I saw my counselor the opther day and we talked about how I am feeling now that I've been through all the phases of this experience.
When W finally owned her part of the problems was when we were able to communicate with each other for real, after years of holding back feelings or not feeling safe to be honest lest we 'lose' the other person.
The whol idea of 'owning' your role in the breakdown of the relationship is very confusing to a lot of people. I know for me I thought at first it meant 'taking some of the blame'.
But it doesn't mean that at all.
To the WAS, it means to look at the old relationship and the things about it that made YOU feel unhappy and ask yourself, what could I have done that would have helped, or made a difference? The answer is rarely 'nothing!'.
In our situations where we were both in a codependant relationship, the WAS could have done a lot of things to make SOME kind of difference but they didn't. Why? IN MY case it's because W was afraid she would lose me. She was afraid to say what she really meant, or ask for what she really needed. She had a controlling jerk father and her role model for dealing with men was to whine or act helpless - not to be a strong and independant woman.
Once again, this isn't her FAULT. It isn't BLAME, it's knowing what responsibilities she had to our relationship.
And I don't see it as her fault, or blame her for anything. I see it as her being unable to deal with my 'Tyep A' personality because she had no tools to do that with. She had always learned not to be 'heard'.
So, as she told me, she just slowly started to lose respect for me because she felt that I DID NOT LISTEN TO HER. I did not respect her feelings. And she's right. I didn't.
That was MY responsibility in out relationship and I OWN that. Now, she sees that it was HER responsibility to make SURE I was hearing her, to make SURE I was aware that she was feeling like I wasn't respecting her. Sometimes that means that SHE had to calmly but fimrly start a conversation with me about it, and not lose it with me when I didn't 'get it' right away.
That's part of what 'owning' your role in the deterioration of your marriage means. Knowing what you were UNABLE or UNWILLING to do and realizing that it was a choice you made and it contributed to the problem.
Most of us LBS's have owned our roles, and more. Given enough time even the angriest WAS will eventually be able to 'see' how they were part of the problem that they try to lay all the blame on us.
And WE need to remember not to lay the blame on THEM. We both have a responsibility.
