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
