Pyrite: Eye of the storm?

[Zues126]

Py- Remember in Godfather at the end when Michael says to Kay, "OK...this one time you can ask me about my business..."?

This one time I will talk about your W's behavior. Right now the focus is on your behavior. The ONLY reason I am mentioning your W's behavior is to discuss how you can manage YOUR reactions.

One reaction is to feel vindicated. You can judge her behavior, her character, point out how unreasonable she is, how crazy she can act at times. You can tell stories about her to your friends and get their sympathy and support. Heck, you can do things that you know will trigger her more just to provoke her, then play the role of the victim.

OR- you can understand that she too is going through a hard time and feel some compassion. You can believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. She may be conflicted at times, but she has one fear overpowering everything- she is terrified that she will change her mind, or not be strong enough to leave you, and that she will end back up in the nightmare she felt she's been living for the last few years that nearly destroyed her. Now, Mr. Bond is right that you are exaggerating her behavior by talking about how it makes you FEEL vs. what she is ACTUALLY saying...but even if she is being very cold right now, that is her armor to protect her from the feelings of guilt, regret, and love still inside her. She doesn't feel safe with those feelings because they are a threat, so every time she feels those she brings back out the script of what you have done to hurt her to "restrengthen" her resolve. Listen to the song "I will survive" and you'll get an idea of the theme song that is running through her head.

OK- enough, enough, enough about her. Back to you, and let's stay there. What does this mean for you?

It means YOU need to spend some time reflecting on how your behavior hurt her. You did very well with the list above. There is much you can do with that. This is VERY hard to do. I've gotten to the point that I can state some of my destructive behavior, but it's STILL really hard for me to truly understand how my W felt. It's a childish reaction to avoiding guilt, it's like my mind just denies it or gets defensive about how "I didn't mean to, here's how I felt, here's all I was trying to do". It's like the reality that I spiritually wounded the person God entrusted me to love and cherish is too much for me to handle. So I get it's not easy. But it's really important that you start to understand the depth of the pain she's suffering because that will make you more patient and compassionate.

You need to act very consistently with character to avoid provoking her further. CONSISTENCY CONSISTENCY CONSISTENCY. You know how companies have a mission statement? The idea is that that mission statement is the compass that guides all they do, right? Well, you too need a mission statement. This is what the 180s are about. Whatever happens with your M, what types of behavior do you want to change FOR YOU? What are the core differences?

For example, if you have decided to try to be less judgmental/more compassionate, and less controlling (which will be two CRITICAL bullets under your overall mission statement)...then you can work through your emotions before responding, and use this to guide your response.

Specifically- you get a message from her. You find yourself outraged and wanting to react negatively. So you sit with it for a bit. Scream into a pillow. Vent here. Whatever. Then, after you've calmed down, you go through a period where you remind yourself of why she's acting this way, your role in getting to this point. Then you revisit your mission statement and consider how you can respond that is consistent with your CORE BELIEFS. Now's a good time to pray for strength to allow yourself to be free of your negative emotions and to allow your CORE BELIEFS to come through. You draft a response. Then you sit on it, reread it, and look for ANY possible edge to the email. Kind of like how before leaving your kid in a room you glance around to make sure nothing is breakable or dangerous, you reread and make sure there's nothing nasty, controlling, or critical. AND that you're not acting over the top self righteous as implied criticism. You want the only emotions to come through to be strength, compassion, whatever your CORE BELIEFS are.

To this point I would recommend going email only for a while if possible. This will be a lot of work for every communication for a while. I don't believe you have the tools to do all of this live on the phone. But if you do this one email at a time, you will start to develop them. Eventually it won't be an act. But you don't get a lot of slack. She's looking with a MICROSCOPE for any sign that everything you're doing is an act to try to control her in some way. The moment she sees any sign of your old mission statement (which is your current mission statement until you CHANGE it, which is why what you're doing here is SO IMPORTANT) she will ignore everything else and focus on that. And your current mission statement was "For me to be happy I need you to act the way I expect, I will tell you when you're right or wrong, and will punish you when you're wrong by hurting your spirit, then telling you it's your own fault you're in pain because you did it WRONG, if you didn't keep messing up I wouldn't have to teach you these lessons". So that must be purged at all costs.

Finally, I'm not saying this means you give her everything she asks for, that you let her abuse you, or that you emasculate yourself. I'm all about being strong, confident, and assertive. If there's a point you have to stand up for then do so. Just do it from a good place in your heart, not from a provocative place. Don't take pleasure in the conflict, the control. I'm not being as clear, but if she makes a request that you CAN'T go along with (say she said she doesn't want you to see your daughter anymore- which we both know she's not doing so it's a safe example) you could respond "W, I understand you'd like as much distance from me as possible in your life, and I can understand why you'd feel that way. That said, I'm not prepared to let our daughter grow up without her father. I fully intend to be a big part of her life. I'm open to finding ways to allow her relationship with me to sustain while still honoring your desire to minimize contact between us at this time. Let me know if you have thoughts on how we could arrange that."

See, there's no judging, no reacting, no provoking, and no CONTROLLING. No ultimatums, no "these are my rights, I can get the courts to do this or that, here's how we need to do it", etc. Just empathy/boundary/validation/collaboration. Point is you CAN stand up for what you need WITHOUT letting the negative mission statement drive the ship.

So- looking back in 6 months...what CORE BELIEFS do you want to see radiate through in all of your consistent behavior? What is your mission statement? What are the negative traits that you will be looking to eliminate from your responses? I've done half of this for you...but do the work yourself in your own words.

I really believe in going email only right now so you can execute this. For my first 90 days I never responded to an email without meditating for 15 minutes, then praying to God for strength to allow my to respond with my best spiritual self. What's amazing is that after a while you are given strength you didn't know you had, which will protect YOUR feelings. I TOTALLY GET that long term you can't stifle feelings of rejection, criticism, etc. TRUST ME...those feelings will diminish if you follow this road, and it will be easier to be your best self, and less painful for you.

At the end of the day this is all about you, about making it easier on yourself. THIS WILL HAPPEN if you follow the path.

You can do this Py. One step at a time bud.