Life 2.0 Pt 5

[NH115]

D15 is having issues; she got angry at us for something unrelated to our marriage, called MIL and wanted her to come get her. MIL lives 80 miles away and was not about to come get her on a school night. D15 said that we were fighting. Actually last night was one of the most calm and sane R discussions we had in a long time. Part of it is D15 is a teenager and doesn't see past herself very much, but I also know she's acting out of fear. She's worried about W's health issues and worried about what her family's going to look like in a few months. I totally understand that. I talked to her and she feels ignored, because we spend too much time locked away in our room. Ouch. She has a point.

W and I are going to sit down with D15 tonight and talk through some things; she needs to understand that she needs to respect us, despite the issues we have going on. One of our areas of strength is that we have been a solid team when it comes to parenting. In return we are going to start taking steps to engage more with our children. We both know they have gotten the short end of the stick for the last few months. We've done lots with them, but we spend too much time locked away, too.

After talking with D15, W and I are going to sit down together and figure out our goals and priorities. We're actually going to write things down and come up with a plan to make our lives better. These seem like small steps, but we've got to start somewhere.

1. Start spending our evenings out in the main house with the kids. Part of that would involve actually doing things with the kids, but even if we're just working on our own projects, we're out in the main area of the house. If we are in the bedroom, the door is open (except for sleeping and, hopefully, other things) to encourage the kids to come in and interact with us.

2. Get back to family meal at least once a week and find a night to play board games

3. Stop with the R talks outside of MC as much as possible. W thinks that we may be putting too much pressure on ourselves to reconnect by talking all the time instead of just living.

4. Come up with common goals. That was a theme in MC today; we separately wrote down our individual, couple and family goals. They all meshed nicely.

Mind you, much of this initiative is coming from her. Color me surprised.

The MC session was upbeat. We talked about common goals; we're going to touch on that more next week, and also talk about forgiveness. We need to forgive each other for our past mistakes; I need to forgive OM and W needs to forgive my parents; her deep hatred of my parents is a definite barrier to our reconciliation. Even W sees that. My hatred of OM is having the same effect.

The therapist said that she is seeing small but noticeable positive shifts in the way we both speak to and about each other. She was very encouraged. Hopefully we're seeing some upward momentum.