I have always been a pretty strong person in other parts of my life. So strong, that in my R I was always very cautious of taking charge or being assertive because I didn't want to bulldoze XW. Similar to how a large man might be careful not to hurt someone half his size.
But it went beyond caution, to neurosis. I began to measure my worth and even define my identity by how XW viewed me. And because of this she was able to manipulate and control me. The problem wasn't only that she was able to push me around and that I enabled some negative choices, it's also that she lost respect for me and didn't see me as the man I truly am.
In a way I kept expecting her to recognize how stupendous I was at a man, while simultaneously being appreciative of how sensitive I was considering my prowess. Yet instead she just took my extreme sensitivity as weakness and developed contempt for me. The irony is that in the end she felt that my inability to protect her or take a leadership role in the family was 'abusive'. So in the end I received a failing grade from her anyway, no matter how hard I tried.
These days I've made peace with who I am. I no longer care how XW views me. I get that I'm the villain in her personal narrative. I mean, how else can she spin things to justify the destructive decisions she made? I realize that her spew and nastiness and disdain towards me is based on the story she tells herself, and doesn't reflect reality or my self image.
One thing I'd recommend that DOES help get to this point, is PROFESSIONAL THIRD PARTY SUPPORT. I had an IC, a DB Coach, and a L. Essentially a team of professionals that had seen this all hundreds of times. Before I did anything major I consulted this powerhouse team.
This helped because if all three of them told me I had to do A/B/C (separate finances, get my own place, draw a boundary around a certain issue, etc), I knew it was endorsed by my team. If XW spewed and twisted that into proof I was an abusive piece of garbage, I was able to let it bounce off me much easier because I didn't make the decision alone. In fact, it was laughable because I basically followed the lead of this team for the last 2 years, so if XW spewed at me, she was basically saying that my counselors and lawyers were being abusive which is clearly laughable. In the end I will never have regrets about the way I handled things or doubt that I was more than reasonable. And this helped me detach from her and reassert control over my self identity.
Who is on your team?
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
