Learning to trust myself III

[Burgbud]

Okay, I'm officially declaring it Pick On Heather Day (sorry).

Back in your old thread you wrote:

Am I unhappier being married to my H than I would be living half the time without my kids? Not right now, that's for sure. Those little angels are my life and I am their mother....every night I sing Billy Joel's lullabye to my daughter and I tell her "I will never leave you...". She's only two. Maybe someday my happiness in a partner will become more center stage, but right now my kids are my priority. We take vacations. We go out to dinner. We do homework. We play. We are a great family and I can't take that away from themn b/c I cheated on my H and now he is an a@@ to me.

I want to emphasize this part:

Maybe someday my happiness in a partner will become more center stage, but right now my kids are my priority.

Exactly. But your kids are also learning from you and Matt every day. They're learning how to resolve conflicts. They're learning coping skills. And they're learning how relationships work. S4 will expect to treat his W like H treats you. D2 will expect to be treated that way. If you're still looking for topics to cover with your C, this might be one to consider.

This issue really hits home with me. Though I think W is occasionally misguided in her parenting style I can say without reservation she loves her kids more than anything and has been willing to make almost any sacrifice for them. In fact she has sacrificed too much for them. I also have always had their best interests at heart and have been there for them more and more as they've gotten older. But for a large part of their lives now they've seen differences of opinion settled by sarcasm, yelling, and fighting. They've had defensiveness modeled as the normal way of being. And guess how they handle conflict within the family? By yelling and fighting and always having to be right. With other people they're usually great. But with each other the slightest issue sets them off. They're great with their parents as long as we're not trying to get them to do something they don't want. Then it's arguing and tracy-logic to the Nth degree. They've done a super job of absorbing what they've been shown.

Given all that, maybe this issue is too personal for me to give advice on. But I think it's worth asking yourself if D2 was in your shoes, what would you hope she would do? Because the biggest part of what she actually would do will be determined by the example you set.

Remind me tomorrow or next week I owe you a cheery post, okay? Or maybe I'll just write a note and remind myself.