I am not making excuses for what I did. I am responsible for my choices.
In the years that my wife lost her feelings for me I was to some extent depressed and felt trapped in my job. Because of that I self medicated with alcohol.
After 2008 I was so scared of losing my wife and feeling guilty about my bad behavior I became co-dependent. I tried to please her any way I could. I do all the cooking, drove the kids every where and household things like that. I remained depressed while becoming co-dependent.
I read Codependent No More a book by Melody Beattie after BD and my mental meltdown. My co-dependent behavior seems to be triggered by my fear of losing my wife and she divorcing me. I am getting better at it since you mentioned it in your post. I realized it when you mentioned it. I am getting better at managing it because there is very little chance of my wife choosing to remain with me. I believe she has given up on me and the marriage.
I will keep trying and hoping because the sun even shines on a dog's ass occasionally.
Mutatio,
I been reflecting on some posts between you and V, and something struck me. I read the above and see that you timeline your engagement with CD to 2008. My feeling from reading your posts with V is that they were present back when you decided to work for FIL.
Your posts with V indicate your motivation was to provide financial security for your wife and I read this as you felt it was an important way of demonstrating commitment to your wife and marriage.
My sense Mutatio is that for many years your authentic self has been seeking ways to fully express itself. Your self medication through drinking, provided relief from feelings of resentment for not being truely Mutatio. You are good man Mutatio your sense of duty was strong. There was however a cost. You identify that the cost was your wife and family, this is true, but equally there was a cost to YOU.
Has there ever been a time when Mutatio put himself first?
When was the last time you experienced yourself as a good person, a good father, a good husband without guilt and shame? I use guilt and shame has they are the feelings often attached to codependent behaviours and coping strategies.
I don't know how valuable any of these questions are for you Mutuaio. Feel free to ignore my reflections. I honour the fact that sometimes there is limited value in rumaging around in past behaviours when the locus of control and change is in the NOW.
I guess I raise them as I feel that at times you are still fully immersed in being the good dutiful husband and father. If you could just show wife, how sorry you are, how good you are that it would change everything. Maybe this is true.
I don't tend to agree. Your wife has experienced you as the dutiful husband - he was a drinker and angry, she has experienced you as the guilt ridden, dependent, placatory and anticipatory husband (CD behaviours - please know that I am finger pointing at myself too).
I believe that your lovely wife needs to see you strong, masculine, focussed and self engaged. While wife maybe presenting as disinterested and disengaged, a woman can't help but take notice of man who is in the fullness of his masculinity and purpose. This is detachment.
I have to thank you Mutatio for being vulnerable with me, allowing me to share my thoughts and reflections with you. I am learning so much about myself and my own relationships with my intimate others. Much learning for me.
I would like to say too. I am a very senitive soul and my strength IRL or Online has never been the nuts bolts of goal planning and more pragmatic change processes. You will however always get a kind and thoughtful reflection that I hope honours you, your situation and pays respect to the ideals you hold for your wife, family and marriage.
The above is said with much respect and good intent
Thanks for thinking of me V, whenever your ready I'm game.
JellyB, thank you for sharing your thoughts about my experience. I am happy to continue until you've got me figured out.
"Has there ever been a time when Mutatio put himself first?"
I have never put myself first against what the family needed. When the family had a need, I would do it in a way I preferred. But me before the family's needs, no.
"When was the last time you experienced yourself as a good person, a good father, a good husband without guilt and shame?"
The first three years of my marriage, about 23 years ago.
"I guess I raise them as I feel that at times you are still fully immersed in being the good dutiful husband and father. If you could just show wife, how sorry you are, how good you are that it would change everything. Maybe this is true."
Not true, I think it would change nothing.
"Your wife has experienced you as the dutiful husband - he was a drinker and angry, she has experienced you as the guilt ridden, dependent, placatory and anticipatory husband"
I agree.
Your good JellyB, you have me figured out. I will put myself first sometimes but each member of a family should have that experience. The evening classes I take now are for me and I don't miss them.
my new goals forge a deeper connection with my son spent time with my daughter exercise and lose 10 lbs. finish my lighting upgrades in my garage take the advanced evening class keep a PMA stop co-dependent thoughts and behaviors
Wow, Mutatio! All this self-work going on in your thread is so helpful to read. You are so bravely baring your soul and the feedback and insights you are getting from others is truly instructional to me.
I'm thrilled with your goals, mainly because this time the focus is not on your W. That hasn't been working, so definitely time to do something else. You reflect such an honorable personality. I truly hope for the best for you.
You pay me such a compliment, and I say thank you! I don't have you figured out, I just recognise myself in your struggles and vulnerabilities. But if you have a sense of being understood in some small way, I'm pleased.
I think you grew up in a family that couldn't, or wouldn't, attach great value to your basic needs and wants, and your natural impulse was to suppress and add a desire to please those around you, it started with those ACE markers, I really think so. This isn't abuse but neglect, a very different and indifferent mechanism.
