In house separation?

[mdu]

Journaling..

Last night H and I txtd a bit about him speaking to S about getting in trouble in school/lying. Also, H wanted to take S next Sat night (it's my night) for a cub scout event I was not aware of. I was rather annoyed, 1). because as I posted previously hearing about S's lying seems to be a trigger for me and 2). not happy that H had planned something with S on my weekend and I was not aware.

I am pretty proud of how I handled my frustration. I wanted to call and be snotty, I wanted to send an obnoxious txt/reply. I wanted to use it as an excuse to go off on H about how much this whole situation sux and is all HIS fault. I did NOT do any of this! I did send a txt to H asking if the event with S was something I had agreed to previously and just did not remember and he said it was something he had signed them up for pre all of this. He said he was sorry he had not mentioned something sooner and I could tell him no if I do not want him to take S on my weekend. Even with these reasonable answers I still felt annoyed and realized that I better not speak to H right then so I txtd back and said 'ok, can I let you know tomorrow?' and he said 'yes'.

I'm so glad I gave it the night to sleep on because now (tomorrow), I am much calmer and can see that H is really being perfectly nice/reasonable about his request and it's something nice for he/Son to do together so why on earth would I say 'no'? And why on earth would I use it as an excuse to go off on H...doing all sorts of additional damage to an already precarious situation?? So stupid!

I also realize how counterproductive it is to point the finger at H and blaming him for our current situation. Yes, he had the A and yes, that is what ultimately pushed us off the cliff but really, we BOTH have f-ed up in this M. Arguably he has MORE accountability bc an A is so huge and destructive but it's definitely not ALL him and trying to score keep is just going to make things worse. We are where we are, it's best to just accept that.

One thing I have clearly observed (in this sitch and a few others that are similar) is that a KEY aspect of anger management for me (maybe the MOST important thing) is to step away from the sitch and just take time to COOL off. It could be just 30 minutes or it could be hours or all night. But I really, really need to step away any time I feel that anger rising and get myself under control. It's SO critical! Another critical piece is to NOT speak to H if I am feeling at all irritated and have had alcohol. Last night I had gone to dinner with a friend and had two drinks. Fortunately I was aware enough to know that was another RED LIGHT signaling that I better not speak to H, even though I had the drinks hours before at that point. Even just 1 drink seems to bring my control down just enough to put me at higher risk for going off inappropriately.

So I'm very pleased with my observations and how I handled this sitch. I'm looking forward to calling H this am and shocking him with a 180 by happily and pleasantly letting him know that he and S can go to the event next weekend. I'm sure even via txt he was guessing that I was annoyed (he knows me well enough to know that his request would likely piss me off given our current sitch). I'm proud of myself for putting my anger in check, not going off on H and ultimately doing right by the kids (which I actually probably would have done anyway but previously would have made H 'pay' with my anger first).