BI, I can't tell you how excited and actually encouraged I am to hear about your progress. After hearing you talk about how you used to parallel my wife (clearly now in the past) in the nasty behavior department, it's great to see how you've recognized and acted on the need to change. You know, my feeling about controlling, perfectionist behavior is that there's a real need to improve the self image of the person exhibitting these behaviors, and there's no doubt in my mind that you are doing so. The objective of the party is fun. Who can have fun when they someone is running around trying to make everything perfect and running other people down in the process? This is where the delicate balance has to be shifted away from form towards function.
The other part of this, the really big thing, is that you have decided that your feelings DON'T mean more to you than your committment to respecting your H and your life together. Clearly, if your H was at fault (which his attitude seems to confirm), you had every justification to be angry and to dredge up all sorts of memories that prove this pattern, etc. Instead, you let it go (and the fact that you aren't seething proves that you REALLY let it go) and accepted and forgave the offense. Big. Because really, you've given up the idea that this defines you. You've given up the idea that because something went wrong in your plan for the event, there's something wrong inside you that people will see. That's huge. In the past, I bet you would have really resented your H for exposing that flaw in you to the world. Now you accept what's happened and let it go, keeping your focus on what is important and what you can do in that moment to acheive your goals.
Oh yeah, and the tone of voice thing, I love it. It really does wonders when you think about your appearance and decide that you want to bring out a positive quality in yourself like that. You add that positive quality to the world you live in, actively loving it that way. Very nice. Go you!
Oh yeah, he noticed. He might not know what to make of it yet, but he noticed.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
