Ok this is my sitch update before I move over to piecing. I'll update this every once in a while in order to bump my thread back up but we're on pretty solid ground and I don't know that I need to be updating here much in general.
We closed on the house a little over a month ago. It's been a journey. The home is beautiful we love it. It was a flip and they did an amazing job. In this process we had seen a lot of pigs with lipstick on. This was truly done with care, so we haven't had to do much to make the home "the way we like," we have however have been having to do a lot to make the house habitable as flippers make changes for resale not livability. You know things like any kind of window covering or toilet paper roll holders...lol. H gets very, very tense doing DIY stuff. It's been a point of contention before. Just hanging pictures has turned into full blown fights. And when I offer to just do it myself it makes things worse. He doesn't like me just doing it even thought I know how. I feel it's partly because of the machismo issue which he likes to pretend that's not a thing, but it is. I also think it bothers him that I know a lot of the DIY stuff because my exH and I redid the entire house we had bought. I know how to steam wall paper off, mud drywall, cut and lay tile, etc. I only think the latter because he'll bring it up sarcastically when I say I can do something. It got frustrating and I just kind of gave up and relegated myself to other tasks.
Leaving it alone actually kind of worked out. The more little projects he did, the more he was proud of the work he did. He eventually started finding some joy in it. And the more he did the more he enjoyed being able to brag that he did that himself. It's taken me some time to learn that dealing with the things that get under his skin I have to handle a lot like the way I handle those kinds of things with our Ds. I can't try to fix it or just do it myself. That I just need to let it be, exit myself from the situation, and let the chips fall where they may. Letting all of them come to me for help instead of trying to fix everything in the moment seems to make stuff like this less tense for everyone. I'm not stressing over how "wrong" they are doing things or preemptively worrying about how long it's gong to take before they give up and I have to do it. They aren't stressing that I'm judging how they are doing things. Letting them at least attempt completing things with out my input or influence gives them a sense of pride. The feeling of knowing they are coming and asking me when they can't quite do something because they appreciate my help feels so much better than feeling like I have to do everything for everyone all the time. Gotta maintain that 180. Letting go of the control and having patience.
Girls both have summer jobs this year. D18 loves her craft store job. D17 managed to find a job that was willing to wait until she's done with her summer school stuff before she starts. Hoping D18 will have a license by fall. Not that she'll be able to drive to school as there's no parking, and what parking there is astronomical, but the hauling around was something I did not miss during lock down. H is training for another marathon in fall, but his knee is already giving him problems. I'm not a fan of his desire to keep training, but he wants to do the Chicago for his 40th and he promised me he'll be done with the marathon running after that and focus more on the biking after that. I'm switching my master's program. I've been feeling particularly unfulfilled and frustrated with my program as a whole so I'm moving into a program with a career change in mind that will start in fall. I'm pretty excited.
H has agreed to some online marriage programming stuff. Which I think is good. He's still trying super hard. He works every day to show me how much he loves me. He's working very hard on his patience with our girls. He's getting much better at setting boundaries with his family. I'm just so proud of the growth in him. And I'm relieved to not have to be in the mediator position between him and the girls or the bad guy position with his family. It's crazy how different this version of H is from the one who was going to leave me, and even that guy I fell in love with.
