Living, Getting the Paperwork Started (20 months)

[adinva]

Thanks! I think the big picture that I'm frustrated about is that I know about this seesaw and I can't figure out how to get off of it.

In many issues over many years, the more I became X the more H became Y. I read about it in Dance of Anger and I learned it was possible to step out of the circle. And here is another one, where the more I want to talk and understand, the more H wants to crack down and punish.

I feel like I need to be even more communicative and understanding to compensate for H, and he gets more and more critical and angry to compensate for me. Two months living apart have done absolutely nothing to help us start fresh and put down our guns. Almost two years of reading and practicing haven't given me the tools.

I think it may take doing something more radical, like just completely agreeing with H and letting him take the lead. I did this once before, at the very beginning, when S did something bad and H was talking loudly and sarcastically to a table of 20 family members in a restaurant about how "SHE" won't let me do anything about it. And I calmly said, you do what you feel is right. He offered S to choose between a beating and a buzz cut, and after much consideration S chose a buzz cut. I stayed completely out of it. This was trying to practice stepping out of the cycle that caused us each to keep upping the ante. I don't even know if it made a difference.

In hindsight it seems like more of the same. It's still either all his way or all my way. If I step out of the circle we're still not communicating.

I feel like the stakes are too high to give in to H when I think he's being too extreme, but there doesn't seem to be a choice other than capitulate or resist, when it comes to H and me.