When it's a one-way street...part 3

[Accuray]

Why do I always sense when I've been mentioned? It's like my spider sense tingles. It's weird:

I'm really getting some insight into Accuray's W's situation.

This feels completely hopeless to me right now. Not my M, but my efforts to improve myself. I really just want to throw in the towel and say, "Forget it. This is what you get, H, take it or leave it. I don't have the energy or insight or ability to do whatever needs to be done, because I just don't GET IT and it's driving me crazy. At least with my normal dysfunction, I can at least still function. This makes me want to crawl into a hole and die, so I'll take my normal dysfunction over this any day."

I never treated my W the way your H treats you. My W's issues precede me and don't have that much to do with me other than that I can exacerbate them and they bother me.

Also, my W knows EXACTLY what to do to promote my happiness -- she does get it. She just feels that acting that way is not who she is, she's accepted who she is, and therefore she's not going to do it.

MC says that acceptance, not happiness, is the goal line, and my W has achieved acceptance of herself in her unhappy state. He feels that's more important than achieving happiness but not accepting who you are.

My W has "given up" on her own happiness and self-improvement. You are talking about giving up on your marriage. Those are two very different outcomes.

Reading over this CV, the posters are saying "CV, you're angry. You're not feeling good about yourself. H has become the lightening rod for your discontent. He may be responsible for a lot of discontent, but with your current mental state, he's not going to win. Nothing he does will work. There will always be more he hasn't done, or something wrong with the way he's done it, and that's a reflection on you, not on him."

I also see the posters saying "You think you'll be happy with H gone, but you won't. Something or someone else will take H's place of being the rock in your shoe."

CV, I don't know if I agree with that assessment or not. Honestly, you are difficult for me to understand. You're obviously very very smart and in many ways very motivated and self-aware, but you also seem to have some blind spots.

Those blind spots could just be my misunderstanding because of the difficulty of this medium, or they could be real. I don't know.

There is definitely so much frustration and ire directed at H, but the examples you give of why he deserves that don't seem that bad. Maybe that's why there's the disconnect. We can't see the non-verbal communication or hear the tone of voice. You may also be expecting him to mind-read and can't believe that he does such a bad job of it. I don't know.

You've had a hard day here. How about talking about what makes you happy? Can you answer these questions?

1) What are you doing when you are your happiest?

2) When you're doing that, what are you thinking about? Where does your mind go?

3) What are you most proud of in terms of who you are?

4) When you think about an ideal marriage for you, what does it look like? What level of intimacy do you have? Is your H doting, or independent?

5) If you could take 4 weeks off from work with no responsibilities and a reasonable amount of money, what would you do?

Maybe we can try focusing on what makes you feel good about you, and forget the problems and issues for now. I think your posters are getting you rolled up in a carpet today, and maybe that's not productive.

Accuray