Oh sh!t

[haphazard]

More horrible rows In the Haphazard household. I don’t know what to do any more. I feel he has given up completely and just wants to seek justification for his view that I am rubbish – his words.

I wanted to have a discussion with H regarding the amount of time S7 spends playing computer games. I feel he spends to much time doing that and that this is reinforced because H spends time playing them with him. I started by saying that I appreciated the good that H is spending quality time with S, but I put it to him that I felt that a child needs a variety of activities and also that he needs encouragement to undertake them. H asked me (in sarcastic tones) what the stimulating range of activities were that I undertake with S. I tried to set out my points which were
a) I undertake many different activities with the kids e.g. play sports in the garden, cooking, gardening, take them to dance classes
b) I spend considerably more hours in the house with the kids and much of that time is necessarily taken up with other household chores so I can’t just devote myself to their entertainment
c) I would like to enlist his help in getting S to see that computer games are not the only thing he could be spending his time doing when I am not available to give him my attention

Much of this was interrupted with sarcastic comments and deflections from H, so it took me a while to get these points across to him. One of the issues he kept raising (which I kept apologising for and trying to get past) was that I had left him in the house with S when I took D to ballet on Saturday with no prior agreement. Normally we separate the weekend out into his day/my day – something I am not happy with but it is something he won’t give up. I guess every time I encroach on this arrangement he sees it as me not submitting to his request to have “his” day. He may have a point. But as I say I repeatedly agreed that I had been wrong on this.

In the end he basically said no he wouldn’t help me, that we would parent separately since we did everything else separately.

I said I was asking for his help in this because I didn’t want to solve the problem for myself by being negative with S about playing computer games when it was clearly something he enjoyed doing with his dad and something he enjoys talking to his dad about. I said it would be far more positive if H were to say to S that he enjoyed playing the games with him but that it would be best not to play them too much and to save if for when Dad’s around to play them with him.

He said I just wanted everybody to behave the way I wanted them to and that by asking for his help I was “again being controlling”.

I can’t remember most of the conversation well enough to report it here, my mind is a ball of confusion. I do remember him telling me “you’re punching above your weight” and when I queried what I meant he said “you’re basically rubbish”. I said that I no longer wanted to be insulted all the time, that all he ever did was criticise me, that he never wanted me to succeed in getting anything right. He then said I needed to consider my options and do something about it. There was silence for a while as the only thing I could take this to mean was that I should divorce him if I didn’t like the way things were. I asked why he didn’t do something. He said “you’re the one who doesn’t like it”. I agreed that I didn’t like being set up to fail all the time and that I had been waking up to the fact that he had been tearing me down for 15 years but that if he doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me to succeed in doing anything right then he should have the guts to say so rather than making me do it so he can take the moral high ground but not being the one to call the lawyers. I also pointed out that this is his MO on many issues, that his calling me controlling all the time was simply because he avoided making decisions or becoming involved in things so that he could blame me later for the way things turn out. He made no particular response to any of this and changed the subject back to an earlier part of the argument.

We then had a few further spats regarding the way I am always telling him he is wrong and me saying that just because I have an alternate POV doesn’t mean he is wrong and he is unwilling to hear alternate POVs so accuses me of saying he is wrong all the time. Many times he raised his voice several decibels, I repeatedly asked him not to and when he wouldn’t pipe down I ended up by plugging my ears with my fingers until he did. He walked out to go and get more cigarettes. I finished off putting the kitchen to bed and then went to bed myself.

He came back in the house but stayed downstairs for a while before coming to bed. He came up and got into bed. He reached over and touched my foot with his. I recognised this as an olive branch. I lay there wondering why I felt comforted by his physical presence. Wondering whether a basic need for someone’s physical presence, for sex and for the money he nowadays earns (now my own earning capacity has reduced) is what is keeping me in this R. And if so then I should probably try not to be too swayed by the comfort of that gesture. This got me to thinking about how abusive he really has been over the years and how these conciliatory gestures have always won me round. So in other words he has been getting away with it for years because I am a sucker for a bit of physical affection. By actually controlling the supply he has made me more dependent on him. These thoughts were swirling through my mind but I understood that he was waiting for some kind of response from me so I just said “aren’t my feet cold?” – he said “yes, but they always are”
Then he apologised for “his part” in the way the evening had gone. There was a very clear implication that I was to apologise for my part. I thought about it for a while and realised there wasn’t a bone in my body that wanted to apologise. I tried to get in touch with why I felt that way and realised I didn’t feel resentful, or self-righteous, I just honest to goodness couldn’t see what I had to apologise for. I had honestly been trying to get him to engage with me in some co-parenting and he had read it as an attack on him and into the bargain had heaped insulting remarks on me. My mind just went into overdrive at that point and I left the room to go into the bathroom and sob (silently).

There was a movie H and I saw recently where the guy said to a girl “There are suckers and players and you’re not a sucker”. There was something about the way H chuckled at that remark that made me feel uncomfortable. That’s what I was sobbing about in the bathroom the feeling that I have been played for a sucker by my H. That I have been working so desperately hard over the years to smooth his path and alter myself and my behaviours to come up to some kind of mark for him and that I was just destined to fail, that he never had any intention of letting me succeed. That his anger in recent years (since the kids came along) has been to do with me not having as much time and energy to devote to dancing to his tune. I know this sounds like paranoid ravings. I am not a naturally paranoid person – far from it. H on the other hand is, which is what makes me think I have been the sucker.

Anyway I got myself together and went back to the bedroom. Got in and cuddled up to H and said “can we try an experiment?” he repeated the words back to me in an oh-so-this-is-what-I-get-instead-of-an-apology kind of voice. Then he said don’t you feel you ought to respond to me apologising for my part. And I said, maybe but I’ll come to that in a minute. I think we should experiment with spending more time physically in each other’s company. Not necessarily talking as that just seems to break down into a row the whole time, but just sitting and being together more – watching the TV and being physically close (I didn’t mention sex – it seemed a bit inflammatory). He agreed (after throwing up a few minor problems) that it might be a good idea.

I then said that I hadn’t apologised because I didn’t want to just tit-for-tat apologise, I wanted to be sincere about it, and that when I had tried to find a sincere place to apologise from I couldn’t and my mind just went into meltdown which was why I had gone into the bathroom. But I said that I could sincerely apologise for the way I behaved on Saturday he seemed to accept this and we went to sleep.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I still don’t want to D but at the end of the day I feel this is because I don’t want it for the kids and I don’t want it for financial and physical reasons. For my own emotional well-being and for my mental health I think it is something I should take into serious consideration.

I know Corri and others have pointed out that it is no picnic on the other side and clearly this is so. The pain I am feeling now and the despair that things will ever change are very strong. The things that I pointed out to H that he never wanted me to get it right and that he has been tearing me down all these years were not denied by him – he looked me straight in the eye – he didn’t deny it or even look uncomfortable. That was the point at which he said well you’ll have to consider your options.

Fran