Am I Creating a SSM Part IV

[heatherg]

Ok, I've been trying to catch up on a few posts. Let me just summarize the older stuff by saying the following:

Burgbud, thanks for noticing the underlying current in some of the posts to me. I appreciate you taking a stand on the general idea, yet in defense of me. Karen asked me a few questions about how I felt about what was said and my answer is that I definitely felt 'talked down to'. It's all water under the bridge now and I'm thinking that Lil simply wasn't feeling heard here. I can tell her that I really did hear her, but ultimately I think the reasons she decided not to post on my thread anymore probably have less to do with me than they do with her and/or her own history.

Blackfoot: Your funny heather.

your posts always make me smile.

Why thanks, it is nice to know that someone in the world besides my kids and my Mom are smiling as a result of something I have to say. Hopefully you meant ha-ha funny and not you're-an-idiot funny.

Blackfoot: Wife is a title with a job description and responsibilities, Like mother is also.
I never said anything about dinner and fetching beer. But it was funny because in your previous post to me, you didnt finish posting, because you had to 'get dinner going'.
Sigh.

LOL, now that *is* funny. I love making dinner, don't get me wrong. The Food Network is my alltime FAVORITE channel!! It's just not my 'job'. I do it because I like to. And when I don't feel like it, I don't. It's not expected of me. But, just for the record, I am a helluva cook when I want to be I don't mean to sound like I'm completely incompetant, I just feel like a M is a partnership, a team like you said. No part is greater than the sum. A W is not a W without an H. Does that make sense? The night you referenced for instance, with dinner, I got up and got dinner going (spaghetti) and H got up and cut the onion, etc. We do it together. But I consider it my job to make sure we have what we need and I typically plan the meals. But we do things together and if we don't have dinner (a fend for yourself kinda night) H doesn't look at me and say 'WTH? Why do we not have dinner on the table?' I am not a W....I am the other half of this team and my name happens to be Heather.

Do you really find the hard work women put into their families for the past millenia to be degrading and offensive? All this time I thought my x enjoyed showing of her culinary skills, and here I was offending her. Sheesh no more letting women invite me over and cook dinner.

No, no! Women in our history have shown such strength and resilience.....it creates awe for me and makes me proud to carry the legacy. It's just that they way I carry the legacy is much different than the way women before me have. Times are different now and such change has allowed women the opportunity to express themselves and their strengths in many different ways. I am not here to knock the woman who grabs a beer out of the fridge for her H.....if beer didn't have the history in my M that it does, hell, I'd grab him a beer. Expectations bother me. Not making dinner. Not grabbing a beer. I want to be me like only I can, not the way someone else wants.

Blackfoot: Competition is not going to be very productive.

I didn't so much mean that I am competitive with H, I just meant that I am competitive in general. I have the underlying belief that if you work for something, you can achieve it. While that is a quality I would not forfeit, it does create a feeling of entitlement. Being so competitive makes it difficult for me to accept that....how did Cobra put it?......ah yes, that I have a screwed up M and my H is a lush. Oh yeah and I cheated, let's not forget that.


Blackfoot: Its sad that your family and one of your closest friends is having a hard time supporting your choice, in a positive manner. I had much the same when x had her A and I had to put several of them in their place.

It's just really hard to explain this place we come to....those of us on the self-discovery, self-improvement journey....where we live with so much BS, learning to wade through it and rise above it instead of contributing to it. It seems that people only arrive in this place at a time of crisis, so unless they can relate to such a crisis, they tend to think you are weak rather than strong.

Blackfoot: your correct. Look back at yourself. what have you done or are doing that attempted to not give him choice over himself?

Aside from my A, I can honestly say that I can't think of anything that I have done whereby I did not give him choice over himself. He always has the option to choose, i.e I've never purposely tried to take his choices away....although I admit to trying to limit his ability to control *my* choices.

Blackfoot, I know that you feel I was manipulative and tried to push H despite his boundary of not riding in my truck. I just don't feel that way. I wanted to pick H up from the airport....as much as I despise what he does to me, I still prefer when he's here (if he's speaking to me and being friendly). I just feel that it is childish to not ride in my vehicle. If I were him, I would say "Fine, feel whatever you want about my boundary". But I would not in turn expect him to ride in different vehicles to accomodate me. You make boundaries like that, you need to be prepared to live with the consequences which may be that your partner calls 'bullshit'. H wants to set boundaries and that's easy to do when your partner complies with every single one. I'm not that easy.