PP's WAW Adventure Continues - (8)

[PigPen]

Thanks all. I appreciate your feedback. As I put in the post, so much of that interaction was made possible by tools picked up here on this board. I'm trying not to put much weight in it, and know that D is still moving forward. I do hope that it was a healing conversation for my W, it was helpful for me to get to express my own feelings.

My plan is to continue on as usual. I've got a big day of chores plans to try to keep my mind off of her and back on my own life. So far it's, well, kind of working. I'm getting stuff done, but she's on my mind a lot.

One of the things she told me was that anytime she'd bring up our relationship, what she needed out of it, and what was upsetting to her was that I would get angry. That I would tell her I don't have time to deal with that now and would even swear at her. Eventually this lead her to simply stop bringing her needs up and she said a year before BD she started withdrawing and not sharing parts of her life with me.

I believed we had very emotionally intelligent arguments, but that wasn't her experience. Was hard to hear but I'm going to bring it up to my IC next week and see if he recommends an anger management course, or if it's something we can work on moving forward.

I know for sure that I was overwhelmed, under slept, and addicted so I'm sure that made me an a-hole more often than I realized - despite my thoughts at the time to the contrary. My life is now considerably more simple, present, and consistent, but I want to make sure that if it gets crazy again that I have the tools to handle difficult communications in a relationship without turning into a jerk.

Goals for the week are to:

- take my dog out for a hike or to the beach every day
- finish reading Storms Can't Hurt the Sky
- start rereading NMMNG
- journal about my experience with our communication and ways I know I could have handled it better

PP