I had several good days of feeling better, more meditation, more focus on the teaching I'll be doing in the fall, and those days happened to be the ones where H works out of the house. No surprise there--it's so much easier to relax and enjoy myself knowing he won't be back any time soon. It gives me hope that one day I'll be alone in this house finally and living my life--sure, probably with some grief to work through over the reality of H being gone, but in an environment that is peaceful and safe.
I did also get stuck here, though:
Originally Posted by DnJ
Ask yourself this:
Was I happy in my marriage?
Overall. Don’t focus on a couple of bad incidences, over the 10 years of marriage, over the 16 years together. Look overall.
Just like all the reading I did after BD on MLC, I've been driven to read more about borderline personality disorder, passive aggression, etc. I felt some validation in recognizing that maybe the circular arguments that have occurred over the last (at least) half of our M were at least in part due to H's coping mechanisms, passive aggression, avoidance, distorted self-image, and were not reccuring because I couldn't figure out how to communicate with him, but because nothing I could have done/said would have made sense to him or would have gotten through to him. When any argument ends with him saying I don't understand him and I'm making him the bad guy, how do you get out of that? Let me tell you, defensiveness, justifying, explaining, reassuring--none of that worked. I felt helpless and terrible during these conversations, powerless to break the pattern. And I'm coming to understand that H would have had to have wanted to break the pattern too, to look at what was going on internally with him, and that's another thing I couldn't have forced him to do if he didn't want to.
It's clear now H was controlling in some ways, not sharing financial info with me, for example. Sometimes H's anger made me angry, and then it scared me, and I would imagine, for example, my mom witnessing the way he reacted when he got angry, and I would know she wouldn't approve of the words he was using toward me.
Was I happy?
I let some of his behavior go, because I loved him, and I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I trusted that if he didn't love me, he wouldn't tell me he did. I trusted that if he was so unhappy with the SSM, he would tell me, and he would want to work together to make changes.
I knew he pushed emotions down, but that wasn't and isn't my responsibility.
Was I happy?
That wasn't the entirety of our 17 years together and really only started happening for maybe the last half. I don't want to rewrite all of our history to focus only on these moments.
I remembered H's mom's breakdown a few years ago, her revealing that she'd struggled with depression and anxiety all her life, something that H didn't know. She sat at our kitchen table and told us that we didn't love her and didn't really want her here visiting.
Last week, H and I sat at that same table and he told me I had never loved him, never really wanted a relationship with him.
I remembered H's dad had been in AA for years, and though H only has happy memories of his childhood, there's a lot I don't know and he doesn't remember about what his mom's R with his dad was like before they divorced.
Originally Posted by bttrfly
Oh boy, yeah I get it, but please learn from my experience - this is wasted energy. You will never ever know the answer.
Want to know something else? Your H doesn't know the answer any more than you do. Chew on that for a while.
Yes. I read too much, until the overlap between MLC and personality disorders and learned behaviors gave me a headache. I think I'm still trying to know what my side of the street is, still struggling to forgive myself for things I could have done differently, still working to accept that I will never know the answer, because there is no singular answer. This is my coping mechanism, I guess--I just need to research as if I'm getting a degree in psychology, and all will eventually make sense!
Maybe two things I can be sure of: there were/are childhood issues at play for H in addition to whatever else, whatever good and imperfect aspects there were to our M, and I can't work through any of these issues for him. I never could. I want him to come out of this a healthier person eventually, and that is entirely up to him.
The other thing: Was I happy? Maybe I'm too far in this mess to trust my answer right now. Did I love him? I can answer that wholeheartedly: Yes.
Originally Posted by wooba
Keep the good memories, as for the rest - let it go.
