Life, One Day at a Time (22 months)

[cat04]

I was thinking about Rock today.

I too have been thinking about Rock.

The pity vs empathy thing.

Personally, I believe pity is a negative emotion. I don't necessarily equate it with feeling sorry FOR them. An example, I pity a woman I know who lived a very abusive childhood. The results of that are her living an adult life filled with running behaviors, extreme alcoholism, and some paranoid thought. She chooses to stay in this life style and it has ruined her relationships with her children, grandchildren, and others. I pity her because she makes the choice to stay where she is instead of doing something about it.

Empathy allows me to have compassion for her situation. For the things that happened that caused her to come to where she is now. No one should have to go through the things that she did. It allows me to forgive the things that she has done that have caused hurt to myself and others. It allows me to see her as human and separate from her actions.

I've been here for a pretty long time and I think sometimes we're just not quite ready to see something a certain way yet. When I first arrived someone who sympathized with or even humanized what my H was doing would have gotten my outrage. I know there are a bunch of times I've gotten really mad at Cat or Crazyville or someone else coming at me with a perspective I was not ready to hear yet.

Yes you have gotten angry. We all have. It's ok.

I also couldn't stick around the MLC forum, for all the good I can clearly see it does people, for me the idea that there was an alien inhabiting my H, or that he acted like all WAS, and was to be pitied and barely tolerated until and unless he snapped out of it, that did me no good either.

I think you misunderstood the MLC forum.

The alien reference is simply a way to explain the behavior that is so opposite from what the person you knew was.

It allows people the ability to find empathy because it allows us to separate the behavior from the person.

The MLCer isn't to be pitied or barely tolerated. I am sorry that you got that feeling.

Their behavior and lack of coping tools and their inability to look for the tools that could help them, is what is to be pitied. The horrible journey they are taking is what is to be pitied.

However, seeing them as human, seeing them as people who are going through something that is difficult to imagine without living it, creates room for empathy to occur. It creates a situation where they can be forgiven, whether or not they come out of the tunnel. It creates a situation where reconciliation CAN possibly happen successfully because they will not be judged for what happened.

I feel like I have no control over much, and I just kind of have to keep living right through what happens, because feeling like I could have controlled it was an illusion anyway. I know for sure I have the power to make things worse, but I definitely don't have the power to make things better in my R.

This is incorrect thinking.

You don't have the power to force reconciliation.

You DO have the power to make things better in your R with your H. Whether that R looks like a M, a good coparenting partnership, a friendship, or simply casual acquaintences that don't want to rip each others heads off, you DO have the power to affect that.

A man I know, had a D that was not amicable. For a few years, all exchanges regarding kids and other stuff was via email and they weren't pretty.

Slowly, that started to change. Not because he changed, but because he kept showing his X the person he is. Exchanges became a little friendlier. Changed from email to text to eventual speaking.

Change does happen. It doesn't always look like what we wanted. Sometimes though it turns out to be the best thing for us.

God has a plan for each of us. We don't know what that plan is and sometimes we just have to have faith. The light at the end of the tunnel, is there. It may be different than what we expected, but it is there.

To me, my H is doing a 100% wrong, wasteful, harmful and needless thing. But to him that is just as convinceably not true. And no matter whether all the world said I was right I'd just be right, and in good company, and divorced. And the fact of the matter is, while his faults are more visible and easier to judge, mine were there too. I like to thing that they're absolved because I've worked on them, but sometimes it's too late even if you worked on them.

One more thing AD, it's never too late. If working on your faults makes you a better person, better able to communicate, better able to envision your own happiness, then it wasn't too late.

An exercise for you...

Sit back. See who YOU were pre bomb. How you handled things. What you imagined your future to look like. Did you have dreams or were you going through the motions?

And then look at who you are NOW. How you handle things. What you imagine is possible for your future. What your dreams are now.

Then tell me it was too late.