Guess I left this board with my sitch in a bit of a down spin. I’m happy to share I quickly pulled out of the nose dive of jealousy and had a really good R for a little while. Until this weekend.
I’ve had stress piling up on me, and Saturday I was working a wrestling tournament. On the way there my transmission went out on my car, I was left with only first gear. I called W to share my predicament, and prepare her to start thinking about figuring out how to afford a new vehicle for me. W was fairly supportive, and asked if I wanted her to come get me, which I declined since I was almost at the school.
Sunday I got ‘lay-on-the-bathroom-floor’ sick with the flu, and was unable to even sit with the family for Easter Dinner. W cooked a whole lot but didn’t allow herself to enjoy it, and actually got angry at the messy, cluttered kitchen all the cooking caused. S13 and I tried to offer encouraging affirmations, mine were spoken weakly from the couch – saying how good it smelled.
W’s anger has built and built from there. Monday, while I was checking car prices on-line, I called W for some verbal encouragement, but before I even got a chance to say anything, W unloaded on me about how horrible her life was, and proceeded to blame everything on me. When W started F’ing me I hung up.
Last night, in-between bashings that everything was my fault, W managed to share that she was realizing she was deliberately sabotaging her M so it would be ruined just like she felt, that she was treating me meanly so I would reject her just like everyone else (her father) did. I
For the most part I’ve just kept my tongue, and if I say anything at all it’s just to clarify or to ask W to explore something she said. This is a big 180 for me, to ask questions rather than make statements. I still need a lot of work at it, and most importantly, W needs time to realize I'm not making statments - W's response to anything I say when she is unloading isn't based on what I've said.
Today at our MC, W totally unloaded on the MC too. Not blaming or directing anger at her, but a lot of mistrust and frustration. I don’t think I have every really understood the depth and breadth of W’s rage and how confused and scared and unhappy it makes her. W claims, and I believe her, to have been sexually abused as a pre-teen, but I believe W’s parent’s D was the main abuse resulting in W’s current problems with rage.
I had planned to use the MC session to talk about my need for W to not talk with OM. Just last week she admitted her continued phone contact with OM, and claimed to have stopped answering or returning his calls. I haven’t been able to start a constructive conv to bring the subject up, but I felt the need to share that during my research on where to cut costs, I ran some cell phone usage summaries and 98% of our local usage was to OM. I never got to the topic in MC, and now I’m probably going to wait until the next billing cycle anyway, but I don’t know what I’m going to do if OM’s number comes up on the report.
W ran an errand tonight and I started cleaning the garage, something W has been on my about since Christmas. I've given her space, but last time she came downstairs she seemed a little more at peace than earlier.
Well, I printed our cell phone records to find out why our cell bill was $40 above normal. 1 1/2 pages of calls to OM! The latest on March 29.
What bothers me most is not that she's talking to OM, but that she has professed her committment to eliminate him from her life, and has thrown away soaps and lotions and other gifts he purchased for her, or that remind her of him.
I'm feeling like W's change of heart and recent improvements are all just smoke to keep me off her back. I know I can't confront W, but I also can't just live with this knowledge and continue to have positive feelings toward W. Sunday night W left a CD of copied music out. I did not recognize the style or brand of CD, and asked W where she got it. W initially got very upset and avoided answering, saying she's had it for a long time. Eventually W admitted OM from 1st A made it for her. This made for a bad evening, even though I did my best to back off - W kept pursuing the issue. The next day W called me at work and said she was throwing the CD away. After a short, pleasant conversation about W purging everything from her past, I explained that I had needs too. W said like what, and I said, "like you not talking to OM anymore." W got real quiet, but agreed.
Now I have positive proof that she is still talking with OM.
W is making dramatic progress in acceptance and forgiveness, I don't want to destroy that progress, but am going nuts keeping this to myself. It's like every doubt I had about W's activities has been validated. Did she really go out with the "girls" until 11:30 last night? Even though I know one of the women she was with, do I believe her? Did she really just go to AutoValue to have the truck looked at? Is the reason she has to just "get out of the house" sometimes because she's given up trying to make up excuses to see OM?
