Am I Creating a SSM?

[heatherg]

My thoughts on this may be a little direct and painful, but I am going to tell it like I see it. There is too much to dance around. Sorry if I come across too insensitive.

No worries. You get a lot right but you get a lot wrong too. No harm done and when you get it right, it's helpful.
This is a difficult forum sometimes because written words can only tell you so much and it can be so darn inefficient

Everything I see in your replies to my post and others tells me you have not understood the dynamics going on here.

My take is this: H and I were experiencing serious problems and then I made things exponentially worse by having an A. Our M has been to hell and we are just very recently coming down from a very elevated state where power struggles were a daily occurrence. I take full responsibility for the A, I've said before there were so many other options. So many. H is very, very angry and resentful toward me for having an A. We are making very slow progress, we are in M counseling and we are behaving nicely toward one another. There are things I have to change and there are things he has to change. Here is my list as I see it:

I need to be more validating to him, listen better to what he is really trying to say when he talks. I need to continue to get better at filtering my thoughts. Everything I think does *not* need to come flying out of my mouth. This goes hand in hand with controlling my reactions to situations, controlling my anger. I need to be more appreciative and remember to treat H like I would like to be treated. I need to be more proactive. For instance, if I want to go out for a night, I should just ask H, arrange it and go for it rather than complain about never going out. I need to continue my self growth, talking things out, trusting in myself, understanding my own feelings and reactions and take repsonsibility and ownership of them.

Apparently, in my thread I've been a little too hard on H as to what he needs to work on, so I'll limit this to my 50%. If you have anything to add, delete or otherwise augment, please make suggestions, that's why I'm here. The above is not an inclusive list by any means, just what I could think of off the top of my head, things that have caused the most trouble in my R with H IMO.

Your focus is on what is wrong with your H and how he needs to change.

I probably do focus on H's issues quite a bit. I want to give him whatever he needs to get past his issues so we can move on, so I do dwell on his stuff a lot. I do quite a bit of venting too.

If you’ve read the other threads on this board, you should by now that the very first, most fundamental lesson is that you cannot change him. He must change himself, if he wants to, when he wants to and how he wants to. He might decide not to change at all.

Right. I understand this. I'd like to change so that he, in turn, can change as well. I strategize, I try to understand what they dynamics are and what my next 'move' should be. I hate to make it sound so methodical, but my ultimate goal is for us BOTH to change. From my perspective, I'm doing my part, I'm trying. You make a suggestion and I'm almost always open to it. You recommend a book and I almost always buy it. And even read it too

Have you picked up the book on Love Addiction yet?

I wasn't sure which book by Schnarch you wanted me to get...I got Passionate Marriage. It was the only one Barnes & Noble had so I figured it must be the one. Love Addiction is really the book you were suggesting? If so, I may have to get it from Amazon.

It sounds to me that since college you have needed to be the focus of his attention, to the exclusion of your friends and any other aspect of your life....This is NOT normal. You are like a puppy dog following him around everywhere. Anytime he turns around you are there, under foot, almost getting stepped on. Do you see how smothering this can be? What if someone followed you around like that? Even if it is someone you loved very much, wouldn’t you get tired of it after a while? Do you still think he has a desire to suddenly turn around and pursue you?

Apparently I've worded my statements about this to sound much more ominous than it is. But just to make sure, I asked H if he's ever *felt* smothered by me or pursued by me or if he thought I was ever clingier or needier than he would prefer. He looked genuinely confused and just said 'No' and kind of looked at me like why on earth are you asking me that.

When I say I am the pursuer, that means to me that I am the one who tries to maintain the closeness and a warm temperature in our R. It doesn't mean I am under his feet like a puppy dog.
I didn't exclude my friends in college, I hung out quite a bit. But only ever really did things like go out to the bar or do things that H didn't enjoy doing. There a couple reasons for this. First I genuinely would rather do things with H. He was my best friend. Second, H set a rather srong precedent in the beginning of our R for any friends of mine and as we went along in our R, he made it clear he wasn't interested in being friends with my friends' SOs. If I did things with friends that H wanted to do, it would have caused problems in the R.

I said: He had so much power over me in this area and he knew it and he used it.

You said: Sorry, but this statement is absurd. How did he exert this “power” over you? Did he have some secret he could blackmail you with, or hold a gun to your head? This is your denial talking loud and clear.

