I am very interested in all the posts here, and am not in the least bit offended. I just don't have time right now to respond to all the thought thrown out, I will just update a little and get back to the other points later.
Well, the bit about H telling me he felt he was here over Christmas on sufferance really got me thinking. I couldn't get my head around it. I thought I had done everything to make him feel welcome and well tended to. But see, in this situation, it is sooooooo hard to know just what level of friendliness is right.
Going back to last year, when he was here over New Year, when it was the beginning of friendly contact some seven to eight months after the bomb, I remember one meal he got up abruptly and changed the lighting, saying it was too 'romantic'. We have a spotlight affair over the dining table, and general lights in the room. I had switched off the general lights and just had the spot lights on, which he objected to. I just saw it as making a nice atmosphere using the lights that in fact *we* had installed one year earlier, in our NEW house, in an attempt to make it cosier and nicer than our old house, which had badly thought out lighting.
So if I am nice, I am trying too hard, I am trying to manipulate him, seduce him, whatever.
And if I am not nice enough, then he is here on sufferance, I am humiliating him, stealing from him, not compromising etc etc.
He obviously is in some kind of fog if he thinks I am not going to object to him staying here with an OW as well.
Anyhow, I emailed him yesterday, thanking him for the raisin bread he had brought over, said we were enjoying it, and then asked him to tell me what made him feel he was here on sufferance, to please allow me to understand his POV?
I have had no reply to that yet.
But, I got a call a short while ago. H sounding agitated. Said it had started snowing up in the hills. I came back with "Oh wow, that's great, D will love that" and he said, after sighing, that he had just attempted to hitch a lift up to the town to go shopping, but that all the so-called Christians driving past had declined to stop and give him a lift, some had even rolled down their windows and shouted at him. So please would I send up some food with D for the holiday period. I said, sure. I have just been out to drop D off at a friend's house to play and done a bit of shopping.
My gut instinct is always to feel bad for H and want to help him out, invite him down etc. Even cancel my plans and invite him here instead, where it is warm and comfortable, but I know at this point these suggestions would backfire.
What is a LBS to do?
Now if I go away and have a nice time, leave our comfy flat empty and H and D have anything less than a brilliant New Year, it will of course be my fault. I will no doubt 'pay' for it with further bouts of ranting and bad temper and P/A behaviour.
Any thoughts?
Livnlearn
PS. Ellie, I am not going anywhere near a ski resort. Also, I cannot afford anything more fancy than visiting friends at the moment.
Yesterday, I had an impromtu skipping rope competition with D, and got up to 45 skips before tripping on the rather short rope, and D got up to 51, but she was pleased to see me at least attempt something with her.
Then we went ice skating in the evening, and for most of the hour on the ice I was the oldest person skating by some fifteen years.
After that we went to good friend's house for dinner, and there met other friends/acquaintances, who have a room to let in their house down in the city. It sounds like a very good deal, all inclusive price, so no extra bills. Was wondering whether to tell H about it, but worried it will somehow backfire.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
