Today I was with our children until 4:20. I dropped them off and went shopping. I called my D5 around 8:00 as I always do to say goodnight. My W informs me that she has our couple friends over w/ their children and her GF from down the street. I tell her, NP, just have D call me when she is going down for bed. She agrees. I get a call back immediately telling me that I am invited over to the BBQ and am welcome to hang out also. I didn't really contemplate not accepting. I agreed. I am thinking that the correct DB strategy would have been to thank her for the invite and decline by telling her I already had plans. But, that hindsight.... Grrrrr!
Anyway, I went over and had a nice time with everyone talking and swimming. I love being with our children every chance I get. When the evening was winding down, my W was making snide comments about the fact that I took too many of our DVDs to my place. I told her, if I'm not mistaken, you fall asleep to LOTR or Gladiator, that's it. She then tells me that she uses more of them. I didn't want to call her a liar, but I slept in the damn room with her and know which DVDs were in the player. I chose to be happier rather than prove a point that I was right.
We then begin talking about what I took from the house and how fair she believes she has been throughout our sitch. I wanted to discuss this further. She then begins trying to boss me around and I tell her that I will not be bossed around by her. She then retorts, "I won't be controlled by you." My ears perked up. She continued, "You always trap me when I don't want to talk anymore. I made it clear that I was done with this conversation." She said this a few days ago that I ALWAYS controlled her during our marriage. I was at a complete loss and asked her for ONE example since she chose to use the blanket statement (i.e. always). She would not give me even one. But tonight, she finally fessed up to WTH she meant.
I told her tonight, "No, you didn't make it clear that you were done with our conversation." I then went and read to our D and put her to bed. On the way out I asked my W for one minute of her time and she gave it to me. I asked her if THAT is what she meant by my always controlling her while we were married, by insisting on continuing a conversation that she did not want to be in anymore? She said yes. I asked her, is that ALL of the ways that I controlled you. Again she answered yes. Eureka! I breakthrough. I simply apologized and told her that I never viewed wanting to finish a conversation as controlling her. I told her I do understand how YOU would feel that way being on YOUR end. I am sorry. I said goodnight.
With the ending portion of our conversation about my controlling her, I had an epiphany. In my defense, I recall my W regularly making accusations about me that were contentless. When I questioned her view/accusation, she usually shut down immediately and said she wanted to forget it. I would geherally try to continue the conversation since the subject of the conversation was genterally her sh*tty view of what I said or did, punctuated with the proverbial blanket adverbs- always, never, etc. The blanket statements she was so fond of using about me really set me off. One really stands out in particular: we were in a session with our MC and she said H always acts this negative way (can't even remember now what W was referring to) with our D5. Immediately, our MC said, "Really? H NEVER has any positive, loving interactions with D5? My W, after having painted herself into a corner and being called on it by a neutral 3rd party couldn't recant fast enough. Our MC then explained how hurtful and damaging blanket statemes are to a S and to a M. This was also about the same timeframe that our MC told my W that she had as "Madonna Complex." meaning that she was interested in intimacy and sex in a R as long as it was new, exciting, immature, and there were NO expectations placed on HER.
At this point, I am at a crossroad in what to do next about her revelation to me that I ALWAYS trapped her in a conversation when she no longer wanted to be in a conversation. I can certainly see her point of view. I also see that from my vantage point she would open up a can of worms with contentless BS and then choose to unilaterally shut down when it was pointed out that her view was full of hot air. This definitely goes back to me always feeling I needed to defend myself and to prove her wrong and thus me right. As I saidd, in my M, I never felt I was worthy, good enough, and/or an alpha male as I do in every other aspect of my life and I didn't feel comofortable in my own skin, as I was constantly being criticized, measured, sized up, downgraded, shown disapproval, etc.
A sizable portion of me wants to send my W an e-mail again apologizing for ever making her feel controlled by pursuing conversations that she wanted to end. But my authentic self wants to do nothing more. I already apologized and she is an intelligent woman and will remember that I apologized. In MY rational thinking, those situations in which she says I controlled her were actually situations in which I was trying to wrest control FROM her wanting to shut down a conversation SHE started with her penchant for negative blanket statements and then wanting to shut it all down unilaterally when she could not back up her "stuff."
I don't know. I'd like to think that my view of this aspect of our R is correct, but my life philosophy has alwasy been, there's my version, your version, and the actual truth lies somewhere in between. Plus, I'd rather be happy than right any day. I've spent my whole life trying to prove that I'm right to the devastation of my happinerss.
One more note about W. She actually IS stuck somewhere around age 13 emotionally. She is on MySpace.com and also text msgs OM and her friends whenever I am around. It's all so childish. I try to ignore it. I'm getting better at it. The ball is in both of our courts. I just hope she will stop being so selfish, self-centered and self-absorbed. Who knows if she will. And so I pray. For me, for our children, and for her.
