Well, hell. I'm at home alone tonight - S. just kicked me out. After I met him at the food coop after yoga, we drove home together and I unloaded his grocs while he found a parking spot. I started dinner, and he snipped at me because he wanted to clean the kitchen first. It was already 10:30p.m.
So I told him I didn't appreciate being talked to like that, and later he apologized. Well, he had laundry all over his bed, and needed to get through it before making the bed. I was dozing on the chair in the LR, and he came out and WOKE ME UP and SENT ME HOME. I was really annoyed, because he could have left me there sleeping there, then come and gotten me when the bed was made. I told him as much and left. What an @ss.
So much for QT.
I realize he needs cave time, which motivated his kicking me out, but what an @SS!
H2H, he was very smooth again - when I said what I thought of his "concern," he said "Oh, I was just thinking you'd want to go home and get a good night's sleep! It'll be awhile before the bed gets made, and I thought you'd want to go on home."
Hi Jennifer - I sympathise - cave time comes in all shapes and sizes, and I guess when you are living in different places, it becomes more pronounced. NG needs his cave time too, and I guess I'm learning how to subtly pre-empt his desperation by offering solitude - becoming less available myself, at periodic intervals. This is a tough tango, knowing when to do the QT, and knowing when to 'do dark' so to speak.
It is good that you were able to recognise it for what it was though Ain't perspective grand?
Thanks, Slowly, perspective IS grand! I knew enough not to open my mouth and b*tch my way out of the house as the door was practically closing on my heels. I do recognize his need for cave time, and I'm usually pretty good about the pre-emptive withdrawal. Last night was just so annoying because it felt like he wasn't taking care of me in ANY way - I mean, I was already asleep! I'm over it now, but I thought it was so rude.
*** OK, here's where I take stock and gather my troops and take a deep breath... and get back to work. As I posted over on MovingForward's thread, I've been getting angry at all the ways HE isn't doing for ME. So now I need to get back to strong me, fabulous me, loving detachment me, still getting a life me.
Here are some S-T goals (off the top of my head) for this week and next:
1. This week will be very busy for both S. and me. I will take the opportunity of S's absence to get work done, spend some time with my dear friends and housemates (H and his BF), and finish purging the piles of accumulated papers from my room and office. 2. It is still warm, so I will get some outdoor exercise - ride my bike or run in the park. Yoga gives me great tone, but the cardio has all but fallen by the wayside. I need some blood-pumping exercise. 3. I need to spend some time drumming up new clients, as the project I am working on is coming to a close. I don't have time to solicit right away, but I can at least put some preliminary feelers out. 4. Start my paper journal up again. I have been neglecting it (and myself), and I could use some good self-reflection these days. 5. Make a more genuine effort to speak S's LLs this week, without being overbearing. One thing I could work on is WOA. I have been criticizing a lot lately.
Tonight S. and I go to the theater with my H & H's BF. After the theater, I go to the paper with S. to be in the excitement of a major news organization as the election results come in!
Goals for tonight: Stay out of S's hair while he works, be out of sight for awhile, not be afraid to meet people on my own, not make S. feel he has to babysit me.
Hey you - I've got some thoughts on yesterday's post & today's, but I can't post right now (MUST get some lunch in me!). I like you getting back on track with those goals...
I'll be back - and I hope part of that getting a life includes Girls Night out with your um, "work colleague"!
OK, feeling a little anxious. Haven't heard from S. and my usual phone-card snooping has revealed that there was a phone call (can only be international) between last night and today, but the server is down and I can't see to whom (could be friends in Switz, friends in England, or Swiss Miss).
Am remaining calm and away from the phone.
I just got back from voting, which was a nerve-wracking experience. First, the machine's explanation of how to do a write-in vote was confusing (we have a dark-horse candidate who is wonderful for state assembly, and it's important, as we're having a huge flap over building a huge stadium in MY NEIGHBORHOOD!).
So I had to call in the voter lady, a dithery old woman with a flower in her hat. She didn't know, and so another voting lady (another of the same ilk) came in. Meanwhile, my curtains were flapping in the wind for all the world to see my choices. Second voter lady showed me how to do it (the instrux were VERY confusing and in the end, incorrect - GREAT!) and I was alone again, curtains protecting me.
Then when I finished, I couldn't get the lever to move back, which records my vote. It was stuck (and I'm a strong woman). In comes the first voter lady. In comes the second voter lady. Curtains flapping.
