Hi everyone, thanks for the holiday wishes! Happy 2021, may this year be better than the last and bring more peace and acceptance to all of our lives.
I have had some up and downs over the past 10 days or so. H was present for Christmas, which thrilled the children, but was hard on me. The days of playing happy family are definitely over for me, and thankfully there are no birthdays or holidays coming up soon.
The kids are great. They are such gems of human beings and I have really loved my time with them lately. I have gone easy on myself for the big stuff and just really focused on them and what matters. It is of course easier to do that with school being out and with H available to help more with them.
A couple of days ago, H and I got into a conversation that morphed into a R convo and a couple of things stood out to me that I would love help processing:
- H told me he is mirroring me. So if I am happy and pleasant and friendly, he is too. If I am a little more distant and self-protective, he is too. But at the same time, he monsters or jabs at me and then expects me to maintain pleasant and friendly (NC or low contact = Sage being distant and terrible, FWIW). I want to be pleasant and friendly, but there are lots of times when I just can't be those things and not betray my recovering sense of self.
- H has completely unrealistic expectations of what a D is going to do to him (us) financially. This really concerns me because we have the potential to D amicably or collaboratively, but the only way he is going to avoid those huge consequences is if I walk away with nothing (totally unrealistic, not going to happen). So I worry that his lack of understanding is going to create huge conflict when he realizes the truth and he will blame it on me and things will get ugly. We have crossed this bridge a few times over the last 6 months where he has an unrealistic idea in his head of how things are going to unfold and then is shocked when they unfold according to common sense consequences.
- H keeps telling me that in all of my pursuit for repairing our R over the past year, I never made the focus entirely on him, it was never about how much I loved and wanted HIM, it was more about the children or the business or our life. But I have emails and texts and conversations where it was all about him and us, and that has always been my focus in my heart and mind. I have experienced so much re-writing of history that I feel like this falls into that category, but it was more recent stuff. It is like he couldn't hear me say those things. Has this happened to any of you?
- In a lucid moment, H asked me what I needed from him. I said that it was really, really hard to see this person in front of me that I have loved and adored for 15 years, be so distant and cruel and pointedly hurtful to me. He acknowledged that he has so much resentment and bitterness built up in him towards me from things that have happened in our M that it makes him incapable of being that previous person and he feels angry and resentful. I have spent a year wracking my brain, heart and soul for everything I did wrong in our M to deserve this and I cannot come up with an equal balance sheet. Not even close. But I get that this is his narrative and there is nothing I can do to change it.
- Based upon the above, he brings this sackful of resentment to me every time we interact. He metaphorically throws it all at me, but doesn't want me to fix it or sort through it or try to make it better. It's a one-way street. I am in a glass cage. I can see him coming towards me with this sack of resentment and I can't escape. I know he is going to dump it on me and try to drown me with it.
I don't want to live like this anymore and I know that only I am in control of that. I am very close to complete no contact and a parallel-parenting situation (as opposed to the co-parenting situation we are attempting now). But in the end, a parallel parenting scenario is going to hurt the children the most (and their longterm R with him). So I would like to avoid that if possible, at least until he follows through with D and we have the contentious issues (finances, custody) hammered out.
Can my wise friends help me? Where are my blind spots on boundaries to protect myself from this toxicity?
