posted By: Bruce1
Let that go and figure out what you need to learn. We are bigger than our roles as spouses, parents, workers, etc. Inside each of us there is a core. Move toward that core and the other stuff shrinks in importance. It's not narcissim. Rather, it's an essential journey to wholeness. You will be better for yourself, your kids, and anyone else in your life if you have a deeper sense of yourself.
Well said Bruce. We get so caught up in our roles and we tend to lose sight of our core. I know I did.
Great post! Peace PEI
Holding onto anger to punish someone else, is like lighting yourself on fire to get smoke in their eyes ~ 25yearsmlc
How are you man? Just wondering dude. Hopefully you had a good weekend with the kids.
If I were a betting man, right now you are still probably spinning a bit. You may even be getting to that place of being REALLY pissed the F off. If you are, know this...it is normal dude. As frustrated as you get NEVER and I mean NEVER let it loose on her.
Showing her the anger, in her mind gives her the justification that SHE needs to keep doing what she is doing. When she sees the anger she get's to say "see I knew he would not change" - don't give her that easy way out. She needs to own her role in this crap. You my friend need to own yours. You need to detach from her as soon as possible so that you can begin the long walk down the path of healing. The long walk down the path of self improvement and growth...the long walk that at the end is STILL. The real dude Still.
You can do it man. I know you can.
Right now...this may come across the wrong way...but right now F her. It is about YOU my friend - all YOU.
"The difficulties of Life are intended to make us BETTER,not bitter". "Fear is a prison, where you are the jailer. FREE YOURSELF!" "Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B." - Jack3Beans
OK current sitch..just about sprained my finger clicking on over here because I am in need of a still type...just breathe moment.
Sunday- Get a call from the W during a nap asking me what I have been talking about with her mother. I have been discussing all kinds of things with her mother so I just mention she found a microwave cart for me that I had just brought home. W starts to get irate asking incoherent questions about what I am doing talking to her family and then says, "What if I told my mother things about you so my family would hate me the way yours hates me.
(My family is not the most emotionally mature and I am battling to keep them respectful when it comes to the W. Invitations sent to me and the kids without her name and petty $#!^ like that have occurred.)
I am at a loss, half asleep and for the first time in this nasty business getting really irate. She starts talking about money...I start yelling about no having a damn bottle of mustard in the house, no beds for my kids, D who says I have to replace floor and bug bomb before she will sleep there and end it with a very mature FU and hang up. Wife texts back...I'm sorry. I ignore it...wife cals back...ignore again. I pick up on second call and...
Little did I know this is what was going on...
wife gets on FBook (everyone booooooo..I hate that flippin thing) and she tries to sell a piano and asks about consignment shops for selling some old clothes. Money pinch is setting in and she is doing what she can. I guess her sister, estranged from the fam but still in contact via FBook and with daughter that plays said she would BUY it.
W's Mom jumps on and says she should check with her Aunt first as it is a family item and her aunt has senority in the matter, I guess. My wife thinks I called her Mom and said she better get on FBook because W is selling piano. Now not only do I not have ANY access to W's FBook profile, because she defriended me and blocked me, but the entire thing makes no sense, which she now sees.
Later W sends page saying she is sorry for saying she would tell my MIL things that would make her family hate me, "There is nothing to tell"
OK now...
Yesterday I send her an EM saying that there were things she could have told her Mom, and I go through some of my failures...I know I know bad but it just felt so like what to do.
I told her I missed the kids, the stupid dog, grumbling about putting her hair implements away in the morning, and I missed my best friend.
Later that night I go to her house to be with the kids, make them dinner, and watch movies with daughter. I tell wife I am leaving in a bit and she says she will be home in 10 min. I wait talk to her a bit. She walks me to car and there is a nice goodbye hug.
She said she still needed time to reply to earlier EM. Nothing until about noon today.
Now I am getting texts..."Been thinking about your EMail. I always felt like I was not satisfying you...I did not feel like I was a priority...this may sound wierd but I never really felt a bond with your family. My family loves you.
I replied- "I can see where you might have thought you were taking a bcakseat to many things, but I cannot think of a time when my ultimate goal was not to build a better future for us.
I told her my family is emotionally constipated and that a custom fishing pole is their version of a deep bond. I told her I never knew she felt that way and that it must have hurt even watching me interact with her family let alone at my own family's events.
Next text-She then said this whole private school thing is unnecessary...money again, but with a point.
Next text- She said she hated our town.
I replied- I know and told her I had a spare room.
