Lil, the Enneagram stuff is really interesting. I agree that I am most definitely a 4 and H is a 5.
Thinking about it, I see that I really didn't bond with either parent. I always felt like I didn't quite belong, didn't really fit. I remember envying my cousin's relationship with her mother, and how easy and effortless it seemed. They were two peas in a pod.
What you posted about the 4/5 problem areas seem pretty accurate. Also:
-Fours tend to be easily frustrated with the quality of attention they get from Fives (since they can be preoccupied with their mental worlds, not with the relationship), thus they tend to provoke the Five until they get a response.
-Usually, the Five retreats first, feeling overwhelmed by the Four's escalating needs and demands. Of course, the Five's withdrawal triggers more clinging and neediness in the Four, more demands, and more endless analysis of the relationship itself.
Thanks for the info.
P.S. You mean you attend chorus rehearsals on-campus? My univ. had a chorus open to all U students and the community.
Hi Lil, Thanks for this article. I kind of knew that already but I suppose I was in denial about it. H will be 40 in September. The lack of morning wood is not all that recent maybe two or three years. I initially did take it personally a little when his E would fade but I don't really anymore. It is so obvious that his lifestyle would lead to this kind of thing.
What I should do is print it off and give it to H. I'm not sure if I will. If I mention anything like this to him he tends to get annoyed with me as if I am pointing things like this out to him to deliberately hurt him
Well no, I will, heart disease is a serious business we have young kids, he can't just go on forever with his head in the sand. He almost certainly has some underlying heart disease I can't imagine he would not. Here's the list
Smokes heavily Drinks heavily Never exercises, sendentary job Eats high fat and high carb diet, shuns veggies never eats fruit Stresses out over everything, workaholic Family history of heart disease
Whenever I have tried to nudge him in the direction of adopting a more healthy lifestyle he just acts like I am saying these things in a bid to depress him or annoy him or act holier than thou. I might just have to make an appointment and drag him to the doctor's.
I have to admit to a somewhat fatalistic attitude to all this. It's like when a kid persists in doing something that you know is going to lead to their downfall and they take no notice of your warnings and in the end you just think "OK go ahead an learn the hard way"
Lil any ideas on how best to approach a 4 with this kind of issue?
Fran
Last edited by haphazard; 03/03/0711:16 PM.
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
With that lifestyle Diabetes might enter the picture too...then everything becomes multiplied...like heart disease, blood pressure, ED.....
My H finally faced the music when he had 4 TIA's...mini-strokes...scared the Bjesus out of him....finally started taking his health seriously and watching his blood sugars....
Thanks for posting, haphazard and imLIN. I am finding it very therapeutic to write my thoughts down here.
Re ED and heart disease: my uncle died suddenly of a heart attack at about age 60. He was thin and a very heavy smoker who once said he'd rather smoke than eat. I found out a few years ago that he had ED and had been on Viagra shortly before his death. There wasn't a family history of heart disease that I know of. Scary.
Do whatever it takes, Fran. He sounds like a heart attack or stroke waiting to happen. Has he had his cholesterol and B/P checked recently? He really needs to get checked out ASAP.
I understand your reluctance to bring it up based on his previous response. I have encountered that a bit myself with H. He sees the doc regularly and has his levels monitored. Now I'm trying to get him to see an endocrinologist about his thyroid. Anyone want to jump in here?
Fearless wrote: The idea of a strong mother being able to balance out inappropriate comments and innuendo from the father doesn't seem possible to me. I don't have experience here but I just don't see how that's possible. The point is that the girl's interaction with her male role model is not appropriate and confuses her sexual development. How can the mother ultimately affect that? I would agree that she can potentially minimize the effect but balance it doesn't seem possible.
MrsCAC4 replied: Right again. If the mother heard the father make the comment (the first comment ever) and she stepped in and defended the daughter and then got the father alone and told him she'd smack him upside the head if he ever did it again (well OK not "smack", but told him very strongly that she would not tolerate that behavior) and then talked about it with the daughter afterwards and tried to do damage control, then the mother MIGHT be able to "balance out" the father's behavior. However, the likelihood that it would play out this way is extremely low IMO.
I’m not sure what type of scenario you two are talking about but I do not mean overt sexual comments which could be clearly considered sexual harassment. I am talking about teasing sort of comments that one girl might say to another but for some reason are considered inappropriate for a parent. To me, these types of comments could set up a guilt complex in a girl or they could not.
The difference I see is in how the family views sexuality. In this country, religion treats sex as a taboo. I think that is disgusting and it is one of my major problems with traditional Christian-based religion (well, along with a lot of other things). There are plenty of other societies in the world, like the Japanese, where sex is not such a taboo. Traditionally families bathed together in communal bath houses. There is no shame of the body. It is not flaunted, but it is not shamed. The idea of a family bathing together in this country is enough to land someone in jail. So with that as a backdrop, then of course any teasing about a girl’s bra size is going to be stigmatized.
