Affair, no feelings...is there hope? IV

[44tries]

44,

I think you and I are the same person sometimes. your struggles are the same ones I face, both in M and in daily life.

look up the term "hyper-focus," and see if some of the things they say match up with you.

Do you absorb yourself in certain things and try to learn everything about them as fast as possible?

Do you have a tough time using your time on your school work and finish everything under a "time crunch?" Almost like you NEED the pressure to get the work done?

Ever get stuck in your head, or in a book or article, and look up at the clock and a literal hour has passed?

Yes, this is so me!! I am an 'all or nothing' type person and a procrastinator. I can read about all sorts of things for hours and hours. I am always researching. It always frustrated me because my W talks about how I spend too much time on electronics. If we're watching TV or in bed, she hates if I'm on my phone. But the problem is she is too! And she texts a lot. Even before the A stuff, she texts probably 10x more than I do. When I'm on my phone, I'm probably reading an article or balancing the budget. I feel like texting other people would be a lot more disrespectful, but perhaps I'm being narrow-minded.

For the record, my W had the same problems with me that your W is saying she has with you.

The first real fight we had in our R was about me eating a PB&J on her bed and getting crumbs on her comforter. We're talking like three crumbs and she f-ing lost it!

Same issues as you're having when we first got M, too. I was working on my Master's and she was working. I was home with my oldest, who was very active at that time, and trying to get my weekly assignments done. It was all I could do to get dishes done during the day, and she'd come home and focus on anything I didn't do.

I can definitely relate to this!

I almost left her at one point as things got really bad for a while. She just couldn't find happiness, was angry all the time and it was sucking the life out of me.

And this! Especially with my W being gone, it was almost like a lifted weight. Now that she's back, it's so much harder to get anything done or not feel dragged down by her lack of motivation/enthusiasm. She is just always unhappy, tired, doesn't even know what to do with herself and watches way too much TV. And she says I am the one who isn't fun! It is so draining to always worry and wonder why is miserable and try to carry both of us over the finish line to meet goals.

We got past it, and things were good for 5 years until my second kid came along, then things went down hill.

W had this really bad habit of pointing out all the things that wouldn't get done, and that just killed me on the inside because I really felt like I was doing the best i could. The kicker with her, though, was that she wasn't taking care of her chores, either, but I never said anything to her about it because it wasn't something that mattered to me.

I know the exact feeling. Nothing I can do is enough. It's not that she never says she appreciates what I do or tells me the house looks good etc. She does. But it's the feeling that at the end of the day, she still isn't satisfied. It's still an "issue". It HAS gotten a lot better as I've stepped up more, and she doesn't cite it as a major problem like she used to. But she doesn't seem any happier (which at one point she said she would be if it were to improve).

I would say that not speaking up about the hypocrisy really put us on an uneven playing field.

During her A (which I didn't know about), One of the things I tried to do early on was take care of all the household chores, which was unrealistic. I know lots of LBSs try this approach.

After two months, I figured out that this was the wrong thing to do and so part of my detachment process was to sit W down and define and split household chores evenly.

Even now, we maintain these household boundaries, and yes, my household chores are a boundary for me. We've had it out over instances where she hasn't felt like i've done my chores "in a timely fashion." They are my chores and my responsibilities; I get mad if she tries to do them. She knows what she is responsible for and what my jobs are. It's been really healthy, too! I think having the list has made our M better because then she can't say thing like "I'm doing X more work than you," because the roles are clearly defined. It helps us both because she doesn't feel wholly responsible for the house, and I know exactly what my jobs are, so I can see that they need to be done and do them (I'm not one that goes looking for extra cleaning!).

I have no clue if any of this is helpful, but I thought I'd share.

This is really good feedback. I think I am going to try to set some more clear guidelines and agree on set responsibilities with her. Especially now that I am trying hard not to cater to her or over do it, it will really help establish expectations and boundaries, just like you said. Maybe having a more defined idea of what she expects of me would help her resentment too. Thanks so much for sharing, Mowgli! Sure seems like we share a lot of the same struggles.