A loving take-away. Right on. Thanks Muddle for your advice about empathy. I found me a few books to read about listening and coversation. I'll let you know how they go. Until then keep your focus on you, detach from her anger.
I'm having a bit of a tough day today. We went out in the morning to the mall and had lunch out. We seemed to do well in the morning, but she seemed to get more distant the more often frustrating things happened. She also seemed to get angry at me. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, something I see as her escaping being in a frustrating situation, especially when she had plenty of sleep last night. This afternoon I asked my W if she was angry. She responded to my question that she wasn't angry, she was miserable. She started asking me how long this nonsense was going to go on (this nonsense being our marriage). She started talking about how we just don't work together. How she doesn't want to be in our home, whether I'm in it or not. She doesn't want to be near me ever. She said that I don't know how to take care of her, she thinks I do only what I want to do, what I feel (I didn't say this, but I don't think I agreed to "take care of her" - I care for her, but I'm not her parent). She said I don't take her seriously. I told her that I do take her seriously, that her thoughts and feelings DO matter to me, and that if my actions are not conveying this to her, it's my error. I asked her what I can do to convey this to her. What can I do? She wouldn't give me an answer. She told me that it was up to me to figure it out. This is often an issue between us. She can ALWAYS tell me what I'm doing wrong, but will never redirect me in a positive way. It leads me to believe that she's using this as a means of controlling me - if I don't act the way she wants me to than I'm not taking her seriously, etc.
The conversation continued upstairs a bit later. The flowers and candy I bought her for valentine's day were in the living room. She told me that this was an example of how I don't take her seriously. She said that she would have prefered to have her house cleaned the way she wants it done over flowers and candy. She said she didn't even really like that stuff. She asked me if I thought she would. I told her that I thought she would appreciate being cared for in this way - being thought of. She used that to prove that I acted out of self interest and self gratification. I didn't consider that she wouldn't like this stuff - especially because our anniversary is only 10 days away. We have always agreed that it didn't really make sense to get stuff for valentine's because of this. And the fact that I got her something shows that I don't care enough to remember her likes/dislikes. Also, when I told her that I got her a gift - it wasn't an either/or thing. It's not like she didn't get the house cleaned because she got flowers. She responded "shouldn't I have a say in what I get?"
Another thing that came up is her frustration with finances. She is really resentful that I don't make enough money to give her the lifestyle she wants without her "having to pick up the slack." I don't really want to be defensive about this, but I never told her that I would take care of everything and give her the life of a princess. I feel like she's acting like a spoiled brat - entitled to everything and blaming me for her not being able to get it. I know I can improve on our status, and I'm working towards that end, but I feel like I'm being torn down from every angle - there's always some negative to point out, even in the good that I do. Then I get to judging her - thinking she's doing all she can to push me away, trying to make me miserable (because that was she can get what she wants, a divorce) and shifting responsibility for her life from herself onto me. Not solving problems because that would require taking responsibility for a part in them, but escaping them and blaming me for the entirety of them. I know I can be frustrating, but that's life. She needs to deal with things that frustrate her, not just avoid and escape them. I don't want to be a part of the problem, enabling her by helping her avoid things she doesn't like. But often I feel she's hurt by me when I don't insulate her from these facts of life.
She believes that I want control but not responsibility. She thinks I make decisions with my interests in mind, even when it comes to parenting. She told me that she saw me tell our son two opposing things because on different days. Basically saying that I was lazy one day so I didn't follow through in any disciplined way. There was no specific event brought up, so it was difficult to discuss this, but I asked her if it was possible that I had a valid, parenting reason to approach similar things differently. I asked her not to judge my parenting because I work very hard to act on our son's best interests. She didn't agree.