But my original point was more about a mother stepping in to give a sense of balance to the daughter. I see this as the equivalent of a father telling his son how to think about being a man. When mothers tell their sons to embrace some aspect of femininity, fathers will often coach the son out of earshot how to acknowledge the mother in her sight, but be a man out of her sight. That is very common here in the south. A man is expected to be courteous to women, say what they want to hear, then be himself when he is away from them. That boy does not get a sense of confidence from the teachings of his mother, but from his father. He soon learns to just listen and respect what his mother says, but to not identify with it. His mother says what she says because that’s just the way women are. A father’s advice can give goys get a sense of reassurance in knowing the difference. So why can’t mothers do the same for girls?
mrs. cac, re the choir, I am enrolled in the community college, I started in the full-blown music program, but it just got to be too hard. So now I'm just in choir. There's a big choir and a smaller group called the chamber chorale. I sing in both, so I'm there every day. My bf also he sings in the chamber group, but he is not registered. The choir teacher loves having him in there. He has a beautiful trained operatic voice. No matter how much of an a$$hole he is sometimes... I hear that voice and I tell myself I could never leave it... er, him.
Fran wrote What I should do is print it off and give it to H. I'm not sure if I will. If I mention anything like this to him he tends to get annoyed with me as if I am pointing things like this out to him to deliberately hurt him
Well no, I will, heart disease is a serious business we have young kids, he can't just go on forever with his head in the sand. He almost certainly has some underlying heart disease I can't imagine he would not.
This is a toughie. My late husband had diabetes for over 30 years. When I met him, his kidneys were already failing. He went on dialysis a year after we married and had a kidney transplant nine months later. It wasn't until after the transplant that he fully took responsibility for his own health. I spent the first year of our marriage nagging him... and back then I didn't know enough about diabetes to even know WHAT to say when I was nagging. I just had the sense that he should be doing SOMETHING different.
I think you should print out whatever packs the most punch... and just give it to him with that list of risk factors (which is pretty impressive in a bad way) and say something like, "This is too important for me to let your annoyance get in the way."
Then one strategy would be not to say anything more for at least a couple of months or something. Don't start micromanaging him or anything. Don't comment on what he's smoking or drinking. The reason you can't do that is because then the fight becomes between YOU and him and not between him and the issue. YOU become the issue, and he will use that as a distraction. You have to assume that he's intelligent enough to see the risk factors and act responsibly. I would bring it up every now and then-- every couple of months or so with no nagging in the meantime.
The trouble is, even if he goes to the doctor and gets a diagnosis of heart disease, he has to make major lifestyle changes. He may blame you for making him face the truth about what he is doing to himself. IOW getting him to the doctor is just the beginning of the journey.
OTOH, I have a very close friend whose husband died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma a month before my husband. He had some strange lesions on his face for years, and he would never go to the doctor. Then he had strange flu-like symptoms and some swelling in his neck. He still put off going, and she didn't push him to go. He was eventually diagnosed in February 2000 with NHL and died four months later in June. To this day she heaps recriminations on her own head for not nagging him to go to the doctor sooner. She feels he might be alive today if she had. NHL is pretty deadly, so that may not be true... but it may.
It's hard to know what to do in a sitch like yours. I'm not sure what the climate is between you two these days.
My bf had quad bypass three years ago next month. He stopped drinking, but he still smokes. I don't say anything about it. But during the few months after the surgery when he had quit smoking, his erectile function was very good. I guess it wasn't that important to him, or he didn't see (as I clearly saw) that there was any connection... or the smoking habit was just too strong. He tends to go from one crisis to another and smoking is a way of soothing himself.
Sorry... not much help.
Fran, are you going to alanon yet? What are you waiting for?
I'm going to nag YOU until you do. (Maybe that will give you some insight into how to get your husband to the doctor. )
:sigh: Cobra, you're just not getting it, are you?
I’m not sure what type of scenario you two are talking about but I do not mean overt sexual comments which could be clearly considered sexual harassment.
By who? An adult? In 2007? In the early 1970s a 10 year old girl like me had never heard the term "sexual harassment." You're looking at it from the POV of an adult male.
I am talking about teasing sort of comments that one girl might say to another but for some reason are considered inappropriate for a parent. To me, these types of comments could set up a guilt complex in a girl or they could not.
First off, girls don't typically tease each other the way boys do. They form cliques, they talk about each other, they try to out-dress each other. Apparently you have no clue how adolescent girls behave.
The difference I see is in how the family views sexuality. In this country, religion treats sex as a taboo. I think that is disgusting and it is one of my major problems with traditional Christian-based religion (well, along with a lot of other things). There are plenty of other societies in the world, like the Japanese, where sex is not such a taboo. Traditionally families bathed together in communal bath houses. There is no shame of the body. It is not flaunted, but it is not shamed. The idea of a family bathing together in this country is enough to land someone in jail. So with that as a backdrop, then of course any teasing about a girl’s bra size is going to be stigmatized.
Well that's all fine and good, but I was raised in the U.S. by Catholic parents. I already said my father had a very sexually repressed mother. He refused to change my diaper when I was a baby because he didn't want to see my naked bottom, for Pete's sake! My mother was pretty uptight too. Can't you see how that would have an effect on a child before they could even talk? I'm sure I picked up on their hangups very early on. Many of us raised in America don't have a fighting chance to have truly healthy attitudes about sex.
Also, FWIW, when this happened my father was in the throes of a MLC and I now know he was having at least a EA. I remember one time I caught him on the phone with OW; it was only a few years ago that I connected the pieces.
I don't even know what to say to your last paragraph. I guess it's easy to just dismiss the words of an overprotective mother because they really are just words and nothing more. You know that she cares about you and this is her way of showing it, even if annoying or smothering. There is NOTHING caring, nurturing, smothering or loving about a father's inappropriate behavior toward his daughter. It is an attack. Completely different.
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