This is where I started to get irritated with you. I slept on it and am fine now, but your statement above was clearly intended to get a reaction from me. My reaction to you is simply this~if you wanted to know more details about why I would say something like that, perhaps you could have asked *before* you so concisely told me I was being absurd? I have very specific reasons and examples of why I said what I said....but I'm pretty much feeling at this point that your additional questions on the issue were merely rhetorical. Interesting that you think I'm in denial though. Thanks for that observation.

Stop trying to blame this on MLC. Unless you have some other personality disorder you have not disclosed, you are perfectly capable of understanding the consequences of your decisions. Trying to pin the blame on MLC or any other “illness” is just an attempt to avoid confronting yourself.

I sincerely did not mean to sound like I was 'blaming' my actions on an MLC. I don't think I actually went through a full blown MLC and even if I had, I believe an MLC is still something one needs to take responsibility for, as you mentioned it is not a personality disorder.

Cobra, at this point, I have to ask you exactly what it is you feel I'm in denial about and what you think I'm avoiding??? I have completely open here as well as in my M. I am matter of fact. I have problems, I do my best to address them. I would love it if H would do the same. I do not pretend his problems don't exist and I don't tip toe around them on this board. Nor have I tip toed around my problems on this board. I have not tried to blame anything or anyone for my A or for any other shortcoming I have.

The only fog you are experiencing is that of not wanting to see the true you. This is entirely your issue, has nothing to do with your H or your situation, but may have a lot to do with your FOO. Can you give any insight here?

You sound so sure of yourself, it's like I've known you all my life instead of a month. Now that we've narrowed down what kind of fog I was in, I guess we can talk about FOO. What kinds of questions do I need to ask myself regarding FOO? I honestly don't know. There may be a lot of discovery there, it's pretty much uncharted territory as I've said.

Why in the world do you want to keep this a secret from him? He needs to know you are working on yourself (truly working on you, not finding a new way to twist the blame onto him). This knowledge, plus changes in your behavior and actions, will limit his available responses, “forcing” changes in your relationship mix and in him.

Because he thinks self help is humorous, a joke, something for confused people. He doesn't view it in a positive light, as me trying to 'work on myself'. I'm not saying I want to keep it a secret per se, I would just prefer not to be laughed at or ridiculed about it.

I think keeping this as secret could really in your interest, not his. Maybe by keeping the book secret, you don’t have worry about the possibility of him bringing up his complaints about you, which would make you confront yourself, and by what I see, avoiding this is your number one priority.

You're simply just wrong here Cobra.

Being pissed and creating distance can still be a power play.

Definitely. I just said it was the extent of my power plays (I'm not particularly creative )

The difference is that he probably feels smothered, or engulfed, by you. So his way of finding relief, of being able to catch his breath, is to distance. He probably married you because he was engulfed in some way by his family.

This is wrong too, IMO.

He wanted someone to chase him so he could feel wanted and loved. Your clinginess felt comfortable and secure to him. You two fit each other.

He wanted someone he could control. My willingness to do what he wanted made him feel loved. I 100% believe it was that simple.

to avoid direct confrontation, because of how you were raised. It may also be a consequence of your avoidance of truly seeing yourself.

It's a result of staying away from what doesn't work. H doesn't like confrontation and I know you're thinking that I'm blaming him for not wanting to truly see myself. Well, you're entitled to think that. The fact is, I've been discussing difficult issues on these boards for a year and half now and I've been in C even longer. I've never had my C tell me I avoided difficult issues. If anything, it's the opposite, perhaps I'm too confrontational, too methodical in my approach. H and I don't discuss difficult issues outside of MC, but in MC we are making some progress because as I've said, H can't avoid her questions and be rude to her like he is to me when he doesn't want to discuss something. You know how you said you can't control anyone but yourself? This is a great example of that. It's pretty hard to have an important R discussion by yourself. And that's basically where things are with H and I still. He will do just about anything to avoid taking responsibility for his half of our M. Last week in C, he tried to tell the MC that I have all the control over how well our R goes, it's all in my hands. It took probably 15-20 mins for the C to pry out of him how that could be and it ended up with her saying 'So, you're just going to do what you want to do and Heather can either choose to react positively or negatively to that and that is how you perceive that she has all the control over the direction of the R?'

She can get to the bottom of things like this....if we were at home, H would walk away, tell me I was being an idiot, I'm deranged or delusional. And that is why we don't talk about difficult issues. Because talking doesn't work for us, at least not yet.