Sorry she's been testing you lately Ballast! Here's the bright side: people can get angry with you for any reason at any time. How that then makes *you* feel is something you can work on. The natural reaction when someone is angry with you is to feel bad / guilty / defensive / scared etc. That tends to ignite an emotional fight or flight type response that leads things to escalate.
If you can step back and feel confident in the fact that you do not deserve this anger and haven't done anything wrong, then you can shift your perspective from defensiveness to seeing that the other person is scared and feeling empathy for them. Ignore her words and actions and realize that you're dealing with someone who is acting out of fear.
Originally Posted By: ballast
I'd said my struggle is more on the WHY this happened
Yes, that's the root of feeling out of control. You can't explain the why, so you can't take comfort in being able to prevent it from happening again, and that's unsettling.
People love linear systems and immediate feedback -- I press the lever and I get a pellet. I can understand that.
Relationships are highly entangled, hugely complex organisms laden with long delay feedback loops, outside influences, historic baggage, etc. When relationships break down you want to put your finger on the exact "why" so that you can learn from that, but more importantly take measures to protect yourself from having it happen again.
When you can't figure out the exact why, you can't put a targeted protection plan in place, and therefore you feel exposed.
One of the singular most painful things about this process is never getting to the "why" in any kind of satisfying conclusion.
There are thousands of small contributors, and you can treat and improve upon each one, but you probably won't feel that the sum of those changes fully insulates you from experiencing a loss like this again.
The first phase of this journey for most is guilt -- searching our memories and inventorying all our shortcomings. The first reaction of some people on this board to a newbie is often "you weren't meeting her needs" which further reinforces this stage of guilt.
Relationships aren't that simple. If you weren't meeting her needs, chances are she wasn't meeting your needs either, and the reasons for that are many and varied. A relationship is an equilibrium between two personalities, and its state is a reflection of both contributions to it.
You're doing fine Ballast, continue to disengage and don't react to the bait. This too shall pass.
Acc
Married 18, Together 20, Now Divorced M: 48, W: 50, D: 18, S: 16, D: 12 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 7/13/11 Start Reconcile: 8/15/11 Bomb Dropped (EA, D): 5/1/2014 (Divorced) In a New Relationship: 3/2015