What you wanted didn't matter so you appeased and thereafter I believe that set the pattern with other relationships. With FIL instead of relating as an adult male to adult male, you placed this wonderful man on a pedestal and attempted to subjugated your needs to his. He didn't need it and would have assumed your submission was contentment. Your needs did not get expressed although I suspect that it may have been safe to do it.
You learned to contain anger inside, afraid to express it in case you were excluded from the work and entwined family group. Your role did not fit you, the anger has to emerge somehow and it did so as a passive aggressive response, alcohol. Your own needs went into hiding as you medicated with alcohol.
Your needs never became known, you kept them secret and I took enormous effort. As a result the passive aggressiveness became reinforced as your main way of coping with the world. The anger was once again turned inward as a destructive fonce.
On giving up the alcohol another opportunity to atone and grow was lost. Damage to Rs with unsurpassed anger has to be atoned in one way or another or it erupts. The anger and frustration was never expressed and it's truely a source unexplored.
Healing of those original unmet needs has not occurred yet and the need to appease resolved.
It is your history spattered with guilt arising from suppressed anger. In order to do that passive aggressiveness was needed. As a child it was not expressed, as a young man with FIL it was distracted. Then suppressed with alcohol, following which contained by passive aggression.
You never let your expressions of negative emotions show. I think because of fear of that childhood anger becoming uncontrolled.
I think you have no strong mechanism for anger management and thus you numbed it and behaved passive aggressively. It emerges at the edges, and you feel inauthentic. I think it's a sense you have of yourself that your skin is thick in case the inside strong emotions burst through. The suit of armour stops you from coming out not the body blows from coming in. You deny your responses of anger because you fear exclusion.
Anger will always find a way to emerge, it cannot be eliminated and you fear it. Hence you become too "nice" to redirect it. In other ways, its corollary is to dampen love. At one stage I challenged you because you referred to your children as amorphous as an extension of W, on a continuum. Indistinguishable. It's different now and you see each as individuals, which pleases me enormously, but that passive aggressiveness acts as a damper on your feelings and . It is as if you feel once felt intensively the anger will leak. You would rather live without authenticity than address the needs left from childhood. Your W can never meet those needs and theating childhood deficit repaired only by you. Your parents were flawed, and you can let that go and it's ok. The anger of unmet need wI'll be released.
Periodically, you must find a way of alleviating this negative emotional build-up without causing serious damage to any relationship that you perceive as precarious. As a result without such mechanisms you decieve yourself and act out passively aggressively, even acting against your own best interest. And sometimes WW does this for you as a surrogate, WW passive aggressiveness arises because her princess needs are not being met. Stonewalling, sulking and avoiding in order to control, you feel comfortable with it as you know it in yourself. It was you cross and once again instead of anger, you feel pain and hurt. It's easier and familiar, an old pattern from childhood.
You both found ways to sabotage, undermine, deceive, betray by disappointing as you grew up, however, in two families that couldn't, or wouldn't for very different reasons, attach much value to your basic needs and wants, your impulse to become yourself shelved and that need rationalised. You were unclear who you were and it was easy to shelve or medicate in a featherbed rut.
You fooled yourself into thinking expediency was what you wanted, sacrificing growth for that expediency? There was hidden rebellion.
You circumvent the growth you need by not addressing the childhood needs and learning to use your anger. Criticism is avoided and evaded as well as self evaluation.
Addressing the childhood need and learning to be assertive rather than passive aggressive would serve you well. Your needs were not met, and you deflected anger into self subjugation. That is why you fear that anger. Anger is powerful and it needs addressing.
If you think my evaluation has merit, then we can look at that FOO to release the anger, safely and to direct it.
We need to know exactly which childhood needs remain unmet, and to see if a new life story can emerge. The pattern was set long ago and has been repeating in each Act in a different way. It can be addressed, and usefully so to move on. This is because suppressing one major emotion acts to dampen the otherst. It's like having a massage with your winter coat on. The whole senses dampen. It will be unfamiliar Mutatio. It means leaving facade and becoming truly authentic. That means acknowledging umnet long ago needs.
These are my thoughts.
V
Last edited by Vanilla; 11/13/1510:11 PM.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
Hi Vanilla, thank you for taking the time to help me on my journey.
ACE markers? I not sure what this means.
"If you think my evaluation has merit, then we can look at that FOO to release the anger, safely and to direct it." I do think it has merit. I would like to go spelunking in my mind with you.
Thanks again, I want to reread your post after I cook dinner. When ever your ready just throw it on the wall.
You can take the Ace test by googling "Ace quiz"...Vanilla usually recommends the one by aces too high. Once you find them online, you'll figure out what she means. One quiz is based on your childhood, the other on your resiliency.
