Muddle's Muddy Waters

[MuddleThrough]

I don't see this as an either/or situation. I think you can do both somehow.

I don't see any other real alternative - I do need to figure out how to do just that. But, as you say, it's a really fine line, one that I have to err on either side of often enough to find where it really lies.

I know I deal with a lot of the same issues and I KNOW I still support her dependance on me, but one thing I do differently now is ALSO TRULY support the attempts she makes to be independent. I have dropped my desire to control her and that alone has made her feel a lot more free.

The part that's so difficult for me here is that my W HASN'T been making much of an attempt to be independant. She has been relating to me much in the same ways she always has, just with a much more alarmingly negative edge to it. In fact, I find it hard to do GAL things without telling her exactly what I'm doing and when - and, even if she's opting not to do anything herself except talk to OM, she still resents my freedom to do for herself. I think a lot of this has to do with the helplessness of being unhappy - the lack of recognition that there are endless choices in front of us at any point in our life. I think my W recognizes that I don't want to control her, and that I haven't been an overtly controlling person. In fact she told me that she feels so dependant on me because I have done for her what she has asked me to do. I think she somehow KNOWS that her dependance is her issue, and she's scared to do the hard work of fixing this, rather than just starting over with a clean slate.

A major issue for my W that she brought up again yesterday is that of me "making" her feel like a child. I told her that I certainly didn't think of her as anything less than my equal, an adult. I finally got her to give me an example of this, and it really drove something home. I have alway thought, defensively, that her feeling like I treated her as a child was because she acted like one. Well, it has become more clear to me that in some way she FEELS like a child - inadequate and dependant. So, she's very sensitive to being treated in any way like a child. Now, during our conversation, I told her that I wanted to know when she felt this way in response to something I said or did, because I wanted to be aware of whether there was something in my actions that I could change to avoid her feeling this way. The thing is, she told me that the thing that made her feel bad is that we were in the grocery store and they were giving out sample quesadillas (my W loves these) and she had just been going on and on about how she should have eaten, and she had decided to shop before we went through the drive through. Because she was so hungry, and because she's got social anxiety disorder, she was in a bad mood in the store, telling me how stupid all my decisions were, and how stupid I looked pushing the cart. If you ask me, really childish stuff. So, I happened past where they were handing out the samples and I picked one up for her. Well, THIS made her feel like I was treating her like a child, like I had to provide for her needs. I thought I was being thoughtful. So, yes, this is HER issue, I have no doubt. But, I am sure that there are ways that I can be more aware of her moods and vulnerability. My actions mean different things to her depending upon her mood.

This treating her like a child thing pans out into another one of our DEEP issues. She told me that because of this dynamic, she doesn't feel like we are or can be lovers. Who want's to have sex with their father? Well, like I said, if she becomes more secure in herself, steps up a few levels and takes care of these issues that make her feel like a child, this dynamic will change - but what can I do about this?

So, she says to me yesterday (and I have no doubt that her saying this is a GOOD thing): "I only wish that I could be attracted to you". I think the root cause of the lack of attraction lies in the codependancy issue. I feel that on some level, she views me as a continuation of herself. I think if she were to see me as more whole and seperate, there would be more opportunity for being attracted - because you can't really be attracted to yourself, especially when you feel badly about yourself and view yourself as an inadequate child. What have I gotten myself into?

Something else is frustrating me - and that's this sense that I get that she feels that because she has grabbed all the power in the relationship, I think she feels that I need to satisfy her that I'm changing, that all her problems with ME need to be resolved. This idea is so flawed because within her interpretation of my actions, HER thought process is involved. If she started to work on herself, or on the relationship, she would recognize that all these problems she attributes to me are her own, or a shared dynamic that we BOTH need to address.

These are DEEP issues, ones that probably shape both our marriages but I think simply being aware of them is a HUGE step in the right direction because if you're like me, you had no conscious idea that things were this bad.

Bad? I prefer to look at it as "this way", lol. I think this sort of judgement does no good for my outlook on the situation. Things are what they are, maybe they're not what we'd like them to be, but I wouldn't call them bad