Ok my mom read me something from a daily thoughts book she reads from. It's a story about two teardrops, floating down a river. One teardrop says to the other, who are you? The teardrop says, "I'm the woman who loved a man and lost him." That teardrop says to the other one, who are you? She replies, "I'm the woman who got him."
Interesting, isn't it?
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
It's a story about two teardrops, floating down a river. One teardrop says to the other, who are you? The teardrop says, "I'm the woman who loved a man and lost him." That teardrop says to the other one, who are you? She replies, "I'm the woman who got him."
My H just told me that he has been deliberately not contacting me and not showing me any emotion because my sister emailed him and asked him not to, saying it was "bad for me" if he did so.
Not that he was trying to resurrect anything, he wasn't.
But this all came up because one of our cats is sick and might be in kidney failure. I emailed to tell him that because I now live alone, that a diagnosis of kidney failure will likely mean I'll have to put her down because I can't administer her fluids by shot every day alone, and I could take her to the vet several times a week for them to do it, but it would be too costly. Anyway I just emailed him to say "keep your fingers crossed it's not that and something more treatable and I'll let you know the results". His response was so matter of fact I couldn't believe it. It said "well the cats are old, this is to be expected, even if I lived there I'd say to put her down. By the way I'll be over to pick up my xbox games later today."
Well I could not stop myself. I was livid. I answered by saying "as usual your response is devoid of compassion for her and me and the possible impact her probable death is going to have on me in this difficult time. You seem to care more about your games than her life. I feel like a stranger would show me more compassion."
So he responds, "look, I'm like this because your sister contacted me and told me to not contact you and to not show emotion because she thought it would be bad for you. Don't accuse me of things I didn't do."
WTF???? I am sure she means well but is this not really overstepping her bounds? I have no clue when she did this. I just asked him; I'm waiting to hear back.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
WTF???? I am sure she means well but is this not really overstepping her bounds? I have no clue when she did this. I just asked him; I'm waiting to hear back.
Antonia, I definitely feel she overstepped her boundaries. But remember you can't change what has happened. STOP reacting and take a breath. Think what you can or cannot do with this information.
(((HUGS)))
Lorie W47 H48 D16 M20 H gone 11/9/10 lives w/OW
When you forgive,you heal. When you let go,you grow. When you cry to God, you surrender. When you love unconditionally, you show others Christ's love.
I don't think I am going to confront her. At least not yet. He said that she contacted him in early December. Thus every emotionaless email or text I've talked about since then has been due to her request of him. He said that she contacted him after he and I had a long phone conversation. She told him not to contact me again and if I contacted him to respond with little to no emotion thinking it was best for me.
The thing is that that long conversation with him generated the discussion about us trying to have a friendship or not, and after I thought about it, I ceased contact with him on the grounds that I thought he was goign to put me in a position where he might drop me as a friend next if his GF got jealous. I made that decision. I told my family that. My sister didn't trust me.
I've been saying for awhile now that my family has been too overprotective and this really takes the cake. I COULD HANDLE HIM ON MY OWN.
She actually made things worse for me. I ceased contact, but in the few instances he and I did have to talk, he was emotionless and cold. He's saying that this is per her request.
I have become more and more infuriated at him and built up a ton of rage over the tone of these emails. Now he's saying it was done because she asked him to do this?
What I did with the info was to tell him this. To tell him that his emails have just infuriated me and made me angry at him for not caring or having any compassion. I mean jeez, I've become so angry about his tone with me that it has affected my ability to think kindly of him at all over the course of the marriage. I went from being accepting a month or so ago back into rage and wanting to write him off forever. This is all due to him following her request???
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Antonia - I'm sure your sister meant well...she was probably worried that by being friendly and showing emotions he is giving you confusing messages and that keeps your hope up....and if she is anything like my family she hates seeing you in pain and probably thinks that you should forget about him and move on...but yeah...she shouldn't have done that.
Also who knows what she said to him and how his MLC mind interpreted it....
