Hopefully Drifting Ashore (Riding the Wave 4)

[wayfarer]

When I read this post about your H getting ultra frustrated with the projects and you letting him be, I felt a bit of deja vu... I didn't take the time to walk through all your threads, but I feel like this is something that has happened before, maybe a year ago? Maybe it was in/re his parenting techniques rather than DIY stuff, IDK. If I am remembering correctly, though,

It's been an issue from the second we moved in together so I'm sure I mentioned it before. Probably multiple times. It was one of my biggest fears buying the house. Like I need an appointment with my IC I can't sleep at night fears. I was right. He was just straight up obnoxious at first, like I would go to the basement or garage to "organize" and just cry level of obnoxious. But part of all that emotion was because I didn't know what to say or do to get him to chill out. But that's on me trying to fix everything. Make it nice so he's calm and happy. Ahhh trauma responses

Don't we all! I have been thinking about this a lot, lately. I think I need to spend some time back focused on myself and my 180s-- I guarantee I've been slipping in some areas. It is funny too how years of behavioral patterns between two people just take soooooo much time to wear away...one tiny slip up and reversion to the old behaviors and we're both suddenly in the same place we were years ago. (And/or, does it work that way with you too? Or just me???)

I think every human person is capable of back sliding. Just as every human person is capable of growth. We slip back in to crappy patterns because there's comfort there for one reason or another. As long as you can see it happening and do your best to try not to immediately revert or regress you're doing your best. We're all works in progress.

What were your other 180s, WF?

Ok so not trying to fix everything was one of the biggies. But that breaks down into smaller things like relinquishing control, patience, and asking why I feel it's my responsibility to fix stuff.

Self care was a really big one that's gone out the window. But emptying the old place and settling in to the new place with a recent high school grad, a kid in summer school 1/2 by choice and 1/2 because she just stopped doing working in US History, and an H training for a marathon in Oct is more responsibility than I would like is resting on my shoulders and I simply don't have time. However starting my bday weekend all of the self care is coming back. Hair, nails, gym, baths, all of it. Partly because it keeps me sane, partly because I deserve it, and partly because I'm not going to put myself on the back burner longer than that ever again. I can feel some of my depressive tendencies creep in when I'm spread thin like this with zero time to myself. My H appreciates the upkeep. Granted he loves me and is attracted to me either way. But a shinier sunnier version of me is clearly preferred and I can't say I blame him. I like her better too.

Honestly GAL is a 180 for me. I'm a home body but with my depression I tend to like full on isolate and with my life right now being work, eat , old house, new house, sleep, repeat it feels like isolation so that's making me feel for the lack of a better term, sad. I'm a happier me when I'm living my life and not trudging along in it.

Oh and another big one is I won't just eat it when H says something that hurts my feelings or in totally inappropriate way to talk to me. I swallowed it for a long time. Just trying to keep things peaceful. I kind of decided through all of this I will fight with a stranger for a stranger if they are being mistreated but I won't do that with the people I live with and love because I'm so deeply conditioned to keep my mouth shut. I don't want to be her any more. I want to be who I was before my step-dad figuratively and literally beat that out of me. And clearing the air in the moment points out something I immediately don't like and it stops me from harboring resentment.

Also, how are the girls doing? Do they ever bring up the whole sitch with you?

So the girls very rarely bring it up. D17 dragged out her angst over the whole thing for so long that I don't know that there's much else to cover at that point. She really made H earn it. Not that he shouldn't have, but it was even to the point of D18 and I being like Ok well he didn't murder someone. It was miserable for all of us but not a year's worth of making him pay for it. It wasn't even a years worth of misery.

D18 likens the situation to her situation her sophomore year of high school. She's been with the same boy since they were in 7th and 8th grade. The summer between her Freshman year and Sophomore year, his Sophomore and Junior year her bf started getting weird. They fought all the time. He started hanging around friends she didn't like. Then he "cheated" (in the context of like sophomores not the real deal) they may have made out. I'm not 100% on that. She dropped him immediately. Started dating an 18 year old college Freshman, (that was an adventure, and a story for another time). That fizzled out and she just got really involved in school and hanging out with her friends from school, middle school and her restaurant job. The bf kept messaging her. She'd ignore him most of the time. Eventually his new gf tried to fight D18 (yet another story for another time, there was cyber stalking and harassment involved prior, not on my D's end, I almost had to get an injunction on that girl, it was a whole thing) and exbf got fed up with the new gf's crazy and dumped her. Summer came a couple months later and he started talking to D18 again, often, and she'd actually respond from time to time as she deemed fit. They eventually started hanging out again, and then they started dating again by Homecoming. The way she sees H's issue is much the way she saw her bf's. That the grass looked a lot greener until it wasn't, and while there are better ways to handle it, it's a fairly common and human response. As long as remorse and atonement are there then everyone can move on.

We had MC today and she said something interesting that made me think of you... she asked us (mostly me) to reframe the A so that the marriage was the victim, that it wasn't something that happened to ME but to my marriage... and then that the marriage isn't a victim, but a survivor. It seemed to me that you maybe always framed it that way? Thoughts?

Honestly I never stated it that way but that's exactly how I felt. I never felt like what he did he did to me. He did it to us. And the more detached I became the more I saw that "us" like the royal "us." LOL. That what he did while it broke my heart to pieces was done to who we were, not me, and definitely not who I was becoming, and it wasn't done to who we could be on the other side. The MR 2.0 idea really helped me conceptualize that. But I really do like the succinct way MC framed that.