Perils of piecing - thread 8

[may22]

Oh, Alison. This all feels really hard, and I'm just reading about it, not living it. I don't know that I can say anything that will really help. But I'll offer a few things that you can take or leave:

I'll give an example. Last night I asked if we could compare diaries to check some tricky logistical thing out with childcare that is cropping up this week. I literally just said, 'can we find five minutes to get our diaries out tonight so we can make sure someone is around for Youngest on Friday?' and he said 'it's not my fault - I haven't been the one stopping us talking about this,' in a really sulky teenage tone. I just left the room and went ahead and made my own arrangements, feeling pretty peeved and unsupported and a lot of contempt. It's like that almost constantly.

Oh god. I feel you on this. That must be so frustrating. No advice here, just wanted to say that.

Which I guess brings me back to self forgiveness. I do regret having him back in the house and moving to piecing before I was ready, and that's on me and not him.

Forgiving yourself for decisions you've made in the past is not going to happen overnight. But I do encourage you to give yourself a break on this. If you were your best friend, what would you say to yourself? I bet it wouldn't be "well, you made your own bed." I bet it would be more along the lines of "you made that choice of of hope and love and fear. None of those are bad things... I guess fear is not ideal but sometimes you just can't help that. It's OK. Let that feeling of regret go." Or whatever you might say to your friend-- say it to yourself, enough so that you will eventually believe it.

I also wonder as I read through this post if some of the feelings you are experiencing now aren't all that different from feelings that the WS experiences. It feels hopeless. He's incapable of giving you the M that you want. The only way you see forward is a cold, dead, but functioning M with him. [All things, incidentally, I know my H has felt in relation to our M.] And maybe you are seeing this all clearly and your choices are between figuring out how to stick it out and giving up the idea of what you had hoped your M could be, and leaving. Or. Maybe to consider... these feelings you have are totally natural, given everything that has happened, and you need to experience them. But. Maybe they'll pass too. Maybe one or two or three months from now, when spring starts in earnest, there will be a tiny tendril of hope that pokes up through the cold, hard ground. And then you might, just might, be ready to consider a different possible future with your H.

I will say this... maybe you aren't ready for MC right now. That is totally fair. If you aren't in a place where you can listen to your H complain without withdrawing further, then probably it isn't in the best interests of your R to put yourself in that situation. How do you explain that to H? Not sure... but I kind of feel like if you push yourself into that situation when you aren't ready, it might simply make things worse.

The other thing I think, though, is that the low-level resentment and anger from his dumb-a$$ comments like your example above, is also not a good thing. Figuring out a way to disconnect yourself from getting annoyed when he says garbage like that, or makes poor parenting choices, or whatever, is probably critical for you to heal. Do you have any thoughts on how you might pursue that as a goal?

And finally... you deserve and probably really, really need a break from him. Not just evenings out but like a week away. Can you do that? A yoga retreat, a solo trip to a new city, a hiking trip, or even just taking the kids to your parents' house and leaving him at home. I don't know. It feels to me like you just need a break, the feelings of wishing you had waited longer to let him move back in-- maybe space is what you're craving right now, and maybe there are other ways of getting that without him moving back out.