Cobra, you may be nodding your head thinking, Yeah I can relate to that....but put yourself in my position for a moment and feel how it feels to be on the receiving end of it.
I do see your point and understand how you feel. But holding on to that fantasy (and it is a fantasy in you mind, whether justified or not), is not going to help YOU. What if he decides he can't or won't do everything you want?
GGB, Howdy friend! We do our shopping with all 3 of the kids. Need I tell you what a fun experience that is. Well, I could not leave the rope alone and wrote him this morn and asked about attending the marriage encounter at the end of the month. He replied that his mother had already volunteered to watch the kids for it. I said, WHY didn't you tell me about it? There is one crazy dynamic in our M. If I insist on something, even to the point of having to get bitchy about it, he'll do it and then be so dang glad that we did. But it has to be me initiating it and *insisting* on it. Gol, it drives me nuts.
Cobra, Parentified, huh. Well this would certainly apply to him. His father had a job where he was gone for 13 weeks at a time. Then home for a couple weeks and back out in the field. H was the oldest boy and the pressure was on him to be a 'fill in' until his dad got home. His niche in his family was to be the perfect son. The altar boy, boy scout, everything to everyone.
HP, I'm nodding too. Ideally, your R and your Lover should be your safe haven from the world, etc. The reality though is you need to put a ton of work in to get your R to that point, and once there, it still requires nurturing to stay there. Once there, I think/hope the work isn't as hard and doesn't feel like a chore, but getting there can be a tremendous amount of work. Not having the same LL's just compounds the amount of effort required. He's gonna have to realize somehow that it doesn't just magically get to that utopian point, that he's gotta share in the burden of getting the R to that point. I think if he were putting in as much effort to the R as you are, you wouldn't be here. Am I right?
Read uip on this perntification thing. It is no small deal! My wife was parentified too, and it has had a tremendous impact on her ability to be intimate, to control her fears, her sense of confidence and self esteem. Childhood emotional development get buried as adults, but it is still there and comes roaring back later in life.
H has problems being away from the kids, letting someone else watch them, checks his watch... Sounds just like my W. Guess where are this comes from...
Cobra, Actually no it is not a fantasy. It's my personal boundary. It is not okay for him to put a staggering amount of effort into everything in his life, except me.
Hey, that's great! So when are you going? The end of February? Let me know the dates and I'll pray for you ot have a fruitful weekend and pray that you get some better presenters than Karen had.
HP, I am so glad to hear you and H are talking about some of the harder things (his admission that he wasn't thinking of you as a lover still seems absolutely huge to me). I think you are well on your way. The hard part, as you recently told me is that the little setbacks can look huge because of the history, and if you are not careful can fill up that ole TSBOR pretty darn quickly. Keep focusing on the good things he is doing, KWIM?
Hmm, interesting. This could be MrsGGB's FOO too. She was the oldest of 5 biological, 4 adopted and countless foster kids. Mom was an functional alcoholic who pretty much dumped all the responsibility on MrsGGB. I see MrsGGB doing the same to our kids at times.
Blind, He thinks of me as his lover, he just wasn't thinking that Valentine's Day was for LOVERS. He seems to think it's for Barbie valentines and heart shaped pb and j's and all the other silly stuff I do for the girls.
The fact that adults celebrate it too, and even in a sexy way, seems to have utterly escaped him this year. And he's quite embarrassed about that fact.
I'd like to say that this VD was an anomaly but last year he bragged to me as I was opening my gift that he parked his truck, went inside the mall and was back on the highway within 8 minutes. But he did make my card and it was truly beautiful..very artistic.
Who knows. I'm cautiously optimistic about the ME weekend. I'm conversing with him at the moment to decide whether we should do one day or the whole weekend.
Quote: And, like I said earlier, he's gotten into this mode of waiting for me to do everything and he'll either go along with it or override it with his bad attitude. Fooey on that! I pointed out to him last night that the last date we went on that was his idea was Valentine's Day 2003. Fellas, if you let 3 years go by without taking your wife out, you are going to have one crabby, neglected-feeling chick on your hands.
HP, I've got the opposite problem. My wife NEVER suggests a date idea, nor does she make any of the arrangements for them. But yet she expects us to HAVE them, and gets frustrated when we don't. When I point out to her -- something I've started to do -- that the last SIX (or whatever) dates in a row that we've had, I'VE SUGGESTED, AND I'VE PLANNED, she acquiesces, but she'll still never plan nor suggest the next one.
When pushed on this, she says "Well, I just get the impression you don't like to go out much, so I don't suggest it, because I know you probably don't want to."
Hmmmmmm, what does THAT sound like??? Ironic, huh?
Personally, I don't think Valentine's Day should be about the kids, I think it should be about the parents as lovers and romantics. But I do think there are lots of spouses who treat it like a "family" thing.
Choc, I think it can be both. I had a huge sleepover blowout for my girls, with a valentine's theme, since my daughter is homeschooled and would miss out on the school party. I handsewed a patchwork tablecloth with embroidered x's and o's and the like. We had heart shaped pizza, heart shaped freakin everything, pink milk, you get the picture. We did crafts and they ate tons of candy. It was a blast! They are all young enough to think it's about "love" in general as opposed to romantic love.
But, yeah, overall, it's a day for adults to celebrate their romantic love. And have hot monkey sex.
