I am feeling much better today. I didn't watch some live comedy, but I did listen to a few episodes of a gripping horror themed podcast I enjoy while I was ironing. I actually enjoy the ironing most Sunday nights (and enjoy having a little martyrish whinge about having to do it now and again...): it's an easy meditative sort of job and I can get on with it and feel a little sense of accomplishment when I'm done. I did a load of laundry at the weekend - bedlinen and covers for the sofas (having a dog, no matter how careful you are, involves a lot of filth in the house, I've learned) and the house looks like a laundrette at the moment.
Eldest is back at school today. Youngest isn't back until tomorrow, but he has a playdate this morning. I'm going to spend the morning in a new make-up shop that has opened up in town. H may be right that lipstick won't fix a marriage (what a genius he is) but I love a new lipstick and it's been a while, and I will be paying a bit less on the council tax from now on so I reckon I can afford an extra treat just because...
Your comment about negative energy is spot on. I know that I've always struggled to separate H's feelings from my own. In the past, I've not been able to be happy and okay unless he's feeling happy and okay. I've not been able to feel secure and settled unless he looks to be in a good mood with life and with the kids and with me. The past six months that went into overdrive - every time I saw him I'd be internally monitoring his mood and adjusting my own to it. It was the total opposite of detachment. It's insane behaviour on my part, and it must also have felt like pressure to him.
He said to me - in one of his angry texts over the past couple of days - that he felt things had been really improving and going well over the past couple of weeks before my holiday and during it - that we'd had lots of friendly contact and he felt things were moving in the right direction, and that I'd just gone and blown it all up in his face. Now, an ultimatum was never going to help matters. I know that. But the fact he thinks it was going well and I was gradually getting more and more resentful at stuffing back my feelings on how he was speaking to me and giving him care and attention and consideration he didn't seem to value and wasn't able to return is telling. He was getting what he wanted during those weeks - a free pass to act however he wanted from a wife who was too afraid of his anger to set a boundary and speak up for her own needs. Of course he thought things were going well...
I can't say I can just turn the switch off on that overnight - I don't think I could sit in a room with his misery and anger and validate it then get back to my happier existence without absorbing it. I'm not there yet. Next best thing is to stay away from him so he can't bring me down and I can't replay old habits.
