No coffee yet because I had to leave early to pick D16 up yesterday and now she's home sick. Tomorrow?
Sigh. I hope Bug or 25 come over here to help me get you to put down your glasses and go blindly for a few minutes.
I didn't say "you shouldn't feel" hurt/angry. You've just got the semantics down wrong.
He can't make you feel that way. Own it! It doesn't mean that he's not a jerk. It doesn't mean that he doesn't intend to hurt you. It may be his goal.
So you say instead, "I'm hurt (or whatever emotion) because H said X."
You didn't say, "That hammer made me hurt." You'd say, "A hammer felt on my foot and I was hurt."
Your H does things that hurt you. Check. But he doesn't make you feel anything.
Quote:
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).
Okay, the real question I want to ask you is why you continued to play this game with him, when you knew how it would turn out? The 2nd question I want to ask you is why you gave him the power to decide whether or not you're entitled to your feelings?
Now, I'll tell you that I had to learn this the hard way. And I didn't get it until I got it. Since you seem to learn from real life situations, I'll share this with you. Because it took me time in therapy to "get this".
My mom, whom I love, has issues of her own and is really good at deflecting shame outward. (Though she is not narcissistic, this is the cornerstone of classic narcissistic behavior.) She also blames others for making her feel angry. She's better now that we're grown, but she's never been one to go into C to figure her stuff out. I seemed to be the person who got the deflection the most: I'm the oldest and I am outspoken and I would fight with her. My sister is 2 years younger, and although she wanted to be the fighter, she saw how miserable things were so she just watched. And my mom has a very codependent R with my heroin addicted younger brother.
You know me as the person who yells out the emperor is naked. I've always been that way. It's how I stay real with myself. My mom isn't like that, and when I called her out on stuff that was not cool and often not even in line with her Christian beliefs, I received it back in spades. She'd yell stuff at me that deflected her shame and it always came back to me. Then I would say, "she makes me feel awful." And I'd lament how I couldn't have an honest conversation with her without it coming back to me somehow.
I'll jump to the end of the story. While I don't yell out the emperor is naked much with her anymore, I just leave her be. I choose not to put myself in situations where I know how it will go. It's like expecting a cat to bark.
In the middle was a lot of therapy. It's NOT MY FAULT that I can't have the type of conversation with my mom that would allow her to be vulnerable and get closer to me. IT'S NOT MY FAULT that she thinks I'm unreasonable for wanting that. It sure as heck DOES hurt that she does this. But I realize now that it's not her fault I feel the way I do. It's mine. Therefore, I had to choose coping strategies that put me in the position of not having to go there. Does it make me angry that she does it? YES! But does she make me feel angry? NO! The solution lies in what I do to deal with someone who doesn't want us to move closer together.
I say this with the caveat that I love my mom and she's there for me. She's a good mom. But she lacks the ability to do this work or she just isn't willing to figure out why she does this. Maybe she doesn't see this as a problem. The truth is, it's a problem to me alone, and therefore, it's my responsibility to manage how I feel.
There are people out there who have no empathy, Melissa. They don't choose to grow. They don't want to see their own flaws, let alone fix them. They don't want to learn how to be fully themselves with others. Nobody can make them do what they don't want to do. And while it's not exactly fair that they blame others, they can't make you accept it unless you're willing to do it.
Make sense?
"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."