In the end, I felt really hurt. WW wanted me to leave, and wants me out of her life (why she does or whether it's rational or unrealistic or anything else, it doesn't change the fact that it hurts to hear this - even though I'm somewhat numb to it). I took things too personally, and soon after having a tearful moment alone in our bedroom I realized that I shouldn't take it personally. Just because she directed things at me as though all of this is due to my personal defects doesn't make it so. That stupid saying about how when you point your finger there are three pointing back at you comes to mind. It's just tough to feel like a complete failure - and I do this to myself, I judge myself based on how little change there's been in my W's regard of me, but also on my lack of significant progress on a lot of the goals I have set for myself. I felt angry, and I have no doubt that these feelings I have about myself have to do with my anger. I wanted to dump the cup of water I had in my hand over her head, but recognized that this wouldn't do either of us any good. She wasn't to blame for my feeling bad, she just catalyzed some feelings that I have about myself.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
So sorry to hear about your day. I think the key is in your statement "there is always something negative to be pointed out, even in the good I do". No matter what you do, it's not enough. This is the mindset of our S's these days. My W isn't as vocal but she's damn sure not going to let me feel I'm doing anything good! My God, it might bring us closer! Your W wants to push you away. You cried because you were hurt, understandably. She was a real bitch who right now is exercising the only power she feels she has, to rip the sh!t out of you. Even when you've managed to toughen up the old skin, there are still days when these things sting. Hope tomorrow is a better day.
I think that what might help is the fact that you aren't doing anything bad. You try to be considerate, kind, loving and thoughtful and she gets angry. Not your fault. You give these things because you feel a real love for her, not because you expect anything in return. The problem is expectation. I try to feel the joy and happiness in giving regardless of any recieving. Your wife is unhappy with her life and expects someone else to fix that. You have to realize that happiness and self worth aren't found without when they're not found within and that is something we can't change in someone else. All we can do change how we feel. Self worth, happpiness and love can be contagious. I hope that you can see your self worth and find the happiness and love within.
WI, what you mention here about the mindset seems to me to be depression and anxiety. It's a way of maintaining blame for her state of mind on me. My actions necessitate an emotional response from her. If I frustrate her she gets enraged. I can't eliminate my frustrating behavior. I do what I can, but it frustrates her when I try and figure out if we have enough money to go do something - she wants a quick answer from me, I want to be accurate and both share this responsibility.
It's not up to me to turn everything around. I can't. I can only remain as close to the middle as I can stand to be, hoping she'll decide to meet me there. I can only remain as emotionally available as possible. This is especially difficult when I feel like I'm constantly under attack, when I'm constantly criticized and blamed. But it has provided me with an enormous opportunity to improve in adverse circumstances. Like climbing a mountian with a 300 pound backpack on in a snowstorm.
I am proud of my progress regarding sharing my feelings. I have responded as often as I could if I felt hurt. I told her that I felt really judged by the way she responded to something I said yesterday (when we got to the mall I asked her if she remembered where the store was - she got snotty with me, and then was trying to get me to explain why I asked. I told her and she basically told me she thought I was stupid for asking) and it felt good to express my feelings rather than stew and not say anything. This is significant progress and it is valuable to me in my life, regardless of where I end up.
