Muddle's Muddy Waters

[MuddleThrough]

I apologize in advance for the length of this post – lots of interesting realizations and happenings I feel are worth journaling.

It was an interesting weekend, as far as my sitch is concerned. I found out my brother is in some way becoming an accomplice to this whole thing (taking a trip with my W’s friend/supporter – who happens to also be my brother’s XGF – who he is torn up about and always playing emotional games with and about). I came home Friday night, and the three of them were downstairs, drinking, W on IM with OM. I said hello to my brother, and then turned around and went back upstairs. I know I was short and “weird” (as they called me later) but I didn’t want to be in that situation, so I went upstairs and finished my book (“What Happy People Know” – read it, it will really change your life). I had a great time by myself – it’s not like I went away to sulk or anything.

Eventually, my brother came upstairs to chat – not about the A, he hasn’t brought that up to me – drunk chat, about how he thought he was over W’s friend, etc. I really wasn’t all that interested in talking to him, partially because I was resentful about his involvement with the A, partially because having a conversation with a drunk person isn’t all that pleasant, not to mention I didn’t have any sympathy for him regarding the subject matter. I do regret that I didn’t communicate directly to him that I wasn’t interested in talking to him - something I need to get a little clearer on in my own mind: when to tell people directly what I think or how I feel about them. Anyway, later that evening, W told me that she didn’t want me to have a problem with my brother because of something she was doing. I told her that my relationship with my brother was between him and me.

To explain this a little better, my brother wants to go to see family in Europe (so does my W apparently) and last time we went (me, W, our son, my brother, and his then GF – W’s friend) W’s friend got close to (latched onto) some of my cousins. So she wants to go back to see them again. W is basically tagging along with my brother. W kept trying to explain to me that he is neutral, that he wants her to be happy. My perspective is that if he were neutral, he wouldn’t be contributing to her effort. I “know” that he is trying to please her friend, because he wants her back, so he is willing to sign onto whatever her agenda is.

This drives me nuts – all the talk of people on one “side” or the other, as if we’re at war and conspiring against each other. W’s friend told her that she couldn’t understand why W would tell me the things that she does – “it’s giving information to the enemy”. W is always talking about how I have so many people on my side and she has so few. Even her mother, she says, cares more about my feelings than hers. She doesn’t support her, she says. I have said in response to this that she does support her, she just doesn’t support what she is doing. I think W is so attached to this scenario that she can’t make the distinction – the situation is her and vice versa.

Anyway, Saturday I took our son and had a great day with him. W wasn’t feeling all that well, seems like the anxiety of trying to plan this trip with more people now is taking its toll on her. She called before I got home saying that she was going to go to her mom’s and hang out - with the two – and drink and stuff. Well, she got home at 2am, woke me up and told me that the other 2 had gone to her friend’s house instead of staying over because I “made them feel weird”. How tragic. These are the same two that were fighting in the street the night before after midnight, that we both were annoyed at. Go figure. I try so hard not to look at these people as contributing to the destruction of my family, but to do so, I end up belittling them more and more. It’s a no win situation: either they have some malicious intent, or they are too dumb to see the consequences of pursuing this path. Well, it’s not my issue.

On to yesterday. W started talking to me while we were at my parent’s house. She said “if we get divorced it would break your mother’s heart. I don’t want to get divorced. Can we not get divorced, even if I take this A to the next level?” I told her that I didn’t want to be divorced, that I didn’t want her to “take it to the next level” but I was not going to change what I wanted for my life contingent on what she did, at least not right now. She was really appreciative of this, telling me that this was an expression of real love, giving her this freedom.

Then she brought up “plans” again. I told her to let me know when she had plans and I would let her know if I could accommodate her by getting time off to stay with our son. This sparked a huge dramatic ordeal. Basically, this was one of those situations where she was “wrong” because she based her argument on a premise that conveniently absolved her of responsibility. She tried to tell me that it was my responsibility to take care of our son because there were no other options (no sitters) and that it wasn’t about me doing something for her, but rather me taking care of my responsibility to our son. Well, to me, she is his primary caregiver – she agreed to this responsibility when she decided that she wanted to stay home and care for him. If she wants to go, it’s her responsibility to find someone to relieve her. Should I be willing and able to do so – yes, I would be doing her this favor. She flat out expected me to do it, and wouldn’t waver in her perspective.

This went on for quite some time. When we went home, it still persisted. I wanted to by asked – I want the fact that I have a choice in this to be recognized. W spun this into me trying to hold this over her head, to control the situation. She got to the point where she was crying – and went downstairs, taking her pillow and blanket with her. So, I let her go, and went on with my evening. She eventually came upstairs, and started into me about how I really express my lack of love for her , because I’m not concerned with her feelings. I didn’t come downstairs after her, and this made her feel like I didn’t care about how she was feeling (calling it complacency and passivity). I told her that I respected her decision to remove herself from my presence. I empathized with her feelings – but I told her that I couldn’t make her feel differently, which she acknowledged. It’s so frustrating to me, because she seems to want to see me doing whatever it takes to appease her and make her feel better (and it looks to me like utter manipulation on her part), and yet thinks less of me when I do appease her. Yet, she escalates her childish behavior when I stand my ground. I don’t want to contribute to her feeling badly about me, but somewhere she has learned that feeling badly about me entitles her to have me change my actions.

Eventually we came to the point where things got a little smoothed out. She recognized that all I was really looking for was to be asked. I think she was so afraid that if she were to give me the choice I would choose to make things difficult for her. I mentioned to her, at one point earlier in the day, that I felt like she though of me as an extension of herself – when she wanted something done, even in conversation with other people, it would come out as “I’ll just have H do it”. This to me seemed like an extension of this thinking, where I was expected to do it because it needed to be done and she wasn’t going to do it.

We also had a conversation about how she’s allowed herself (her own words, very encouraging to me) to become dependant on me to do things for her. She felt that this was a really bad scenario because she lost a lot of herself. I told her that I thought we did indeed have a problem with codependency – to which she responded that she felt it was one sided, that she was dependant and I wasn’t. Later in the day when she talked about staying together, I said something about a new relationship – she was a little confused about what I meant, and when I told her that we couldn’t go back to the way things were she said “I hope not”.

So, I guess it’s not really the best DBing – heavy on the R talk (though not really initiated by me), but I think it was generally towards a more positive place. I’m not sure if my actions are really improving things – because the difficulty here is that for the sake of this issue at hand I want to make her feel safe and secure in our relationship – to some degree coddling her and bending to her every whim, but through my self examination and my examination of the issues in our relationship, I’m very aware that playing into this codependency is very bad in the long run because it removes her choice from the equation – by guilting and obligating her to stay in the M. The choice to stay is very important to her – and I feel that she can’t make that choice as long as she feels dependant and we are so intertwined. I have taken a lot of steps towards detaching, but she remains in the same sort of place in the function of the relationship to her. It’s frustrating, but I think that what change is occurring is for the best, even if it makes W somewhat uncomfortable.