So third voter lady bustles in, grabs the lever, snaps "Get out of the way," and pulls it right over! We're all crowded into my booth, and attracting no small amount of attention from waiting voters (not to mention a VERY cute guy who smiled at me and raised his eyebrows ). The whole time, the second voter lady kept repeating, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Lord. Ohhhhhh, Jesus!"
Turns out the call was to FF in Texas, who is going through a messy D (2 young kids). He must have left a message, because the call was 1 minute. Probably returning a call from her. NOT that there hasn't been weirdness with her in the past, but it is certainly MUCH less threatening than a call to Switzerland.
First of all you had me laughing out loud here in the wall-less office with your voting story!
And second, I'm glad you got your answer - BEFORE I was about to ask you what happened last time you snooped and automatically ASSumed S. was up to no good. . . Turned out he proved to be the good man that he is.
Still, there's a lesson to be had here - do you see how quickly you (ok, WE, as I too am quite guilty of this) readily assume the worst of S.? I wonder just what would happen if you tried (let's say 1 solid month as a trial period) of ASSuming only the best. Do you think maybe that quick-to-think-negatively may just reflect in your tone, body language and choice of words, and he can pick this up? Could he be feeling like a specimen under the microscope these days? What if you took this 1 month to take a break from snooping so as not to throw you off your positive thinking track?
I agree you have had a couple of strange days there w/ S., but in general I see the INTENT to focus on LL's get side-tracked or shelved too quickly by 'smallish' details or events. At some point, you have to give it all you got from your best self and watch what happens. Or are you gonna keep that one foot in the door just in case?
OK. Whack taken. But in my defense, he has used that card to call OW, and only OW, for the last 8 months. It was HIGHLY unusual for him to use it to call domestically, because his cel. phone plan has free LD. But yes, I was quick to ASSume.
One thing I can be a little tiny bit proud of is that during the time not knowing who he called, I thought about "what if it was OW," and decided that yes, maybe he was calling her because things were off with us and she loomed a little in his mind. But I decided what was more likely was that either she called and he called her back, or he called her after having received an e-mail a few days ago from a mutual friend. (He and OW haven't spoken in 2 months, remember, and she doesn't even know I'm back in the picture, and the last time they talked it was for 2 hours and they "caught up," so I am assuming they hung up on good terms. So why *wouldn't* she call again? It seems perfectly natural to me, though when it happens, I will no doubt feel very anxious about it.) And I decided that I would wait for him to tell me (our agreement), and hear him out, and not flip out.
So back to the drawing board (for the third time this week?!). You're right, though, they are "smallish" events.
Don't know if I can lay off the snooping. When Swiss Miss knows he loves me is when I'll feel more comfortable not snooping. C'mon, H2H, you know how it is.
Oh, I wasn't whacking - precisely because everything I wrote to you applies equally to me. I can "Yes, BUT..." with the best of them.
Having recently had a similar atypical event (SO's trip to the city), I also plunged headlong for the day into doom & gloom and sadness. In the end, I left it alone and no 'damage' seems to have been done. It does take work to constantly focus on the positive and all but ignore the negatives.
Hmmm, let me see here - rumaging around that journal of mine for handy quotes for the day:
* If we want the truth from our partners, we must make it safe for them to tell it
* People who don't talk to us are people who don't expect us to listen
* Remember to communicate in a positive way, as negative thoughts can not possibly manifest positive deeds.
Quote: Don't know if I can lay off the snooping. When Swiss Miss knows he loves me is when I'll feel more comfortable not snooping. C'mon, H2H, you know how it is.
Oh yeah, I know . . . One question, who cares what Swiss Miss knows or doesn't know? I understand your point here - just trying to steer you into focusing you on YOUR R, not some lass living on another continent...
JinB, I also was laughing out loud about the voting booth incident (although voting difficulties are not a laughing matter--just that you told it so well!).
I'd also like to second H2H's advice, which I think is *excellent.* Not that you don't have reasons to distrust S and his behavior with Swiss Miss or a thousand 20-something beauties, but that you can't do anything about it, and to the extent that much of this is your anxiety and ASSuming, you can do something about that. I'd say a month is a good period of time to work on this, just as H2H has prescribed.
Hang in there....have you been doing the cardio thing? Does it help?
Ain't perspective grand?
). The whole time, the second voter lady kept repeating, "Oh, Jesus. Oh, Lord. Ohhhhhh, Jesus!"
