Making the best of the mess.

[97Hope]

Dilly,

I thought the same thing about pretending to be each other, that's why I've been more active here. Reading your sitch, I can tell you exactly how to act!! Then I'm stumped on a text message!!

Solo,

We will order you a shirt CAGD 'crap at going dark' but the membership requires that you start doing better now! No more cake-feeders.

Alison,
That is so true re: validation. Doesn't sound like now is the time to be validating any of these fools!! They need to sit in their pig-pens by themselves. I felt a shift when validating in my sitch went south. My H was just going on and on and I stopped him and said, "I can't listen to your list of complaints about me anymore. You have spoken, I have listened. Enough". At that moment it was no longer about saving our MR (which was already past dead, I just didn't know it) but about what was good and beneficial to me. For a time, it was appropriate to validate during our R convos. But after a point, it turned into me being a whipping post for every bad thing in his life. That crosses a line.

I hope you know where that line is for you. Any past trauma or abuse can make it hard to see. I strongly suggest IC for you so that you know what to look for.

Believe it or not, we can become acclimated to things that are wrong. I didn't realize how consistently my H invalidated me, and that's a terrible awful thing to do to a person. I didn't realize what was wrong, just that something wasn't right, until I understood what healthy relationship looked like. Since I'm now aware of it, I simply don't accept it. And I certainly don't let him read the list of my iniquities off to me. I am aware of what they are and I'm focused on being the best me. Certainly wouldn't take his advice at any rate on what makes a "good person" based on his current behavior.