Walking the path to my own happiness

[mamabird]

You are smart Vero! I like what you have to say.

During this part of my journey I stopped questioning him about R. I stopped trying to change him. I turned the focus on myself. I made goals for myself that helped me be a better mother, friend and in turn a better partner!

That's certainly what I'm after. I'm not interested in changing him at all and really trying to focus on me. Me, me, me... it seems so selfish but the way I see it, I was withering before because I hadn't focused on fixing me.

I don't know the details of the first disrespectful comment he made, in response to your cheese and meat comment. However think about what is it about his comment or reaction that made you take it personal? How did you contribute to it? What can you do to change it?

This is what happened. H makes some sort of meaty cheesy sandwich for lunch, after an eggy cheesy sandwich for breakfast. I said to him "You know, I'm a little concerned about your eating habits... that's not good for you." He looked at me and said in a nasty tone, "Good." So childish. I just mentioned that his father has very significant heart disease and left it at that.

Also, consider what about you hurt the previous 5yr relationship? What are your shortcomings/faults that you contributed to the demise of that R? Sometimes they are carried over to the next R. Especially if you haven't worked on them and you weren't aware of them before.

Few things about this R that were problematic:

1) He was my first real "boyfriend" - and I was so happy to just have something working that the rest of it didn't matter to much at the time (like the fact he didn't graduate from college and I had just finished at one of the top schools in the country, for starters).

2) We started dating about 6 months before I had planned to move across the country. I figured it would end and that would be that, but he showed up on my doorstep one day and said he had moved to be with me. I had a very low paying job at the time and his job provided us with free housing so then we became financially entangled. Then we started a business together which made that even worse.

3) I am a ball buster. I admit it, I am. Most of this is my problem, but I would really like to be with a guy who could stand up to it a little better. In the case of the first guy, we just weren't really a good match ever. He drove me crazy, and we just stayed together out of convenience.

4) Like so many of us LBWs here, I'm controlling and somewhat of a bulldog. I was going to say I didn't accommodate BF as much as I should have, but looking back, that's not true. We lived where he wanted to live, we drove the cars he wanted to drive, he made the decisions in the business. But I'm not easy to get along with, I can be very demanding, and that's what I have to work on.

I remember a time just before we broke up - we went out for Valentine's Day and it sucked. He was just not into it. Oddly enough, days before my bomb with H we went out to dinner and he acted exactly the same way. I don't put a lot of stock into that R and I honestly don't remember that much from that time.

Tonight H made dinner for us and then at 9:00 I asked him if he wanted to watch Downton Abbey. Watching TV together is one of the only things (over the past year or 2) that we really enjoyed doing, but of course, the show would have to be approved by him (nothing gross like True Blood or Walking Dead for him). Anyway, surprisingly enough, he said yes, but we watched it in the den vs. on the bed as we used to do. I had the couch and he laid on the floor for 2 hours, but it was pretty fun - he always has some great one-liners in store. I call this a win.