So true Mach, so true! As for 180's and what I did in our R to help get things where they are....I allowed myself to become passive. After so many years of my W not being able to be a W or mother because she was so "sick" (depression), having her say that she doesn't even want to live and not being sure if it was true or she was just having a bad day, her always (and yes, I mean always) being on the computer if she wasn't just sleeping, playing games, chating with people who she only knew through some weird video game, (one time we had made plans to have a special night with the kids. We had planned it out, made sure both the girls were going to be there and on board, we were going to cook dinner together and play games, my W said she couldn't do that now as some person on one of her games was having a 'party" and some guy in Thailand had asked her to go. I remember the look on my D's face when she heard her mom say this. All it was was a bunch of aviators "chatting" on the web!) I became so scared that she was either going to just do something awful to herself or become even worse, I became someone I wasn't. I took over doing everything, cleaning, cooking, making sure the kids homework was done, you name it. It left her with nothing to do but lay around and stay in her own head.
Once she was able to go back to work, I kept doing these things. I should have just let her be the W and mother she was able to now. Instead, I became overly attentive. I watched her every mood, I jumped at every chance to do something FOR her she was capable of doing herself. I deferred to her on every decision, even ones I disagreed with (like the overly expensive car), just to keep her "happy". I stopped doing things I wanted to do and let her dictate what we all did or didn't do. When she was tired I was there to give her a back rub or get her some food, whatever. I was more like a parent than a husband. Of course, at the same time, I wasn't able to keep up with all that needed to be done. I let things go that I shouldn't have. When she refused to go on vacation with us, I just didn't do anything instead of doing it with the kids and giving her the choice of going or not. I became tentative, unsure which way was the right way to go. When she needed something, I dropped whatever I was doing to be there. I stopped having friends outside of her and didn't do much but be a H and father. I let her get between me and my oldest D, even when I knew what was needing to be done, I let my W decide on the right way to parent.
In short I allowed her to control me and my actions. I lost me and became someone else. No matter what she did or didn't do, I just let it go. I should have let her be a parent but not sway me when I knew what she was wanting to do was wrong. I should have let off and only did my share, not try and always be there, taking over and doing what needed to be done. I became so very "nice", never disagreeing or if I did, allowing my W to decide the course we took no matter how wrong I thought it may be.
I should have stood up for me and what I thought was the right thing to do. I should have been the man I had been before she got "sick", not this person who I became. Of course at the same time my W didn't help. She felt isolated when she was depressed and when she went back to work, she threw herself into work and her new friends. Friends who didn't treat her like she may go back and become depressed again if anything went wrong or wasn't the way she wanted. This is a very hard thing to deal with I'm sure. Just as I was running around, trying to do everything and resenting it, she hated that she could do anything she felt like and I would just let it go.
Both of us got stuck in our roles. As I tried to back off, she would get angry as she was used to me doing the things I was. As much as she wanted to be in control, she also wanted someone else to be in control. She resented me for doing this but at the same time wanted to be able to do what she wanted so it was impossible to get out of this dance. We really needed MC badly but she doesn't believe in it.
I must not allow myself to get caught up in what if's. What if I do this and she gets depressed again. What if she doesn't like what I did and gets angry. What if I stop doing that and instead of doing it, my W gets angry and resentful because I didn't. Forget that! I need to be me. I need to understand we all need to have our own responsibilities and that it's wrong to take that away from someone, even if I was doing so to "help" them. By allowing her to decide which way to go or what we did, it was a form of control on my part. I see that now. I started to see it before B-day but didn't quite know how to stop.
So, that was the biggest, badest part I played in our R getting worse. I was wrong. It would never happen that way again but it seems too late to do anything about it now. Have to go!
