Yup, sometimes obsessed, admittedly. It was good to get away, but now I'm thinking I wish I would have brought a different book, something just for fun.
You're right on the plate thing. It has become symbolic in my posts, not that it happens constantly or that when he does, it somehow devastates me. And sorry if I was jumping on you in some way. H has a tendency to do that and I've developed a sensitivity to it. If H ate off my plate and I calmly asked him not to do that with even the slightest tone, he would tell you I went ballistic. Just trying to figure out if it's something I'm putting out there.
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Lose the offendedness. It's a feeling based on the thoughts you have about his action, and you can change your thoughts. Take action to protect your boundary (move your plate away, etc) and hopefully begin to erase the bad feelings that make it so difficult for you to even be sure you want to be in the relationship.
This is interesting. I read your suggestions about the plate thing. I've been offered them before too. I think they're good suggestions and should work. So this past weekend, we went out to breakfast with H's parents. There were 5 of us, and I sat at the farthest position possible. Seating worked out well, didn't embarrass anyone or make anyone feel awkward, just sort of slipped it in that way. H can't even reach my plate. We get finished eating, S has some leftover fries and offers them to H, so H looks across the table and says to me in a volume that everyone can hear, "I'm not taking them off his plate, S said I could have them." That was rather awkward for me. Am I wrong?
The thing I find most interesting about your post is that I feel I'm reacting the way I am because I'm trying to protect my boundaries. With H, in order to enforce one, it seems I have to choose to breach another. One of my boundaries is not acting in a way that ruins dinner for everyone else because H and I have a dysfunctional R. To get up and leave the dinner table in the middle of dinner as was suggested at another time would protect my "respect MY food ownership" boundary but breach my "don't ruin it for everyone else" boundary. By not going to dinner with him at all, I can protect both.
The problem is that there doesn't seem to be anything left that we can do together.