M53 H54 D17 M33Y T38Y Bomb OW 09/09 OUT 10/09 BACK 11/09 OUT 01/10 WANTS TO R 04/10 BACK with OW 05/10 Wants to Reconcile 05/11 I said NO
Antonia, I am so very sorry that your cat is ill. However, I do not buy this story from your h. It maybe has a grain of truth in it, but your h [imo] is using it to justify appalling behavior.
They tell themselves stories, and if your sister oversteped the mark and told him how upset you were, well, that fitted in with his world view, and gave him 'permission' to behave as he was doing
These people take no personal responsibility for their horrible actions and blame them on others. Do not let your immature husband drive a wedge between you and your sister. The worst case is that she did overstep the line, out of love and concern for you. Think about what happened. Seems to me you are all too ready to exonerate your husband.
They are emotionless and cold anyway. Their feelings have shut down. They truly do not care about anyone or anything but themselves and their lives. I have seen it time and again on these boards
Yeah I realize that the MLC lens might be distorting things.
This won't drive a wedge between my sister and I. I probably won't even bring it up to her. Likely my mom will contact her and say I know. But that will be the end of it.
What the situation (or at least my mom) did reveal to me is that they are not understanding recovery from something like this. Around T-giving, they saw me being very peaceful and trying to work with acceptance and forgiveness. The main reason I felt I was getting there was that the limited interactions I had with H were not contentious anymore. They were cordial, even joking around at times. Then he started to get comfy and made friendship gestures. I wasn't ok with that, so I backed off. The problem is that they assumed (mom says) that he wouldn't accept that I was backing off. So my sister contacted him to tell him to walk away. Mom said "we just didn't want him to hurt you again." But they can't control him. I can't control him. He can hurt me if I let him. I recognized that, and I cut off the cake-eating. I felt good about that decision and I felt that I had some control over myself in the situation.
This whole experience has been about me trying to learn to stand on my own. I found it empowering that in a week, I saw his friendship gesture, I felt pulled to it, but then in talking to you guys and others, I saw that it wasn't good, and I walked away.
To find out that she didn't have faith in this process and went the extra mile by contactng him shows me that my family is willing to go to a lot of lengths to try to minimize further damage, and that's admirable. But I told my mom, you have to stop doing that. You can't minimize it. And if you minimize it, you strip me of the experience of facing bad stuff and overcoming it. I have to learn to overcome, not be shielded from bad stuff. He shielded me all our marriage to the point that I couldn't function when he left me. When he left, my father said, "don't worry, you don't need him to care for you. We can take care of you."
Where is the "you can take care of yourself" message? Look it's wonderful that I have a supportive family, but they made me into a codependent person, he made me into one, and for 41 years, I've been codependent. Well, codependent no more!! :-)
My family's reaction to me is twofold: protect her from anything else bad if possible, and worry incessantly if she isn't progressing every day and if she has even the most minor "down" day. My therapist describes the way my family treats me as "Antonia on a pedestal." "Revere her accomplishments. Protect her from harm. If she falls, panic. Get her back on that pedestal as fast as possible."
I told mom you guys have got to back off and let me navigate this. I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL. But this is the 10th time at least that I've felt this way about the way they're taking over for him in terms of how they treat me, and it's counterproductive.
As a side note, this morning at the vet's office I had an epiphany, that I was finally "ok with not being in a relationship." That I would "stop worrying about being alone because I was doing great." Isn't that ironic?
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
Oh and yes, thanks for the reality check about the way he might be twisting this. I can see exactly what you're saying. This whole thing won't change my relationship (well, lack of one) with him. It won't change my rel. with my sister, other than that I hope that they allow me the space to be down and just pull myself out unless I ask for help.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
So he responds, "look, I'm like this because your sister contacted me and told me to not contact you and to not show emotion because she thought it would be bad for you. Don't accuse me of things I didn't do."
This sounds pretty typical to me of MLCer. First take no responsibility for your actions and where possible put the responsibility onto somebody else.
So what, if your sister said something. H still typed what he typed.
