Yep, noted Alison. Actually I quite like paying his rent, gives me a feeling of control knowing I could say no and knowing that he has to learn to say PLEASE when he asks me to do it. Maybe he might learn to use this word more regularly as a results. And it takes me like 15 seconds, nothing like the huge amount of stuff I used to do for him to accommodate his life for zero thanks and lots of criticism. But anyway. I ignored the text this morning and he rang 3 times, all while I was in the middle of domestic mayhem trying to leave for the office. I texted back 2 words, and he rang again and then texted 'pick up'. I texted back for him to ring in 15 minutes when I was driving. He rang and said a few things about the kids and then said that he was feeling increasingly stressed about this event on Friday. I thought to myself 'do not validate over the phone! He is prioritising other people over you this week, no validation here' and so I just said 'mm'. I validated the heck out of him about this event on Friday and then on Sunday he was just hateful even though I was trying to validate him about that too. So if he wants validation it has to be in person and it has to be when he's not being horrible. Time to get my head down and focus on finishing this work, I have GAL lined up for tonight, tomorrow night and need to arrange Thursday and the weekend. I'm torn between telling H 'you were cantankerous on Sunday so I don't want to see you this weekend' and just making other plans and not telling him about them. I suspect the latter is better DBing.
