Learning to trust myself III

[Burgbud]

I guess I thought this was what I was supposed to do? Look at my own behavior to see how it is contributing to the madness? Change him by changing myself. Am I taking this too literally?!

I think you're right. I'm trying to control his behavior. But isn't that part of the premise of what we're doing here? Monitoring "results"....what are those "results" supposed to be? Changes in the other person's behavior, right?

Ah, good. A chance to try and clarify what I'm talking about.

This may be over-simplistic, but I think the heart of what I'm trying to say is that maybe if you change your behavior you can avoid a repeat of him putting his hands around your throat. But you can't change him from being a person who would put his hands around your throat under certain conditions (which, except in the case of self-defense, those conditions can NEVER justify what he did). He's going to have to see a need to change and take action to change himself. I think part of the DB idea is that if you become this magnetic person who makes everybody tingle by just being around you, then your spouse will see that and do whatever it takes to keep you in their life. That would seem an entirely rational belief if your spouse is healthy. But if your spouse isn't healthy, then all bets are off.

I was thinking about this yesterday...you're in a lot different position from most of us because your marriage isn't threatened. You're not willing to leave and he's not willing to leave. So you're not trying to save your M. You're trying to figure out how to optimize your M and your family life. So by all means you should work on making yourself as healthy and happy as possible. And you should try different things and see how they affect H. Just don't expect that he's going to react to you like a healthy person would. That's what I mean by chasing your tail. Don't expect him to respond the way you'd like to your changes, and above all don't blame yourself when he doesn't. At this point, your R is not hurting because of you. I think your role now is to make your situation the best it can be for yourself and your kids. Let H own his problems; you worry about the rest of you.

I've got a suggestion for you to consider. It seems to me that it's high time to reestablish yourself in your R. Your mini-A is water way under the bridge by now. Seriously...let go of it. Don't take any more bullets for it. And start by fixing your sleeping arrangements.

If you want to sleep in the marital bed, then from now on that's where you should sleep. If he's going to come in and turn on the light on you, then learn to sleep with the light on. If he makes it even more miserable for you to sleep there, to the point there's no way you can stand it, or if you don't really care about sleeping there, then move all your stuff into the other bedroom and sleep there all the time. Including when he's gone. And I mean ALL your stuff. Don't leave anything. That'll just be his bedroom from now on. Let him figure out if that's the way he wants to live. And if it is, then fine. Give up the idea that you can fix this yourself and just worry about making yourself as happy as possible within the limits of your sitch.

If he's happy having just a live-in, co-parenting R with you then good for him. But even that R requires more from him than he's giving right now. He's gotta meet you some part of the way (1%? 10%? 25%? 50 (gasp!) %?).

The bottom line of what I'm trying to say is do whatever you need to make yourself happy and healthy and don't let his crap get in your brain.

That's all.