Ben, I'm not sure how I feel about what you wrote here. I know my intentions are good. So in this sense I'm not doing anything bad. But if my W is hurt by what I do, am I not doing something wrong? I do need to consider the response on some level, right? Otherwise I'm being entirely narcisistic - seeing my perspective as absolute. I don't believe it's so, but I also want to trust myself more. You're right that my W is unhappy with her life. She does need to set the expectation in some way (and if she's doing that now by showing me that she wants to live like a princess and be taken care of her whole life, I should file now - I want a partner, not a dependant, not someone I need to buy things left and right for to fill the void inside her. I never thought she was this superficial before.) in order to be satisfied by the results. This is specifically the reason I keep asking her "what would it look like if I were to convey my feelings about you accurately through my actions?" She won't tell me how I should act, rather that I'm always acting wrong. If she doesn't know how she wants to be treated (she probably does at some level but doesn't want to share it with me because she wants to continue to believe that our personalities preclude us from working together) than how can she ask me to figure it out? I have to empirically try every possibility? She did tell me that I had to do the exact opposite of everything I was currently doing though.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
Muddle, I think you are correct in not wanting to just automatically dismiss any complaint or hurt feeling she has. Her feelings are her feelings, they aren't wrong for her. But, because she's feeling hurt is not necessarily something you need to feel responsible for either. You are well aware of this and do as much with it as one could expect. Once we start to dismiss everything as "her problem" we become locked into our own way of thinking, which as you say, should never be absolute. It's walking that thin line which is so difficult and because it's so difficult emotionally a lot of people just stop trying and do adopt the absolutist mode of operation. I'm glad you were able to express your feelings to her re the mall incident because that's part of standing up for yourself, isn't that what she says she wants when she says "why don't you grow a pair?". I know my W gets pissed when I ask things like "do you remember where..." or especially if I say "you can turn right here"...and that's because in her mind it infers that I think she's stupid by asking "do you remember where the store is" whereas I think I'm just being helpful. Either way is not wrong, it's just different. I now refrain from giving driving instructions, if she wants to know she can ask. But, I can also imagine that when you ask your W "how would you like me to address these type of situations?" she would respond "you should know that without asking"...So do you just stop asking whether she knows where the store is or do you stop asking "how do we deal with these situations?" or just carry on. Beats me! But as you know it's not all these minor complaints that are the issue yet she refuses to deal with "the issue". She's made YOU the issue versus looking at healing the dynamic in your R. It must create a sense of helplessness sometimes for you. I feel that sometimes when I see my W working so hard at not allowing us to connect. She's protecting her R with OP by not allowing the walls to drop, even a bit. That is frustrating and it's tough to feel continually rejected, as I'm sure you feel much of the time as well. Take care.
Her feelings are her feelings, they aren't wrong for her. But, because she's feeling hurt is not necessarily something you need to feel responsible for either.
Yes, this is true, and I'm as aware of it as I can be. However, W believes that I AM responsible for her pain, pain that SHE'S creating by maintaining a extramarital relationship. The only solution to her pain that she's willing to accept is to dissolve our marriage. This is not a solution for me.
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I'm glad you were able to express your feelings to her re the mall incident because that's part of standing up for yourself, isn't that what she says she wants when she says "why don't you grow a pair?".
I think this is exactly what I should be doing. I see this as being aware of my emotions and making my W aware of them as well. It's also a precursor to saying "my emotional state is important enough to me that I will remove myself from our contact for a time if we are unable to communicate in a way that doesn't upset me." Sounds a bit simplistic and maybe even a bit stupid in print, but it makes a big difference in the way I feel in the dynamic. No more blaming and judging on my part, simply acknowledging my feelings, communicating them and then continuing the conversation trying to be effective.
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But, I can also imagine that when you ask your W "how would you like me to address these type of situations?" she would respond "you should know that without asking"
Why yes, WI, this is exactly it. I should know. I should know her well enough to just know. She shouldn't have to say anything. Etc.
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...So do you just stop asking whether she knows where the store is or do you stop asking "how do we deal with these situations?" or just carry on.
I don't like the idea of avoiding conflict or communication. I don't like going on assumptions. I think it makes sense to ask the question (either of them). If you take away the opportunity to have conflict, you are taking away an opportunity to productively resolve conflict as a team. You're hiding from problems rather than acknowledging the problem and solving it.
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But as you know it's not all these minor complaints that are the issue yet she refuses to deal with "the issue". She's made YOU the issue versus looking at healing the dynamic in your R.
Exactly. It's a personal fight to keep myself from seeing her as the problem. It never will be, but sometimes I have the urge to say F-it with the whole relationship. Say she's impossible and be done. This isn't what I want either. There's nothing productive in this.
