Feeling alone and frustrated with a 180.

[Psych77]

Hi, Chaos - back from a couple of heavy days at work, no time to type.

Well, my focus on what "should" be was poorly worded. What I meant to say was that during the good times I seldom am aware of, concretely, what it is that is happening that is so good. So later, during bad times, I often am at a loss as to what, concretely, I should be seeking out to make a change for the better.

As for the changes I am making...well, I am realizing that I am sometimes making them for myself, but other times making them to revive the M. What I mean is that when things are tense between me and W, I make changes in myself, not hoping to bring W around, but rather to focus on making myself happy and being a better, more complete person. Problem comes when W does come around - it feels so good to be near her that I sort of automatically snap back into my mode of intensely focusing on her, hoping to see that better relationship every time I see her. And then, of course, everything falls apart, because I am focusing disproportionately on her.

The same thing happened a couple of times this week, since I last wrote. The most recent was Tue. I came home late, having picked up S from his part time job on the way home, so I didn't get in until 9p. She actually came home later, having been shopping, and was a little irritable. Well, we got on each other's nerves, and instead of just walking away and leaving her to cool off, I got upset about it. First mistake. Then I asked her why she was so angry, and she said it was because S and I didn't clean up our mess in the kitchen after eating dinner. So, I got childish and said that most of those things were what S had left on the counter, but backpaddled and said that, nonetheless, I should have followed after him and reminded him that he had a mess to clean up. Then I started to tell her that I had not gotten home until 9p, and was really tired. That was when she cut me off, and said I was making excuses and she didn't want to hear it. Which I was, she was right. But in the moment I felt humiliated, shut down, shut out, rejected...I don't even know how to classify all that I felt. In short, I was angry, and felt like it was urgent for her to know my side of the story (that, my friends, is an Asperger thing...we frequently get an idea stuck in our heads, and it starts to feel like a need more than a want). I will say I did one thing right. I didn't pursue the matter any further. Once she told me I was making excuses (by the way, in the moment I was absolutely sure I wasn't making excuses, and didn't realize that I actually had been until the next morning), I said "Okay," and dropped it. And so did she. Which was good, because in the past this would have been one of those things I would have held onto and made it into a knock-down drag-out. I was furious, and as we went to bed, I pulled away from her - I was so angry I couldn't stand to be touched. I didn't relax and soften up for about 20 minutes, when I wrapped my arm around hers. I was going to apologize the next night (I am up and out of the house long before W wakes up) and own up to making excuses, but I was unsure whether it would make sense to bring it back up. I also was not sure whether I was making it, in my mind, to be a much bigger issue than it was, and if it might be better dropped. I didn't bring it back up, but I don't know if I was avoiding something we needed to talk about, or exercising appropriate discretion. I still don't know.

So, there, because things had been a little bit better, I let my guard down, just started enjoying the more relaxed air between us, and my attention went off the 180s I was doing. My behavior became less deliberate, more automatic, and I fell back into the same pattern. And my urgent need for her to hear me - well, part of it comes from Asperger's, but some of it comes from the fact that I allowed myself to become, again, dependent on her appraisal of me, instead of having enough of a sense of myself to accept that I had done something inconsiderate, it was my own fault, I could change it, and that was that.

I feel so childish looking at how I acted as I type this up!

Sometimes I think that DBing is teaching me not so much how to succeed in a relationship as how to live. You know, how to have balance, to love without making a person the center of my life, to exercise an appropriate amount of focus on myself, etc.

So, back to the drawing board - look at my part of the "script" of our conflicts, and rewrite my "lines" to be different from what I have done in the past.

I guess I should just take this as a learning experience. After all, it is not reasonable that I should expect to decide to make a change and have it consistently changed ever after. I have to expect some falling back into old habit. Just try again.