Thanks for your visits. Moving Forward, I haven't come across the book you mentioned, I will look it up sometime. I have meanwhile been reading up on Narcissitic Personality Disorder and while much of it is so spot on, there are some aspects that still don't gel. Of couse no two people are the same, but then I read one personal account (journalling) of a woman's life with her H whom she decided had NPD, it was eeriely similar.
Basically right now I am backing off the situation and just thinking and reading. No contact with H except about D visitation. I am afraid when he calls I sound just about neutral, no interest or excitement in my voice.
Last night was one on the job with good friend, and it went well. We have made up and brushed clean some of the cobwebs in our friendship. So that's one good thing.
Older guy has been calling to ask about Sunday plans. I said I would go out with him if D was away with her Dad. Usually H rings the landlord by Thursday to confirm the arrangments for D's lift up. I heard nothing, so I emailed him this morning. At lunch time he rings to say that they are going up, but they don't know for sure whether they will stay overnight. This, as usual, means I cannot make plans to go out Saturday night or the whole day Sunday until the last minute . I do different things on Sunday depending on whether D is there or not, as she doesn't like all the 'boring' stuff that adults might want to do!
I understand that H lives in the sticks and has to depend on his landlord for lifts for D, but it is getting ridiculous, that I have to live my life depending on how the landlords of my separated H are living theirs. This has got to end at some point. It has got to become H's responsiblity to sort out transport for D. Thank goodness in the SA it says that he is reponsible for picking up and dropping D home, otherwise he would have had me jigging a merry dance.
H always comes back to how he is put in this position because I am in the family home and he has to live far away because he can't afford to live in town. Sometimes I long to be disentangled from him financially (and maybe downsize), but on the other hand, H himself has said that he never wants to own a home again, he frankly cannot be bothered with maintaining a home as such, so wherever he was he would be living a sort of batchelor existence, hardly providng a home for D. Which is why I intend to stay put here.
I would like to be able to insist that if it is H's weekend to have D, then he makes the arrangements to have her, come what may, so I get my time out, as it were. If I straight out said that, I know there would be a big rant and firworks about how I can never compromise etc.
The truth is, folks, if I base my expectations of how things will be in the future on how things were before, even in the "good ol' days", then I predict just more abdication of responsibility and H doing stuff to suit himself. Let's face it, after ranting and raging at me last summer for taking D away from him for "three months" (even though it was only nine weeks, and we were visiting the rest of D's family after all) he told me quite matter of factly (in fact I think he even stated that he was 'informing me') that he would likely be away for eight months this year, in my country of origin, working on his project. He didn't ask if it was OK with me, vis a vis looking after D during his visitation weekends or anything. I guess he thinks he has the right to do so, now that he is 'free' of me.
Any help to think through this puzzle?
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