Next text- about my family- "They wrote me off so fast. Your Aunt sent thank you to the house and put my name last." I replied that my family is and has been all about paranoia and betrayal and that by being mean to her, they think they are showing their love for me. I said it probably killed my aunt even to put her name on the thank you, but I had made it clear how upset I was that they left W's name off of last invitation.
Next text- I also hate having to work. No matter what we did we were always in CC debt.
I replied- I always felt if I tried to take the financial reigns that that independent streak of yours would kick in and you would take it as some kind of insult, but having taken care of yourself since you were in Jr, High I should have perhaps offered you the option. I am not doing to bad getting some of my things in order IIDSSM. Go do some work to get your mind off of all this. I would like to talk more later.
Is there anything here that was handled properly? What do you folks think about this exchange over the last couple of days? Sorry for the length but it seems I am so close to something, I did not want to be short on details. OR...is this just a part of the MLC cycle and should I have stepped back more?
Board continues to be calming influence...thanks for your time reading all this.
OR...is this just a part of the MLC cycle and should I have stepped back more?
BINGO!
I can tell you all this has happened to me.
They go bouncing around and it is everyone's fault and they hate everything and ...
If you send something heartfelt and contrite like your email it goes no where
Believe me Stilt.
This is standard operating bullsh!t.
Don't defend yourself or your family or any other tirade she gets you pulled in on.
Just Shut the F@ck UP (STFU for short and you will see this again I promise)
You will know when it is safe to talk about your R with your W and it will be when she is begging you ( or just short of that) to accept her back in your life.
And that is a long way off...
Right now you are still at her beck and call and you have to stop that my friend.
Your are still not detached.
My goal is to some day be the person my dog thinks I am
I am constantly amazed at both the different and yet same things that I hear from male vs. female on these boards. Venus vs. Mars, I guess.
Hint: We (women) are manipulaters by nature. We know how to get you do to what we want and think it is what you wanted all the time. USUALLY. As bad as it has been with my H in MLC, a female in MLC is SCARY SH!T.
IMHO, as Grit said, Back the Hell Away. The more you run, the more she will pursue. Don't be there for her. Let her figure it out herself. You will have a lot less grief that way.
Hint: We (women) are manipulaters by nature. We know how to get you do to what we want and think it is what you wanted all the time. USUALLY. As bad as it has been with my H in MLC, a female in MLC is SCARY SH!T.
ff punkin, You are awesome!!! I got a great feeling when I read this. The guys here appreciate your honesty. Add to what you said a woman that flips like a switch overnight and you wake up to the twilight zone every morning with no end in sight. Ever watch Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? It is much like that except the hurt you feel for your kids just kills your heart.
Stilltrying, I feel for you man! Seen and heard much of what you wrote. The paranoia the MLC'r gets is really wacky. Sometimes their vocabulary includes words or phrases you have not heard for years from them. Things that you may have joked together about in the past now becomes part of their current thoughts except it is not funny now to them or yourself. I have even heard words in her vocabulary that I know her brother has said or her "New Friends" have said recently. I hope I am making some sense for you but my W has become a parrot for others and she is an intelligent woman. It is an identity loss. Thinking clearly for herself appears to be impossible for her. The more I keep my mouth shut and just say "That makes sense" or " I can see how you would see it that way" actually keeps her anger from coming out and more strange things come out instead. This takes practice to do but I am betting you will see some of the same as me. Grit is right. This is a long process. I wish I could give you an estimate on how long. Sorry, no cando. That means one thing. YOU have to work on YOU and detach. I hate hearing this too. It will make YOU better. If you were good before you will be awesome when YOU work on YOU. Then you will realize she would be absolutely crazy to leave you. When you start getting comments from people you know that you are different or a good husband something along those lines, then you know you are moving whether your wife notices or not. Mine did notice but she can't face the guilt yet. So I will keep working on me. She will lose if she leaves and that is where you want to be too.
You're still too focused on what she thinks. I know it's easy to say that and hard to do, but do it you must. She's going to say what she says and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. It comes down to control, and you have none over her. That's the way these things go, and the sooner you can get comfortable with that the better you will be.
You can control yourself, however, and it is there you must focus. They are unpredictable, and they will make you mighty angry if you let them. But ultimately you have control over how you react to someone else. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, but it made all the difference in the world. I used to hang on her every word (and I wasn't getting much from her; we lived apart), try to read something meaningful into every hint of action I saw. Guess what? It meant only what I projected into the situation. Drove myself batty and caused myself a lot of anguish in the process, all for naught.
So, give up trying to figure her out. Figure yourself out instead, and figure out what you need to do to protect yourself emotionally and financially. At the end of the day, she's gonna do what she's gonna do.
