The three of us had tickets to see The Nutcracker with a friend and her daughter. H comes over to pick us up, compliments me on how i look, I return the compliment. We pile in the car and drive to meet our friends' for lunch before the performance. You'd think we weren't separated. Laughing, coparenting our crazy, bouncing-off-the-wall kid (who has recently been taken off her medication making things like The Nutcracker very difficult). Enjoyed lunch, drove to the performance... H insisted on sitting next to D. I knew it was to keep her in line but his version of keeping D in line has a tendency to make things worse.
It's a fact. At least if you ask me. H thinks it's me criticizing him. Obviously I kept my mouth shut but I could predict what was going to happen.
1. D was going to act out 2. H would try to physically restrain her in the middle of a ballet 3. D would fight back and could get loud 4. H would continue to physically restrain her and NOT be successful at calming her 5. At intermission H would say, "we need to go, D can't handle this"
Guess what?! All 5 happened! Grrr!
I talked with D during intermission, told her we were on a team together and that if she felt fidgety to just hold my hand and we'd work it out together. We could play hand games or she could play with something from my purse to keep her hands occupied but it was not ok to: 1. talk or make noise during the performance 2. stand up or walk around 3. start a fight with daddy
We went back to our seats and I told H that we were staying. His eye roll meant "ok, well, she's your responsibility then".
No sense of team work. No "we're in this together". No, "i know this is hard but you're doing a good job". Nope. Of course not.
She did GREAT during Act II. She read the program and could see what dance was coming up next. She recognized the music from her piano classes and we talked in whispers about which instrument was playing, etc. It went well.
Afterwards, H said, "good job". Ok, I'll take it.
Drove home and we were talking about all the paperwork I filled out for D's assessment at Children's Hospital. I asked him if we could go over it together in case I left something out or should rephrase something.
We got to the house, I went upstairs to change. I came downstairs and saw him bent over the paperwork with a stack of post-its. He was going over his "corrections" with me.
I calmly said, "can we go over this together? this feels like you're correcting my term paper and I'd hoped this would be more collaborative or more of a discussion rather than you criticizing 6 hours of my work."
He sighed heavily and said, "sure, ok"
We got to page 4 of 56 and started to argue. He was arguing that D biting her nails is the "exact same" as D putting her entire fist in her mouth and biting down. The question specifically asked, "Has your child in the past 3 months hit her neck or throat, tried to bite entire fist or blah, blah, blah"
HE thought yes, I thought no. He wanted to call it quits. I said as calmly as I could (which i think was pretty calm actually) that what I really was hanging on to was that was absolutely no recognition for the 6+ hours I put into the paperwork already only for him to criticize and imply that I'd "done it wrong".
He said he felt like I was saying he didn't know or observe our daughter and that his opinion had no value. I heard him and I told him so.
We tried again.
This time i REALLY tried to show him I was listening and that his opinion had value. I changed the answer on the question and said, "I dont' think nail biting is the same as fist gnawing but we'll put 'yes' down and we can explain further down here, ok?"
HE seemed ok with that. Whew.
After about 20 more minutes of talking things over I thanked him for trying again, for not walking away from it and apologized for being hot under the color.
He thanked me for putting in the effort of filling it out in the first place, understood where I might have been coming from even though he disagreed. He then said, "its hard because that was triggering a lot of things for me, you know? It's like a 'Nam vet hearing bombs go off, you know?"
I'm sorry? Did my H just equate dealing with me to a Vietnam veteran having PTSD after coming back from war?
Dramatic much? That was hard to let go and not touch but I did.
I also didn't try to make him understand how hard it was for me. WE always did that. We wanted credit for how hard something was for us. HE made his point with the vietnam reference. I didn't feel like it made any sense to draw up some metaphor for how hard it was for met to compromise with him.
At the end I said, "but we did it, we came together, we worked it out and we powered through and came out better for it. I'm glad we did that."
And then half jokingly said, "and I'm sure you hate me and are super resentful but you can take your resentment and fester in it later".
HE laughed but I know that's just what he's doing. Mindreading, yes.
Gosh that was hard. IT's even harder that instead of seeing the changes in that scenario, the changes from just 6 months ago to now, H is dwelling on the things that were the same.
I hate the things that were the same. Hate them.
A separation, an undiagnosed troublesome child with SEVERE behavior problems, the holidays, erratic schedules, 18 years of pain, no support from friends (abandoned much?)...
It's almost too much for me to handle.
I will say this though:
In that moment when H and I were arguing I felt unafraid. I didn't shut my mouth and cow-tow to his wishes because I was afraid THIS would be the deciding factor on whether he would want to work on our marriage.
It felt strange to give value to my own argument, my own opinion and not wonder if it had validity to H or not. It has validity simply because it was my opinion. I gave it value.
And guess what? I don't feel resentment that I did the compromising and H did not. It was a choice and I picked my battle. The issue wasn't worth me second guessing myself for the next three weeks. AND, me picking my battle doesn't mean I sacrificed the value of my opinion.
These are all very big for me. BIG.
My heart hurts though. It hurts because I can see in H's eyes that he sees no change. I can see that he still sees himself as this beaten down war veteran with napalm memories. Really?
His self-victimization is starting to make me not like him as as person.
