Allison and May, thank you for the great advice. I have been trying to avoid R talks, but get sucked into them under the guise of discussing the children or other neutral arenas of our life. I am recognizing that I need a firm boundary here, if only in my own mind. Something along the lines of 'I will not get sucked into a R talk for the next 2 weeks' and then just do Allison's suggestion of avoiding it at ALL costs. As a newbie to this, I am vacillating between validating and going dark. But it's obvious to me now that those two things can't be done at the same time.
For the most part, I am able to keep busy and feel like I have done a decent job of GALing despite Covid. I have a consistent outdoor exercise routine that is vital for my mental and physical health, I meditate, write and have some work projects that keep me occupied. I also have a large cohort of supportive friends and family, not all of whom know the details of my sitch, but the few that do are great outlets. I stay with a family member during my days away from the 'nest' and actually appreciate the opportunity to be on my own, sleep without littles disrupting me and read late into the night if I want. I would say that I enjoy the break, if I am really honest. But I would still prefer to be with my family.
H had a breakdown when I came back to switch out the kids today. He accuses me of making him feel like the most awful person in the world. Because I have refused to take ownership in his decision to leave us. My reasoning is that if he wants to leave, then he has to own it. This isn't something 'we' have decided to do, it is something 'he' has decided to do. He is in the driver's seat, not me. This is what we discussed with our MC at our last session a couple of months ago and I have held firm. Which is hard for me because I hate seeing him emotionally uncomfortable and have tended to step in and soothe/fix in the past.
My challenge is that he definitely has NGS and has spent his whole life trying to please people. Mostly me, although I didn't always recognize it. I don't have the same need to please, although I am a warm, nurturing 'giver' by nature. I just tend to ask for what I need and don't get bent out of shape if someone says no. And because that is how I operate, I just assume people will ask me for what they need too. I am very approachable and 99% of the time I say yes, often to my own detriment (say yes to too many things, push myself beyond my capacity etc).
I also believe that H has a stack of covert contracts that I never got around to fulfilling for him, simply because I didn't know they existed. All of my contracts were fulfilled, because I was clear about my needs and how he could fill them. So now he feels like he gave and gave and I didn't reciprocate (I did, just not the contracts that I didn't know about, which just so happen to be the most important ones to him). And then you throw EA/OW who is desperate to fulfill his contracts and we have a right old mess.
So not listening, not validating and going dark trigger his negative feelings about our MR. And yet I know that is what I need to do, for me as much as him right now. I'll stop for now, this is a lot.
