Hey guys, it's okay on the insurance thing! But I appreciate all your help. Things are fine. I'm a great advocate for D6, though I turned over the insurance fights to Mr. W.--who is just as effective (if not moreso) than I am in dealing with sharks! We're really good...
The secret is persistence. They expect to have insureds back off in fear. They don't get that from us, and we've been able to get them to pay for pretty much everything they're contracted to pay for. Whew.
I am a candidate to testify in Congress with our state director sometime later this year, so that will be the right place to address the world on the problems with state entitlement programs. Until then, I've got to resolve conflict with my partner in crime.
Linda, I think it's important for me to point out that Mr. Wonderful is not a full blown P/A guy. As was pointed out by Laurie (DB coach) and MC (you know him), a true P/A is P/A with just about everyone--at work, play and in Rs with friends. I will tell you that my H will give the shirt off his back to fulfill commitments he makes to others.
And he hasn't always been as P/A with me (though there were definitely some signs of this before we got M). When my crazymaking peaked, his P/A peaked as well. I believe that they were both coping and defense mechanisms--ones that had long outgrown their usefulness because they were making the problems worse.
However, maybe he DOES think that my emotions are blackmail. I'll have to consider this one. But something doesn't quite sit right with that one.... let me think about this some more.
One of my colleagues had a C session last night that went very well (and he is my age--the Will in our Will and Grace sitcom here). Well, he's just ended a R and the C had some interesting things to say... because his ex-SO appears to be having MLC on top of some other legal problems that are turning his life inside out.
The C said that often MLCers are dealing with conflict that their fathers presented during the years when the MLCer was 13-19 years old. I felt a complete whack by this one.
Mr. W. has admitted to me that his world was very turbulent then. His mother was diagnosed with emphysema (and refused to take doctor's advice and continued smoking). His paternal grandfather had come to live with them, and his mother was very angry... Angry about her Dx, angry that she had to take care of her FIL, angry about being poor. Angry that she had married at the age of 16...
Looking back in the crystal ball, I imagine his father felt grossly inadequate, a financial failure and a disappointment to his W (not to mention a little unloved). Neither of them had ever communicated effectively--they employed the silent treatment when they couldn't work through conflict.
Mr. W. and his older brother were caught in the middle. Well, BIL was on football team in high school, giving him an out at family time (and how his mother was able to secure permission from his dad was a pretty sad story--manipulative and mean).
Mr. W. did not have the athletic prowess and was stuck at home doing chores and helping take care of his beloved GF.
He told me that he felt very much alone the day that Gramps died (he was 16). Gramps often spoke up for him and made sure that his folks realized that he was a person. Once the medium was gone, he put the wheels in motion to get the hell out of MT. He got a scholarship to college in AZ and never returned. Never wanted to either.
What I'm really thinking is that his parents taught him his coping mechanism. They ran away from their problems by ignoring them, stopping the conflict by not speaking or pretending that there wasn't a problem when the frigging elephant was occupying their living room!
MC was just getting into this when Mr. W. stopped going.
So I'm taking this a step further and postulating that because I'm different, he thinks this is bad. In fact, I'm going to put money on this one.
Think about it:
If conflict and conflicting emotions are things to avoid, this makes them bad and hurtful. And what do we feel when we avoid? Fear. Fear that hurting will make things worse.
Well, I know that can be true initially. But why do physicians often have to rebreak bones to get them to heal properly? This can't feel good at the time, but in the end, it forces proper healing.
OK, so now I have to break Mr. Wonderful's leg....
Bets
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
