Equalzr's WW. Still accepting advice! Pt 3

[burned]

My ww told me that if i was doing everything i was supposed to do, the door to her A would have never been opened up. No matter what, they wont take responsibility.

That was one of my favorites when I got that one from WW, maybe some time during MC. Some of the A books say the same thing. Fact is, it's true. But when you say it post-hoc like that, what it really means is, "It's your fault I had to cheat." That's crappy, unfair, and just plain wrong.

Plus it's just another move in an unwinnable game. The A happened. Then you try to change the things that "opened the door to the A" and then she says, "Yeah, thanks but too little too late." Or, "Thanks but you're just doing that to control me." Or whatever else they say. And you kill what little respect you had left. It's all over Sandi's threads and posts, this isn't my own insight or anything. But yeah, it's part of the script.

I actually was thinking about this while reading one of the many self-help books scattered around my apartment. Think about the meaning behind the statement. Not just, "I wish you had done better on this issue," not just, "My dissatisfaction with your performance was a reason I was unhappy, and my unhappiness was a reason for the A." Get down to the 3rd layer. "The responsibility for the success of the M was yours, and because you failed to live up to my expectations (which were probably unreasonable to begin with), the responsibility for the breakdown of the M is yours."

Twisted, irrational, immature thinking. I'll accept up to 50% of the responsibility. Plus I get 5% off for the A. So it's 55% on her.

You and I both got M relatively young. I think both of our Ws, and probably both of us, had a lot to learn about MRs. I think all of us did our best to work with what we had and try to improve. I'll admit that at one point I started phoning it in, and that was the beginning of the end. But then why was I phoning it in? What changed in her that made me change? Or what changed in me that made her change that made me change? W and I are both responsible. But again, as we LBHs keep saying...we're not the ones who stepped out. That's not a healthy way to problem-solve. And as AS said somewhere on my thread, nagging doesn't count. The whole thing about "I bugged you and begged you and you hated me for nagging," that's after the fact justification, rationalization, etc.

Like I said before, here or somewhere else I posted. The hard part is trying to sort out the useful information from the garbage spew.

That doesnt mean i dont still long for the W I had though.

You can see me struggling with this, too. I thought I had it made. I didn't. Now I'm trying to resuscitate a MR that not only didn't really exist except in my head, it's also just gone and done. And like people keep saying, neither of us want to go back to that. But it's HER. Or the her that she used to be. If we were both single and met somewhere I'd still find her fascinating, lively, beautiful. But now I know her much more deeply, and I know how badly we related to each other, in many ways. Plus what she is capable of in terms of betrayal, lies, disrespect.

Hence the need for us LBHs to change, or else it'll be right back to that. Not like WW is making any changes, right? Still blaming us for what went wrong, still acting like the problem is external and switching it up will solve it.

That's like wearing soccer cleats and complaining that every time you stand on a water bed it starts leaking and you have to get a new water bed. Something like that.