Wife in MLC and ready to leave #4

[25yearsmlc]

Matt,

You really don't "hear" me & I have never had someone get this angry at a person not in their lives, as you seem to be, at me. It's not helping you, is it? You seem to be in some sort of competition that you must be declared the winner of. I'm not sure if it's between you and your wife, and her family, or you and me, or you and the world, but I hope you'll restructure the approach. One can only manage so much. If you feel you are in a contest, remove yourself from it and make your life about you and your d's (and maybe anyone else in your family who is supportive to you).

I tell EVERYONE here, not to have a score card or list of grievances in their marriages. I had one in mine, and it was long. On MY scorecard, I was winning and my h was losing. He'd wronged me and the kids many times, on MY scorecard... Turns out, my h had his own scorecard! And on HIS list, I was not "winning". Not all of his grievances were BS either. I could defend myself til I was blue in the face, but what I had to do was 2 fold: I had to empathize with HIS perception, without denying it or arguing with it, and I had to do some internal work, which meant I HAD TO CHANGE ME...

Not b/c I was "wrong", but b/c what I was doing, was NOT working.

The "undiagnosed condition" of a daughter was NOT your d, it was someone else's. That's the only fact I confused. I already apologized for that mistake, horrendous as you seem to think it was.

Anyhow, here is what I actually wrote to you.


Then do it. Detach for real. Turn it over to God and keep going. She knows how to reach you if she wakes up or gets better.

From your description, your w has had psychological scars for awhile now, and she struggled mightily with depression for a long time.
I think these are the acts of a desperate, long suffering woman. IF you cannot feel compassion for her, step out of the way and feel some for your d's.


(I did NOT say you had no compassion.) Your words here:


The only thing keeping me from wanting her to go is the fact that I needed her income to help live until I made more money and I realized this is the biggest reason I didn't want her to go. That's not good.

To which I replied:


If your wife had said this^^, you would say she is a selfish user. At least now you are being honest. I'm a bit surprised at how she's been able to keep down a good paying job while feeling so depressed at home. Do you now think you might have enabled a lot of this by ignoring her depression, because after all, she was earning a good income? Any reflections on that?

Anyhow, back to YOU and your d's...

.....

Do you see why I believed she had been depressed WHILE holding the job down, based on your wording^^^ above? Can you recognize that your wording was not clear to me? To me, it seemed that you were admitting you only wanted her around b/c of the money b/c she was hard to be around, due to depression or other behaviors.

This is not about being "right"; it's about doing what helps the situation and getting to be happy. You spent a lot of time arguing with me, and that made no sense to me. Then you went on about it, again..

I challenged you, I did not attack you. But that's how you reacted, (and more than once.) What a waste of energy.

Anyone who wants to make this a contest about who was/is "right" and "wrong", will spin their wheels forever.

So now, along with Mach's suggestions and others, I suggest you focus only on your daughters and yourself,

and NOT on your wife, or the past, or predicting calamity in the future.

I know you think it's unfair. It probably is. (So is your wife's past, so is Africa...)

Deal the cards you're dealt and play them as well as you can. And choose your battles wisely. This won't be solved anytime soon, so you need to pace yourself.