Am I Creating a SSM Part II

[heatherg]

LFL:
Do you do things with your H as a "couple" and spend it with other M couples? It's important to "play" together too.

No, H is very judgmental and doesn’t make friends easily nor does he want them. If we do anything with other people, it is with his family.

LFL: But your idea to stay on a friends couch doesn't really sound like it would have much effect on your H to tell you the truth. He seems to greatly enjoy getting his way even to the point of seeing you miserable

Yeah, I just thought that it would bother him having me out of the house, out of his range of sight. I thought the discomfort of that might make him change his tune.

LFL: Now, if you set the boundary that if he did not show some genuine attempts to improve the M right now (it's been two years!), then you were going to follow through on a legal separation, maybe that would have more impact? Maybe not though. Not sure what he is truly thinking, obviously.

Things will eventually have to come to this….at least if things stay at the rate they are going now.

LFL: I will state that I see a very dysfunctional/controlling/abusive M, but I coming from my own personal perspective. Have you talked about that in MC? Does the MC see your interactions as abusive?

No. I don't think it would do anything except make H defensive, particularly to use the term abusive. Our R has been abusive, I think I can say that pretty comfortably. I had a part in that as well. I don't think I need H's validation or invalidation on that point.

LFL: Not sure if you covered this yet, but is there any chance your H is having an A? Had an A?

No one has asked that before. I don’t think so. H is not a people person and I can’t imagine him even getting friendly enough with someone to exchange thoughts much less sex. But it is odd and probably unfair as well, but when I broke the trust in our M, it also made me see H in a different light. Once the bubble was burst that ‘an A couldn’t happen to us’, I became very weary of H too. I feel like there are things H has not told me about how far his porn habits go or possible strip club activity, but I have no indication or reason to believe he has ever had an A.

Phase3:

The concept of a married single is interesting and I think that some of H’s behavior reflects that concept, but only on the surface. I think the codependency theory fits better at H’s core. The married single behavior he’s displaying are basically his attempts to punish me. H used to enjoy feeling at least physically close (being in close proximity, cuddling, etc) in the earlier years of our R. So for him to be so distant all the time, I think it’s sort of like he’s trying to let me know that things are not ‘all better’. I think deep down, what drives H really is fear. I could be wrong though just as much as anyone else. I do think that H seems to have some avoidance issues, although they seem to be a reaction more than the main problem. Back in the beginning of our R, H was very smothering. I can remember him actually getting on my nerves because he was so touchy feely in a needy kind of way. Plus he didn’t like me to be with anyone but him. It wasn’t attractive. So, that is surface intimacy, which he doesn’t have a history of problems with. As another indicator that he was/is comfortable with a certain amount of intimacy, he used to disclose a fair amount about himself when we first got together, much of which he felt guilty about come to think of it. If you think it’s pertinent that he felt guilty about things, remind me later and I’ll get more into that.
The avoidance issues that H seems to have seem to me to come more from fear of real intimacy with me, the kind of intimacy where you disclose your true self, your thoughts and hopes and feelings. Like I said, he did a fair amount of that in the beginning of our R, but somewhere along the lines he has become very afraid of my rejection and I imagine my A pretty much solidified that.

Phase3: I think you can avoid that by becoming a married single along with H. Just be civil and stay out of his hair and he'll like you. He'll be affectionate sometimes. If his "single" life meshes well with yours, you guys might even have a marriage that rises above tolerable.

I think I will probably try this as a last resort, prior to giving in to separation. I will probably just ‘give up’ and live my life. I am pretty much at this point now, but there are reasons I have not implemented this just yet.

Phase3: ..it doesn't seem that he sees marriage as the giving of one's self that you see it as...If he doesn't understand the "all in" version and what the benefits are (feeling really loved and important is a powerful thing), it will take a lot of work before he'll be willing to buy into it.

This was a very good point. I need to ask H what his ideas are of a ‘good’ marriage. I wonder how close or far apart our visions truly are.

Cobra: You seem to think there is good chance her H may never change and, essentially cannot be rehabilitated. That is very short-sighted and should only be reserved for the more extreme cases, like those with narcissistic personality disorder or worse.

Or maybe reserved for those that have displayed the same characteristics for years and years with no acknowledgement that they think there’s anything abnormal or unhealthy about the way they act? Perhaps like my H?

Cobra: Neither he nor she can be happy because of how the other remakes him/herself. They become happy because their internal sense of self, their confidence, security allows them to be happy by themselves only. The addition of a spouse is not a prerequisite for happiness, it is only an additional facet. As long as Heather focuses on the marriage as her source of happiness, that happiness will elude her. Her happiness can only come from within her.

This is more of Schnarch’s line of thinking. While I do think Schnarch’s principles (and I still have not read the entire book, still working on it) have a lot of usefulness, I don’t buy into them the way that you do. I don’t believe that all of one’s happiness, in a healthy person, comes from themselves. Like someone else pointed out, Chrome I think, we are social creatures. While it is beneficial to understand the concept of self soothing, I think Schnarch takes his theory of self validated intimacy a little too far. I wouldn’t be happy in a R where I could only count on self-validated intimacy. I happen to like Dr. Phil’s reference to one’s partner as being their ‘soft place to fall’. But that’s just me. And of course I understand that there are times when that cannot be, so in those instances Schnarch’s perspective is handy. But only to be used as an interim, not as a way of life in a R.

I’ll post more later.