Muddle's Waters III

[MuddleThrough]

Just wanted to journal some thoughts (what else do I do, lol). I have been thinking about cycles, in particular, certain cycles in my wife's life. This has serious pessimistic potential. I had a conversation with W's step father the other day. He has an interesting perspective on my W because his daughter went to school with my W and that's how he met her mother. So he has seen my W's character both through the eyes of his daughters (who my W has had fallings out with) and through his W (her mother) and his own observations. He reinforces my POV that this is very much about her issues with self esteem and depression. Also, he points the finger at her upbringing and the fact that she got whatever she wanted.

So, the cycles that came up were: her lack of follow through and tendency to sabotage things in her life and her feelings of entitlement (which my MIL often talks about). She often starts something and then decides, for whatever reason, that she doesn't want to do it anymore, or that she can't or it's not for her. For example, she started college and after about a year, decided that she didn't want to do it anymore. I think a lot of the reason she stopped going was because of social anxiety, because the feelings of the moment made it difficult to complete the course of study, and she was able to justify the feelings as a real disease, and this excused her from the responsibility she chose initially. I think a lot of this behavior stems from the tendency of people with low self esteem to not try rather than risk failure.

Now she kicks herself for not having completed college. She really recognizes that she made some bad choices. A big part of it now is that she doesn't have the experience or education to run out and get a decent job, so her fleeing wings are somewhat clipped - because of her choices. She has an expectation to be rescued, and she feels like all she has to do is destroy what she has and it will be replaced. Her mother has helped us out countless times financially, and I think she expects this (in fact her mother REALLY resents the fact that my W expects this rather than appreciates the GIFT when it comes). So, my W has never worked through anything and therefore has never felt the happiness and satisfaction of accomplishing what she set out to do. The closest she has come to feeling happiness has been in getting what she wanted. This is short lived, and I have no doubt is right in line with her motivations for the A and what it's doing for her. She now expects to get whatever she wants AND she thinks I should always want to get her what she wants, and should know this because it's my job to keep her happy. This is the only way she can see being happy.

So, either I play into this, by continuing to try and feed her desire for things, etc, and show her that I'm trying to make her happy, or I stop this almost entirely and encourage and support her doing for herself and realizing a different kind of happiness.

I have a sense of hopelessness from this sort of realization because she's a very smart person, but I think she uses those brains to support her feelings, rather than to analyze and see things for what they really are. I think she's got a long way to go before she can come to a place where she's capable of a real deep relationship.

Well, I see there's not a whole lot of useful stuff here for my progress. I think the real question on approach here is whether I continue to do what I have been, supporting her ill-founded concept of happiness just to demonstrate I'm trying or step away, force her out of her comfort zone and into the real world where she has no choice but to work through things that aren't pleasant, where she has to do what doesn't feel good because of responsibility or because of the good that WILL come out of it in the end. Again, I don't want to control her, but I can see her sabotaging even her plans to leave me. I feel like she's burning the candle from both ends, her A is going to fail, and she's devalued me and our M so she has no apparently good choices left. It's such a miserable place to be.

Last night when I got home I could tell she had been crying. I didn't really pry, especially when I asked her how she was and she said she was fine. I wondered whether they were having problems or if there was something else. There are so many things that I assume she could be feeling now, one of them being that she's more aware than ever that having this A relationship become her primary relationship will close the door on a lot of her family relationships that mean something to her now. I think this alone makes this A more of a dead end to her.

I don't think she has looked down the line at all. I don't think she's made any long term goals in her life. She has done what felt right, or what felt like it would make her feel good then without regard for what the responsible thing would be. Without regard for what impact she can have on her feelings in the future with her actions now. She has a lot of cycles to break, and I'm not sure she can/will before we're past the point of no return. I hope so, but that's out of my control. I need to really spend some time thinking about my own cycles now, lol.