The Goddess of the Goats Sees Into The Future

[jim0987]

First off your list of 100 was really good and really positive. Your H is clearly a fool.

I've tried to give this some thought about how i might of reacted or felt given in the circumstances but the massive caveat is that there is a LOT of mind reading and i'm not 100% on my stuff let alone someone else. I hope it helps in some way and i've gone for a strange second person narrative so sorry if some of it seems pointed.

I'm going to start with the cushion and for all of this i'm going to assume the postive that he threw the cushion away without thinking (rather than a deliberate act to annoy you).

So tonight we're down there and he picks up the the note I'd left for him after I saw he'd tossed some of MY things.
A nice note, "Please remember not to throw anything out without checking. Thanks! :)"

He says to me, holding up the note:
"Just so you KNOW, the only thing I REALLY threw away was that old cushion."

If he saw the note before he through the cushion then he is going to be racked with guilt that he did something stupid when he should have known better. he's angry at himself and feeling low self worth that he's let you down. he's kicking himself so he is under attack (even though its him doing the attacking) so his defences are at max. he is trying to minimise the damage by saying its not too bad its only the one thing

TRANSLATION 'please tell me its ok and it doesnt matter so i dont have to feel guilty'

If he didn’t see the note then all of ths ^^^ is probably still going on but now he has 'proof' that you are passively aggressively attacking him because you saw he had thrown the cushion away but rather than speak to him you've left a note. and its all friendly because you are deliberately trying to make him feel bad by showing how superior you are

TRANSLATION 'I've made a mistake we both know that and i feel really guilty but I can offset some of that guilt because you’re just trying to make me feel worse than i need to'

I say: "That's my favorite chair (antique, had it before we were married, sentimental value!) and I wanted that original cushion (a bit raggy but solid and easily covered) to see about replacing or re-covering it.
(TO PUT IN MY NEW HOUSE WITHOUT YOU!!!! Didn't say that.)

He then says, like he's talking to a child: "You KNOW, ANYone who does upholstery can EASILY make a NEW cushion."

So now you’ve validated his guilt and it can set in quite nicely, but to him it’s still recoverable because its easily fixed plus if you agree it’s easily fixed then there is no need for him to feel guilty because it’s your overreaction and it didn’t really matter in the first place.

You didn’t agree so now he has to feel the guilt and because you went quiet and your body language and tone changed he knows you’re upset.

ALL I said was, "Please don't throw away any more items without checking with me, maybe focus on all this construction stuff."

And with this he is now properly angry about it all. Because not only is he feeling guilty for the cushion, but you failed to make him feel better, you’ve not accepted his fix, you haven’t engaged with him in a loving way and on top of all of that you’re not acknowledging everything he is doing to try and sort the basement. He may even think your criticising the way he is doing it

TRANSLATION ‘I got it wrong but its not fair that she then has a go at me when all im doing is trying to help’

And so now he can park some of his guilt because he is the victim in all of this and the cushion is no longer a problem for him

Hey--I know you wouldn't have thrown that cushion away if you knew it was important to me. :--)"
Just as sort of an invitation to see if he would apologize.

I get this snippy response: "Correct."
"gn"

So from his perspective he may have not so much seen an olive branch as seen it as an attempt to extract another apology (his fix was an apology in his head which you rejected) and to make him feel worse. Reopening something that he had parked and dealt with plus he can now say it’s your fault because you didn’t make it clear that it was important to you. His response is shutting it down at a point where he doesn’t have to feel guilty.

Nice. So I said, "Well, we all mistake". "Make mistakes". "Hahah... Get it?" "Sorry... forgot."
(Deliberately vague, thinking, yeah, 'forgot' you have no conscience/sense of humor/are an a$$hat/take anything said as criticism/have to attack people in a passive-aggressive way to make them "pay" for upsetting you...).

Me: "Good Night"
(And yes, I can actually write more than "gf".What is THAT, anyway?)

The key bit here is the "Sorry... forgot." The rest of its fine but when you said "Sorry... forgot." he heard everything you typed in the brackets

it makes him feel bad about HIMSELF and that feeling is MY FAULT and I must be punished

I doubt its about punishing you as such to me its much more likely that he feels bad about himself and he is fighting against anything that forces him to engage with that. He wants to put it back in its box where it can slowly poison him – there will be a lot of fear driving some of this. He also probably wants you to understand in a kind of

‘you make me feel bad and i want you to understand what I’m feeling so I’m going to make you feel like i do’

I know that sounds and would feel like punishing but that’s not his intent. He doesn’t want to hurt you he wants you to know how your hurting him. (even if the hurt your causing is only in his head)


I have no clue if thats helpful or not or even makes any sense but its my translation on living through some of this.

If you want I can try and tackle some of the other bits you’ve raised but I’m hesitant to if its not helpful