Well, now I have extra sticky buns, so feel free to stop by! Or I can mail you one. Three sticks of butter for 9 buns, plus honey, heavy cream, brown sugar, pecans... fitting for Christmas morning. Although I couldn't eat lunch after that!
Sticky buns aside, I wasn't feeling great yesterday, so I stayed in my pajamas and napped, read some books. I was dismayed and surprised when H returned in the afternoon; since he'd been gone for a week, I really thought he'd be gone through Christmas day. He's still in nice mode, wishing me Merry Christmas, changing the hard-reach air filter for the first time since BD, etc. From my outside perspective, these periods always seems to follow the anger and outbursts. It appears to me that he feels lighter, feels that he's gotten some of that pain out, and all is well with his life again finally. Then some pain will rise up inevitably and he has to beat it down again. That's the cycle. His uncle called to wish him a Merry Christmas, and I had to put headphones on. The call didn't last long, maybe five minutes. I miss his family. I miss all of our holiday traditions with them. His is a small family--really only his mom, dad and longtime girlfriend, uncle and cousins. At Christmas, I miss him being a part of my much larger family, which he fit into so well. Everyone loved him.
Originally Posted by DnJ
H was/is in a place where he is unable to hear or receive any of that. His own emotionally pains are being projected upon you. He cannot handle his own emotions, so he throws them at you. “You didn’t care enough. Didn’t love enough.” Is actually about him - it is he that didn’t care or love enough. And he knows it and cannot face it.
Didn't care enough, didn't love enough--I think he feels this way toward his mom and old friends as well and, again, all the anger and pain of it is pinned to me. The projection, when you put it this way, is also that he feels he really can't care enough or love enough to receive or deserve love in return. I see it's a whole tangled ball of yarn, not just me, yet I still have that urge to address what I can, what little part of the yarn might be mine. I saw his pain and not just his anger for once (even though I see that the anger is just a different manifestation of his pain), and it's made me miss him anew.
Post-BD, we are told to show up differently, to make changes for us, and to enact them, not talk about them. Did I do that? I stopped being defensive, I wrote the apology letter, I gave him a very thoughtful, heartfelt anniversary gift (these last two not DB recommended, but I chose to do both because the actions felt right to me, true to me and the changes I was committed to making, and in my case I don't think they made anything worse or better—they were more for me than him, though do I still have that hope that someday he will actually be able to see these gifts for what they were and receive them? Yep.); from time to time in the first six months I did try to make space for communication between us, a few times overtly by saying things like, "I don't want there to be any misunderstanding between us, so if you ever have questions, I hope you'll feel free to ask me," and "I'm here if you ever want to talk about ____" after his friend died; I showed up like a friendly neighbor when he did want to make small talk; I said nothing about his new habits of drinking and staying out all night. My big 180 for me was making a move on him (either before there was or before I knew about potential OW), because I was tired of being held back by my own fear of being vulnerable and not expressing my desire. This last one must have really surprised him, because he's mentioned it a couple of times since--"You never did anything like that in our R!" I don't know what to make of that. I think it's probably fueled his anger and hurt over SSM (the "It's too late now!" kind of thing), but it was probably the biggest action that I took to show myself that I wouldn't settle for SSM anymore, and that I wouldn't be held back by fear or doubt. (Also, as an aside, I was just thinking of how weird that would feel now, because he really does seem like a stranger most of the time, though if I squint really hard, I can still see the H I knew.)
Does all of that show love? It didn't register for him, consciously, at least, but does it register for me as love? Isn't love also what we *don't* do after BD? I never blamed the state of our M on him, never made remarks that might guilt or shame him for what he was doing, for walking away, for taking off his ring, for not filing, for dating someone else. (That doesn't mean that I sometimes don't still want to tell him how disappointed I am by all this). What if he actually doesn't remember a lot of this because he was just so out of it for most of that time? I guess technically he has the apology letter and the anniversary note, and he definitely remembers the move I made...
Is it really that I could have done more, or is that in trying to answer this question it's like I'm relying on someone who is momentarily blind to see all the love letters I've laid out in front of him?
Originally Posted by DnJ
You cannot fight him directly. He isn’t even listening to himself. His view is what it is, for now. And you know better. Hang on to that. Believe that.
He isn't even listening to himself.
Maybe what this comes down to is that I want to know, whether he does or not, that I was open, was willing to be vulnerable, to look at myself and make changes (and this is different than feeling like I need to pretzel in order to "win" him back). I do know all of this is true. What I guess I don't know is if I "showed" this as much as I could.
Sometimes I think of it this way: post BD, I've only had H's exterior to go on, and if I didn't know any better from reading and this place, I'd think H was living his best life and has no grief whatsoever over the end of our M (I mean, I still struggle with thinking that at times! Thinking of the exchanges I've had with Kindly on this). So does he see me the same way? Does he look at me--almost never crying in front of him since BD, always polite, seemingly confident, doing my own thing--and think the same thing? That the end of our M didn't really affect me? That it was a little sad but then I moved on, see, I really didn't love him that much!
I realize I'm getting sucked into this somewhat pointless hypothetical, as if there was anything I could actually *do* to make him see me differently while he's in this state. Do I need a DB 2x4?
Sometimes I just feel so dull and wooden around him, like I'm going through the motions. Good morning! Merry Christmas! I feel so reserved, so far away, like I am in the middle of a large costumed me, pushing buttons to nod my head or make words come out. I want to be me. I want to be real. Is it just unfortunate that there was some distance between us before BD, and there is no way to change that now? Just unlucky that I want to be real and can't do that with my current roommate, so that makes me feel like I'm not?