W and I had a pretty good MC session yesterday. Where able to discuss our progress and successful holiday, and compare it to our recent setback regarding the plumbing.
Points of Note:
It is a common fear that things will go back to the way they were.
Chosing to act, ispite of how you are feeling is very positive. Be aware of the despair you are feeling and that acting inspite of despair is twice as positive.
Turns out W had some unspoken needs Tuesday night. Even though I came in and solved the immediate problem of water all over the floor - W just wanted to be heard. I just wanted a quick fix so I could go to my wrestling meet, and when I came home - W was in no mood to express her needs. She had jumped to expressing her anger and despair.
Even during MC on Wed, we would start to discuss how to express needs or actions to improve structure w/ kids and W would leap into expressing despair.
For example, W brought up the fact that she would like new couches - but since I'm happy with what we have she might as well just forget it and pretend to be happy. I interjected that we had agreed on getting new couches, even agreed that now that the kids are older we could get good, leather couches, we just needed to save money to afford them.
W remained in her emotion of despair - there was no recognizable acknowledgement that we were together on this topic. I think W may be deliberately confrontational when she feels despair and then sees a positive action that might make her feel better. But some of our conv must sink in, because eventually W makes a comment about something we talked about.
I'm learning that W is listening, and I think is deliberately trying to throw me off track, which makes it is even more important to do what we talk about.
Case in point. During our fight Tues. about the plumbing, I said I could not do anything while it was dark, but I would see what I could do the next day - if it stopped raining. So Wed. I left work early and dug a little ditch for water to drain out of our septic leech field into the drainage ditch at the back of our property. That little action scored major points with W (she told me so), although I could have sworn she didn't hear a word I said.
