Alligator Love

[Zues126]

I don't want to project my own issues on your situation, because I'm not a mind reader and I don't agree with your wife's actions or criticism but just to offer a different view point... perhaps she does not want parenting to be easy for you. Maybe she wants that acknowledgement that taking care of the kids is tough and stressful and maybe she wants to be appreciated as well, for being capable at the most important job in the world?

Thank you both for the replies. Julie, this is a really interesting point.

DB coach once told me something really incredible about how to tell what was motivating people when they acted poorly. I can hunt down my write up another time, but the idea was that when they act in a way that makes you feel insufficient, it is because THEY feel insufficient. I can see how me handling the situation just fine could make her feel like she's not as important as she once was, or that she can never live up to me because I can do it all, or whatever. I also know that she derives a lot of her self worth from her role as super-mom. So this is quite possible.

I don't really show my appreciation for her, any more than she shows her appreciation for what I do. There really is no emotional exchange between us and hasn't been for a year. We basically don't speak and I'm emotionally deadpan if we need to. I'm not willing to be emotionally close to this person. Whatever our contributions or issues she has crossed hard boundaries with me. It's too bad, I do appreciate what she does and feel very lucky she is their mom.

For some reason the comment about the 'most important job in the world' bugs me. It feels extremely diminishing. I don't think what I do is more important by any stretch...but I do think it's necessary. Like in caveman days, if I'm fighting off a saber tooth tiger and my partner is nursing the baby...yeah, I get it, the baby is more important than a tiger...but if it weren't for me the tiger would have the baby for breakfast! STBX wanted to be a SAHM and I worked my tail off hard, harder than most people that think they work hard, so she could have that time with the children. I feel that is extremely diminished, and in fact judged, like 'you have your priorities backwards, work isn't as important as young children', etc. But meanwhile I did it so that SHE could have the time that she wanted. And had I not done that she would've been working and would've have had the opportunity to spend that time with the children. So yes, her nurturing the kids is the most important job in the world, but I feel what I did was equally important to allow that opportunity.

Anyway, I have some things to think about. I agree that I didn't make her feel the appreciation I felt during the M. I also can see a potential pattern of me justifying it because of how hurt I felt (the card game deescalation of behavior I posted about back in april, again, I'm too tired to link at the moment). So maybe I need to challenge myself...is it really for my protection that I am emotionally distant from STBX? Or is it resentment/punishing behavior? I mean, it is consistent with the M (we didn't speak for months at a time). And while I don't really think about R and I do feel pretty at peace with her being out of my life forever, it's not really about her, it's about me, and about my behavior and what it brings me in the future. It's weird, it feels to me that at some point I don't really care about the 'whys' behind the behavior, if someone is beating you it doesn't matter why, you have to protect yourself! And when STBX drips disdain for me I have to just extract her from my heart and make her a movie extra that no longer gets a say in how I feel about myself. That's how I feel. But maybe I'm just justifying my own bad behavior of walling her off? This stuff is so confusing to me.

I dunno. Right now I am very disinterested in being emotionally close to anyone. It's all I can do to take care of myself. I can't imagine trying to navigate through an R again. But this is stuff I have to sort through little by little.