Studies in Feral Cats, part 4

[TSquared2]

Snodderly~Thanks! I have two LBS (left behind siblings...lol) competing for the room...we will see how this all shakes out...no rush. S19 and I became very close once we started backpacking together years ago, had some Mother Nature power bond us (life-threatening stuff does that). He was here tonight just to talk with me...so much he is learning with roommates, the city denizens, etc...I had to keep telling myself to shut-up and just listen (gee, these DB techniques come in handy everywhere). He wanted my old leather jacket and my "thinking" chair, which I got from my dad...oh the analyzing I could do with that... We have a great relationship that can only get better as I get better.

TVS~ Thanks for letting me highjack your thread for a moment...and also your response, I appreciate getting female feedback to help me check reality. I can see why respect is a determinate in attraction. I sometimes wonder if my anger sometimes is just a slipping of respect for W, because I know and have seen she is better than "this" mlc alien...idk.

I do want to thank you for validating me...words like that are so far and few these days, as they are for you. It means so much.

I think your 4 points:

- stop the lying, sneaking around, cheating
- be 100% comitted to ME
- be 100% comitted to our marriage
- recognize and acknowledge how he has hurt me

are also the basis of my "requirements"...I have number 4 pretty much from W, I know how she operates, more would be better, but I know she knows and feels guilty/bad/whatever.

So, I am doing the right things, but getting nowhere fast..just lovely...ok, it is my reality, so just deal with it T...

rH~Your "forthrightness" always makes me smile...an ideal for living...but to answer your questions:
-The fireworks (Though I've been on the shelf over a year)?
Using a completely guy metaphor...sometimes her motor was hard to start, but once it got running, whether mild or wild....omg...holy crap...day-um... Aside from her depressive episodes, I never had a complaint. At all. She is still my "best", and I had an "active young adulthood", and she is my measurement standard, if there is such a thing...

I did lose the "unexpected" man-ness after the first round of A and such in 2009/10...I was so afraid of her leaving, or being unsatisfied, that I can (ugh) say it became sometimes a performance/goal issue to be sure she "O'd" and I did not scare her off if things were not just perfect (and she does have a perfection issue). Of course, now is NOT the time to try that aspect...and just when I got comfortable with it...

So here is the core of this issue for me I think:
This is a fear issue...
I have read that people "re-create" the marital environment they grew up in, I see it in myself with how I would try to control things, and the word "should" was too big a part of my vocabulary, like my dad...

So, W's dad (who s-abused her) had cut-off her Mom from ML, probably he had mlc or something...though he had all his porn mags, and incest "story books", so it wasn't a natural decline of ML interest, but a conscious choice, as he was still into s3x, just not with her Mom (who is the biggest sweetheart in the whole world),some would say this is emotional abuse, and I can see that point of view...and I see that with W and her online/phone/RL interest in s3x, but punishing me by withholding...I can say that, if W wants a sexless M with porn and cybersex and whatever, then that would be a deal breaker.

This is why I try to get other people's thoughts, reality check and to clue me in...I want to understand this. THIS! Whatever it is.

Okay, venting done now T.

Thank you folks, I have no one but you for the most part, as we know we can't let family in too much in case of reconciliation...

[reachingHigher]

Wow, T!

I had one of those nights where I was wide awake for two hours and couldn't sleep. So I read your post. I don't have any sage replies. Just wanted you to know I read it. I'm so glad you can post here and be honest with these difficult heart issues.

My sitch is moving on in an incredibly painful way. Yours is standing still in an incredibly painful way.

I admire the R with you and your S19. That's a real treasure to have. My S19 is doing very well but our home foundation feels so slippery that I just want to hold everything together for them but allow myself the grief in the process. I'm looking for a better year in 2013.

I read your posts to other people too. You always have the solid advice and I love it you revisit the basics so often. I need to be reminded of them again and again.

[WenikiTiki]

Hey T!

This is completely off topic. I brought in the cat food I've been keeping outside for my one stupid cat who lets the dogs scare her. I was tired of hoards of invading pidgeons taking over my carport and crapping all over.

Not to mension the increasing frequency of a pidgeon getting into the house going after the dog food if the cat feeder was empty. Which the hoards of pigeons could do in an hour. When a pidgeon gets into the house it is either killed by the dogs, who make an amazing mess while doing so.

Or the pigeon takes refuge on my bay window behind the kitchen sink, where it makes an incredible mess, breaks and destroys my plants, and the pigeon also craps all over. This has happened so many times that I can reach over the sink and grab the bird and take it outside to set free.

It is 50/50 dead or alive....... in case anyone wondered.

So while I have been fighting the pigeons/dumb cat for the past several months I thought about me, about your situation, a whole bunch of other stuff.

Sometimes feeding the feral cat work. But sometimes it creates bigger problems. It seems to be working for you. Me not so much.

You are doing great! I enjoy reading your posts, They make me think.

Aloha,

Wendy

[reachingHigher]

T, I LOVED your post on the other thread about the living without regrets. You posted similar to me before.

I was JUST yesterday thinking about the society that produces MLC. I also thought how easy we have it, not having to work so hard for our daily bread, as it were. Lots of free time and leisure doesn't necessarily feed the soul.

My H really started mutually embracing more modern media/electronic social networking at the same time as slipping into MLC. Which came first (chicken or egg?). I can't see that more rap, parties, alcohol, etc. could possibly help him.

He does seem in a stage of connection/interest in me and family that seems normal while engaging in it. But then back to his other life.

You gave me good food for thought for today. We have to have our own journey of accepting who we are in our growth alongside accepting who our spouse is and their growth.