I'm teetering on the brink of trust, and filing for D myself - I have to be careful that my attitude when approaching W about her calling OM has as little impact on W's reaction as possible.
I'm thinking about just leaving the list where she can find it, or highlighting the calls to OM that are more than 1 minute. I may try to use a copy of the conflict resolution worksheet from our MC, but I'm not sure it will help, since I'm not sure how we both contribute to W calling OM, or how I can help with a possible solution.
I was unable to act as if when I went home, and W picked up right away that something was wrong. I told her I didn't want to talk about it yet, but that we would talk later. W kept nagging me to know what I what I wanted to talk about later, so I went outside.
Shortly before I needed to take the kids to karate, I handed W a stack of papers. The top sheet was a blank Conflict resolution worksheet (maybe I should have filled in some of it?). After that was the cell bill usage report, with OM's phone numbers on top. After that were comparisons of other cell phone packages - but W never got that far. She asked what was this, I said our cell bill was $40 over this month and I wasn't happy with who she was calling on the cell phone.
W said she wasn't going to put up with me telling her what to do and threw the papers on the floor. I told the kids to get their stuff, I was leaving to take them to Karate. D8 came out to the car - after waiting 3 minutes for S13 & S9, we left without them.
W brought the boys to karate, but did not stay. Small talk at home before bed - things seemed to relax, but this issue of W calling OM was still hanging in the air.
This morning went pretty well, W helped with breakfast, and joked around a little, but later this morning W called me at work and unloaded on me.
She never loved me, she hates me - and hates all men, she needs someone to talk to, I wasn't going to control her, she could do what she wanted - it was her life, we shouldn't even consider ourselves married, she hates me for what I'd done to her.
I took it for as long as I could, but finally asked W if there was something specific we could focus on. Somehow the conv lead into W's need for support and how no one was there for her. That led me into bashing W about how she had never been there for me, and how I hate her for that. I went on to tell her what an awful example she has been to the kids, showing them it was okay to lie, it's okay to cheat on your husband, that the only time she is happy is when she is acting ignorant and swearing, and our kids think it's okay to swear as part of normal language. W went silent, and I knew I had gone to far.
I don't feel any better after unloading on W, it felt good coming out, but now I feel worse.
Lol, you sound like me. Pacience is hard. I also have had doubts whether to keep taking the abuse and not doing anything about it, I guess it is pretty normal that sometimes we boil over. Let it go, put on your happy face, and keep going. There is no such thing as screwing up forever as long as you get back up again. Walking on egg shells all the time also does bad things to your health, that is something I am convinced of.
Got home last night and W ignored me. I think I tried twice to engage her in answering a question, then left her alone and went about my business, doing odd jobs outside.
Eventually W had to say something to me, and I did a good job acting-as-if. At one point I reached out to scratch her back (her LL is physical touch), and she pulled away, saying she did not deserve any affection from anyone.
She said I was right to say she was a horrible person because she is. I didn't say anything. W said she had cried all day, but she didn't blame me anymore.
Before bed W sat next to me on couch to use laptop computer. I started scratching her back, and she told me not to, that she didn't deserve it. I just kept scratching and W finally allowed herself to enjoy it. W reminded me she was going to C the next day (today) as soon as the kids got on the school bus to take a MMPI? before her scheduled appointment with her C.
This morning as I was leaving I told W that I did not want the way I talked yesterday to be our future, that I did not want to live or act that way. W told me not to apologize, I interupted her and said I wasn't trying to apologize, I was trying to explain that I truely want to be different and put all this behind us.
W reverted back to how it didn't matter because she was a horrible person, and she deserved everything bad I said about her, but that some of it was my fault that she was this way. I didn't try to answer, I just said, "I want our future to be different than our past" and asked W if she was going to get ready to go to C.
W asked if I was going to watch the kids until they got on the bus so she could dry her hair, I said sure and W went to dry her hair.
I hope W takes my heart-felt desire to have a happy family WITH her as seriously as she seems to take my outbursts of anger. I'm still surprised at how much of what I say W actually does hear, even though I can't tell she hears me, or emphatically denies what I'm trying to say.