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It must create a sense of helplessness sometimes for you. I feel that sometimes when I see my W working so hard at not allowing us to connect. She's protecting her R with OP by not allowing the walls to drop, even a bit. That is frustrating and it's tough to feel continually rejected, as I'm sure you feel much of the time as well. Take care.
Yes, you're right on here. I do feel helpless. I all too often get to that place in my internal logical dialogue where I say if she would only do this, or unless she does that or acknowledges this, etc., there's nothing I can do. Being aware of where the boundaries are between us is important, but preventing myself from taking responsibility for dynamics and healing that could possibly take place because of my perception that she owns a particular portion of the dynamic isn't helpful either. Yes, the rejection is tough. It's all very frustrating, but I have a lot to be thankful for as well.
Thanks Whatis for sharing this journey with me.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
Muddle, you are so welcome! Remember our motto "No one gets left behind"! (That's kind of a strange motto when you think it comes from the 7 th Cavalry who were all slaughtered and everyone was left behind!) It just occurred to me that there is a book out there you might want to get a hold of (yes, I appear to have a book for every occassion!)called "Why Can't You Read My Mind?" by Jeffrey Bernstein. He says "Don't let these toxic thought patterns come between you and lasting love: the all or nothing trap, catastrophic conclusions, the should bomb, label slinging, the blame game, emotional short-circut, overactive imagination, head game gamble, disillusionment doom. I thought of you when I opened the book and read the following: "To develop real empathy for your partner, you must at one time or another permit yourself to feel frightened, overwhelmed, or hopeless. Your own sense of strength comes from embracing your own sense of vulnerablility. Similarly, being empathetically strong for your partner and being able to identify with his or her sense of vulnerability is rooted in accepting, and not denying, your own pain and vulnerablility" I think you've been doing well with this Muddle! Maybe I'll give this one a read myself. Take care.
On your response to my post: You have said that your W is using the OM and negativity to justify her actions and want for a divorce. In this mindset can you do anything right? When you do something right does it give you happiness or do you feel you had to compromise your sense of right and wrong to do it? I know that right and good are all perspective. But how do you get her perspective without ESP? My W and I are seperated and talk about once a week and I understand her perspective because she tells it to me not because I can read her mind. My problem is getting her to understand I understand and have changed as a person. I know we are not bad people in the degree our W's feel so to take their responses as a way to measure our rights and wrongs, goods and bads won't work completely.
Thanks WI. That sounds like a book I should pick up. I just finished "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" by Dr. Amen - interesting read - so I'm due for another.
Ben, I know what you're getting at. I'm careful not to assume much in my sitch. I don't have ESP and I don't claim to know anything more about my W than what she tells me. Her negativity always seems to end in the "we just don't work" statement that she is always trying to get me to swallow. I agree with her that we don't, just not that we can't. Well, we can't as long as she continues to sabatoge everything - and this is what the A does too. No, there's no way that I can use her opinion to measure my accomplishments, but I can't ignore it either. As far as doing something right or wrong goes, I try not to think in these terms. I prefer to see something as effective, or functional as opposed to dysfunctional or problematic. The good/bad dichotomy tends to lead right into the good/evil one, and that's most certainly not a place where I have the authority to judge. We're both people, neither intrinsically good nor bad. Our actions are neither good nor bad. They are healthy/unhealthy, destructive/constructive, etc., and all of this is relative to the moral plane we're dealing with. The family is important to me, I see it as important to my son. So therefore any actions that help acheive some level of functionality in the family I tend to see as "good" - but when my W looks at the family she sees a prison - something that severely limits the amount of freedom she has, that limits her life's potential, therefore seeing the ties that bind the family work is threatening to her - functionality here is "bad" for her. She wants to see the prison destroyed and she sees the family as synonimous with the prison, so it must be destroyed too. This all comes from conversations I've had with her.
Yes, I do get a sense of satisfaction when I accomplish a goal. But I measure that goal by my progress, by something other than her reaction.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. ” – Albert Einstein