Thanks you as always for sharing your insights.

[TSquared2]

Thanks Wendy and rH!

I wonder if my feral cat is in the house now, but still cautiously hiding out under the bed or on a high shelf somewhere, watching, still skitterish...wow, I haven't thought of trying to place the feral cat "stage" in a while. Guess I have been focused on my own crap and ruminations as noted above...

Much of life is watching the MLC grass grow, paint dry, washing machine spin cycle...whatever metaphor pleases you.

New developments are that she wants us to "work together" with dinner and evenings, which she hasn't for a long time. She asked for my help in menu planning, grocery shopping and cooking (which I used to do before all this). She apologized again for being so controlling and keeping the younger ones to herself, that it wasn't fair to them or me. This was nice, to have that validation and to be able to get back to doing that...I really miss it (I used to be a sous chef in one of my past careers and I love cooking and menu planning..I am a "foodie").

She also said she thought my hair looked good on a no shower project day...lol...I asked her if she was just saying that to keep me un-attractive to her or other women...she said no in her "real" or "old" W voice and manner, so...whatever that might mean, if anything.

We will be continuing on in our house "make-over" during the weekends, which I am letting her drive the colors and all, I want her to feel like she created the "new" environment as she wants, have her develop that "ownership" within. It has to be something really important for me to raise objections (like structural, or just a really bad idea in terms of work, cost and/or aesthetics). She is doing really well with it, my only real objection/boundary was painting over the beautiful custom, hand-made woodwork. Otherwise, I want her to feel like it is her creation.

Other than that, just the usual cycle of "depression-withdrawal-clarity-express herself" and then back through. I seem to have figured out those waves, and her peri-men hormonal cycles, so I am getting by okay and adjusting to be there, or back-off, as she cycles...what a dance...wish I could dance this well on the dance floor. Then I could be so much more suave...

Also, my weekly sound gig has expanded to doing the sound for the home games as well, and I am getting A LOT of positive feedback/compliments on my skill (yea me!). The show gets higher ratings than even the news broadcast the nights it airs, so that is coming together nicely.


T^2

[job]

T,
You are doing great! Your wife is coming back around and she's starting to feel safe w/you and her surroundings. Continue to drop the crumbs of validation and affirmation. She needs to be recognized for what she's doing.

I'm very happy to read that she is advising you that she wants the both of you to work together. This is a huge step in the right direction.

Keep up the good work.

[TSquared2]

Thank you Snodderly, it doesn't seem like it at times...lol. Just as W says she wants to work together, the next day she is back withdrawn again...oh well...2 steps forward, one step back. I am not really surprised, sems to be a pattern as she works through her stuff.

I will keep plugging away through her moods, "testing", and whatnot.

Alb's update today was enlightening for me from the "feet on the ground" perspective as they are further along the process. A big reminder to keep expectations at or near zero and that this is a LONG process.

[reachingHigher]

T, you are so kind and tender to W. Letting her create the aura with design and color in the house.

Glad to hear about success with the sound gig. My older son absolutely loves sound technology. When he was 13 or so he wired speakers in the ceiling of our kitchen, which was nice. We've got speakers/computers everywhere seems like, including our large work shed. A great joy for him is going to consignment shops & finding great Sony speakers for $5 and other exciting components!

Re: your W's compliment on your hair. I always liked the unshaven rough looking side of a man at times too. Maybe she was thinking about getting her motor started running soon. We can hope, can't we?

[TSquared2]

Thanks rH!

Keep encouraging your S to always keep the music and sound as part of his life...even us old farts can still do it...

So, after a weekend of busy-busy for me with sound gig for the game and coaches show, I pretty much let W be, supportive, but not answering emails right away and all, working on my own "stuff" (good things and also my issues). She has strep, so has been even less pleasant and more withdrawn, but whatever...supportive but not enmeshed was me pretty much.

So later last night I get a message on my phone from W (I was right down stairs in the house doing my own stuff). Text was "last one" and it also had a "naughty" pic attached...so, old T^2 would have texted back to this enigmatic phrase questions like, "What does this mean? Last one to me? or to OM(s)" or something very flattering/complimentary and so forth. OR, my old sarcastic side would have sniped back "uh, i think you sent this to the wrong person" or something like that. And I thought about doing either/both of those, but instead I did something unlike me, I just replied back with my own "naughty" pic, no questions or words. Not like old T^2 for sure!

She seemed pretty normal when she went to bed and this morning, I made sure to keep the hoping puppy dog look out of my demeanor (my, that is sooo much easier these days, barely have to remember to do it).

Further investigation shows that it came from her email address (my phone isn't very smart), not her phone, so whether I was the only recipient, or carbon copied or whatever, who knows. What it means? Who knows until she tells or shows me...

This was something different...



T^2

[TSquared2]

W has been very chatty via email today, lots of decorating ideas and questions and daily life updates...no venting...she also called and her voice and delivery was very much like old W...hmmm...just rolling with it, no expectations.

One thing occurred to me with W being ill is how I have changed in my reaction to it...before I would be put out because of the decline in attention to me (especially after round 1 of OM, I hadn't yet recovered from it), and I would get in a bad mood and such. Not now...now I reverse it and ask "How are you, T^2, when sick? How "there" for others are you?" . So the empathy and understanding kicks in and I just check on her needs and then go do my own thing. This takes un-needed pressure off a sick person and actually benefits me because I am taking care of my own needs, and thus no bad mood, which is always a bonus.

Ah, personal growth, who'd a'thunk?



T^2