melissag XII - must. detach.

[melissag]

I knew when I typed that, that someone was going to jump on that one.

I don't think I agree that nobody can make me feel anything. For example: when my H tells me that, since he bailed on our M and moved out of our house, he is the happiest he has ever been - that makes me feel hurt. I don't see a way around it. I mean, I can tell myself that it has nothing to do with me. Yes. But it still hurts. I can no more control my emotional pain than my physical pain, can I? You would never say, "that hammer that fell on your toe doesn't hurt unless you let it." Umm, no. It hurts. How is H saying that not H making me feel hurt?

I'll bet my mortgage that it's tied to: "X did that, and I'm hurt because he didn't consider my feelings when he did that. I made it worse by not letting him know (in a loving way) that I was hurt, so I'm angrier at myself for not speaking up."

That was it some of the time, but it was also this:

"H did that, and I am hurt because he didn't consider my feelings when he did that. So then I did let him know that I was hurt, but he blamed it on me, which just compounded my hurt."

I am not saying that I always let him know in the appropriate (loving) way that I was hurt. I handled things poorly a LOT. I own that. But how I feel doesn't always end with me. I learned that in this M, my feelings were, more often than not, invalidated.

I can't count the number of times I begged my H to just acknowledge my feelings as valid. But, and he has admitted this (and thinks it's OK), he would play judge and determine whether I was allowed to feel hurt (or angry, or whatever it was). Included in his criteria was what he intended (rather than how it came out or how I viewed whatever it was), whether HE would be offended (and the answer was almost always NO), and whether he believed that I felt that way.

I truly don't want to play the victim role. And I do believe that we have to find happiness ourselves, not wait for someone else to provide it. But I'm not sure I buy it that nobody can make me feel a certain way. I am willing to be convinced, but at the moment I just don't get it.

Betsey, did you get your coffee??