I have been thinking a lot lately about how to keep happy and how to detach from someone who is not happy. Some of this is in relation to Stig's long post in reply to Landica which I feel has a lot of bearing on my own sitch.
H is not happy – hasn’t been happy in many a long year and for many a long year has been trying to make it my problem that he is not happy. I have gone along with this in my Mrs Fixit mode and spent a lot of time and effort wondering how he can be happy.
He could start with the basics Stop drinking too much Eat more healthily Get some exercise
He could then move on to quitting the negative self-talk, not taking everything personally etc etc.
All this would be good. But all this is NOT MY PROBLEM and I have to train myself to believe it is not my problem and to stay happy regardless of his moods. Since I began DBing I have been working on not criticising, detaching and GAL, but there is and always has been resentment on his part when I appear to continue blithely on with my life “ignoring” is problems and not letting his misery get to me.
I am a naturally happy person (just lucky that way). Friends have mentioned that they find me positive. I get comments like – “You’re always such a glass half-full person”, “You’re so strong”, “I like the way you can be guaranteed to see the positive side”, “You always see the good in people”, “Trust you to see the funny side” etc.
H seems to manage to place a negative gloss on these traits by making “glass half full” become “self-satisfied” “Strong” become “over-bearing” or “insensitive” “See the positive” become “over-optimistic or simplistic” “Seeing the good in people” become “bad judge of character” “Seeing the funny side” become “flippant”
How is it that you can purport to empathise with someone, care about them, even love them if you cannot get into their misery. If their misery has to be theirs to own and theirs to live with/fix. I feel that in the last few years since I have been detaching it is like we live our lives on two parallel tracks. I am on the sunny side of the street and he is on the shady side. Do I just carry on regardless on the sunny side and hope one day he will have the sense to cross the street? The more I try to do that it seems the angrier he becomes, notices that I am living a separate life and accusing me of not giving a sh!t about him.
I want to raise the happiness bar for both of us, but if I can’t do that I sure as hell don’t want him lowering my happiness bar.
Thoughts anyone?
Fran <--- me being positive
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
<--- me being positive 
