First a little background: Wednesday, W borrowed MILs car. Went to therapy with friend in tow (about 7:30). I had a great evening with S4, put him to bed and looked up some stuff on the internet (trying to find out if there are any martial arts classes open to kids that young). Didn't once worry or even think about where W was (it was almost 9 by now).
So, I go to bed, I'm tired. I'm laying there watching tv and W and friend come in. W mentions that the car is on the side of the house, that if I need to get out in the morning I might want to move our car out of the driveway and pull it in after. I decline saying that I'm too tired to get up. W and friend come up with the idea of leaving it on the street (this town only lets you park on certain streets, and even then you need a permit sticker - you can, however, call the car in as a visitor car). Friend says "how many times have I left the car here without it getting ticketed?" I agree that it probably isn't the biggest risk. W goes downstairs.
The next morning, there's a ticket on the car. I mention to W that this is the case. She immediately gets upset and starts going on and on about how she left it there because she was being considerate of me (it's my fault, of course). She then orders me to "take care of the ticket." So, I grab it off of the car on my way to work. When I get home, I put the ticket on her pillow. I then get in the car and drive to my second job.
When I get home, about 11PM, the car is on the street again. I walk in and ask W, who is in bed, if she has decided to leave the car in the street again. Oh boy, this sparked a huge tantrum. She started going off on me about how it was our decision together to leave the car there, etc etc - absolutely refusing to take responsibility for the ticket, and getting annoyed that I didn't take it upon myself to find the keys to the car and move it when I got home, but rather asked her about it. I guess this goes to show just how entitled she is, and how she's so concerned with blaming me for everything. I guess I could have been more compassionate, and I could have done things a bit differently, but I am getting a bit tired of being responsible for her.
Anyway, this conversation turned into an R talk, about how I have been mean to her (which I still disagree with - even her examples showed that she considered it mean when I didn't do the things that I consider nice). She told me that she felt that we weren't even friends, and that I wasn't giving her simple courtesies that I would afford a roommate. Again, these things seem to me to be control issues (Where are you going? Who are you seeing? When will you be back?), but they bother her.
It kept coming up that she was unhappy with the disparity in freedoms again, and that she felt like a servant every time she did something. Listening to this, I can't really see how I feed into this, or what I can do to address it, but I listened and I tried to truly understand where she was coming from. Eventually, she told me that she didn't want to end our M, but that my actions of late were pushing her away (that old mantra). Let me ask you all something, how come it never matters that what they are doing is pushing US away? Anyway, she confided that she's really confused because she's having these intense feelings that this person is someone that she should spend her life with, but that she looks at our family and thinks the same about it, she doesn't want to destroy it. And then she started talking about us. She started saying that we have never been like we have been as of late. She knows that we were much better than we are, and she acknowledged that we could become better than we ever were. This was a bit of a relief to me because I got this sense from her prior topic that it was the draw of OM vs. fear of destroying our family, not the pull of the good of our family and M.
I told her that I was pulling away, not because I was trying to punish her (which she did try to argue with - her argument being that if she felt it, I was doing it - and she didn't care what my intentions were) but rather because I wanted to give her space because I knew she was going through a lot, and I too needed space to find myself and realign my goals for my life. I told her that to some degree I was trying to protect myself. She kept saying to me "you're the one who wants to make it all better - you want to save this M" and I told her that I still want to spend the rest of my life with her, and have a great life together. But, I told her, I needed to do what I felt was right for myself, I was coming first now, and the only thing I would promise her was that I was going to try and keep myself open to reconciliation as long as I could. I wasn't going to kiss her a$$ anymore, and I wasn't going to try and win her back. This was her deal, and I was going to let her decide what she wanted without my involvement. So (is she reading this DB stuff?) she says to me "you are probably right that there's nothing you can do right now to make me fall in love with you again right now, but you CAN push me away."
GH, I have almost always taken pause when you talked about this, because everytime I heard W say this I always thought "that's a threat - 'do what I want, or else'" I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
So, to make a long story a little bit shorter, near the end of the conversation we were hugging and holding hands. She even tried to sleep with her arm around me - something that hasn't happened in months. She clearly is making an effort - for what, I don't know.
I guess that's my story for right now - there's a bit more that I left out that may need to come out later.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
