Muddle's Waters V

[MuddleThrough]

Thanks guys. It's really sad to me - it hardly gets me defensive anymore because I just can't take it personally. Sometimes there are useful tidbits in her abuse, but for the most part not. She went on and on about how I proved that I don't care about her because I didn't offer to give her the bed and sleep on the floor myself. She seems to think that I should be completely selfless and do everything I can to satisfy her and make her life nice, and by not spending 100% of my effort on this I'm proving that I don't love her. The crazy thing is that I see my taking on as much responsibility for her wellbeing as I have as a detrimental thing - because I have enabled her dependency which is part of why we are where we are now, yet to her it's not enough.

Now I'm being told that I'm condescending all the time, that I'm passive aggressive, that I'm mean and I don't care about her feelings. As I've posted before, I think the fact that I have allowed her feelings to control me and have a track record of caving into her impulses, appeasing her, is a really bad thing to me. So, I can't provide her with the positive reinforcement that I'm getting better at being her husband by doing what she wants because she's going to steer this ship straight into the rocks if all I do is spend my life responding to her demands. And I'll have nobody to blame but myself for wasting my life doing so.

So back to the trip. Things seemed to be going pretty well while we were there. I guess she was putting on a show for her father and stepmother (who both really like me), but things seemed to be relatively normal. But she was always hostile to me when she had the opportunity. I don't really understand how one can spend so much energy acting the way she does, but she does. I guess I bring it out in her in some way, but to me, any contribution I make is just an excuse to unleash her venom.

While we were away, some minor issue occured and I told her that I was sorry she felt the way she did. She responded by telling me that I'm always so slick and sly about things like this. I appologize for her feelings but I don't take responsibility for causing them. I responded that I was sorry she felt the way she did, and I was sorry that my actions contributed to her feeling the way she did, but I didn't appologize for my actions because they were honest and genuine and had little to nothing to do with her. She takes everything personally and seems to think that everything I do is to influence her. The world revolves around her.

So, the flight back had her stressed. She doesn't deal with her stress, she just converts it into anger and dumps it on me. When we landed, I was trying to put the car seat in the car. She was on the other side of it and took the seat-belt to clip our son in. She gott angry and yelled at me to move the seat over, as if she had asked me already. She hadn't, but I guess I should have known, right? She kept snapping at me like that, little things. Irrational, unreasonable. My feeling is that I am experiencing a part of her inner dialogue - she gets a certain amount of relief out of having an external object to criticize, rather than just herself. The problem isn't what she criticizes, it's that she does so. But that's part of her depression. Her misbehavior is always excused by something. And I don't know where the line is with regard to legitimacy. I give her too much room to abuse this gray area.

Ok, that's that for tonight.