Swimming with the Turtles

[zig]

i had thought that i was being less resistant - because i can't say that i have NOT been possessive of my limited time with s.

Why do you think sticking to the agreement you've made makes you possessive? You can certainly be open to changes, but your time with S is your time with S.

you're right , it is

i'm trying to be more generous of my time with him - to maybe show by example to h that we can be kinder in this sitch to each other.

Are you being generous because that's what you want to do or because you want to teach a lesson?

actually because i wanted to be generous - especially to s. i can see him missing his dad and how delighted he was last friday to spend a couple of hours with him. also, we talk a lot here about how when we change it can/might instigate change in the other person. is that wrong to want? h has deliberately kept his life with s separate from my life with s for years. should i continue that pattern, in fact, as you suggest insist on it?

does the fact that i have noticed h liking the extra time with s, influence your thoughts on it at all.

Are you fixing things for H? Discounting yourself to make his life better?

a few weeks ago, when it was my turn with s, fil called and asked if s could come over because his sisters were in town and really wanted to see s. i asked if h had seen them (h's aunts) and fil said yes he did already a couple of days earlier

do you not find it ridiculous on some level, that h felt he could not ask me to get s to go over for family stuff and his dad had to ask me as if i was doing everyone a favor by allowing it?

There's a lot of mindreading here. Do you see that?

How did you stop H from asking to have S visit?

you're right, i was mind reading - i didn't prevent h from doing that, he chose not to on his own accord, and then fil asked at the last minute when he realized that his sisters would be leaving without getting to see s, if he didn;t call and ask me

i DON'T want to be placed in that position. this was my solution to it. maybe i'm wrong and someone is going to tell me that yes keep it that way - let him see the reality of the sitch.

What position don't you want to be placed in?

well the reality is that every one thinks i'm so controlling that his family always asks my permission before they ask h. even his sister only asked me if she could come for s's birthday. i ask them why they are asking me and shouldn't they be asking h, and they insist that they want the answer from me not him

You can't control what they think of you.

All you can do is be aware of your motives, act from a true heart and do what's best for you and S.

If it's your time with S, why shouldn't they ask you and not H?

i can accept that, but when it comes to his birthday, sil didn't even know where s was going to be and didn't seem to want to find that out first.

so am i controlling when i offer to open up the sitch and allow h more freedom with s, in a way in terms of time spent together?

Are you doing it to teach H a lesson?

GOOD GRIEF, NO - i honestly saw it as seeing how much he missed s and not wanting that for them. i suppose as i wrote that i realize that i'm trying to make things better for h and for s? at my own expense?

Are you doing it to be seen as not controlling by his family?

absolutely not - i was doing it to not feel that I WAS CONTROLLING

Rally being honest about my motivations has been one of the most difficult thing I've had to because it's made me see a darker side of myself.

actually - i think i'm beginning to realize that it's the opposite for me - i am so over giving - at the total expense of myself and what is good for me. it's odd, because in the process of answering your questions step by step, i realized that rather than this being some kind of manipulation on my part, what's coming to the surface for me is that even now during this horrendous sitch that h has created, i am still trying to GIVE to both of them out of the goodness of my heart at the expense of myself.

But I needed to shine a light on it to be able to change.

thanks labug. it's odd - my horoscope has been talking about this - not to give so much of myself that there is not the right things left for me.

[zig]

yes your'e right - even in offering to take s, i was controlling what h decided to do with him after school.

that was in the beginning - then later it changed so that h set up his week so that he didn't have stuff in the evenings and i barely saw s. he did have the issue in jan when his teaching schedule changed and he had to teach until 5.30 and he asked if i would pick s up from school for those 2 days.

i happily agreed as then i got to see s during that week.

the first therapist i went to last august, told me to be as flexible as possible with s and h's schedule.

And if H always feels like his care of S isn't up to your standards and he's not doing it good enough...well I imagine that's not a feeling you want him to feel.

for sure - that's how i made him feel through the whole marriage - it really sucked what i did. and it's one of the first things i realized when i "woke up" with the bomb.

my big 180 has been never to question h about anything he has done with s at his house. not one thing. or even ask what they do. and whenever he does volunteer something about what they've done, i have responded really positively and said how wonderful it was.

.you do have to really honestly look at your motives...

if i were to be brutally honest - and this is the place to be that, i would say that for the longest time in the back of my mind i thought that getting h to come back was through s. so if i was "manipulating" or having misguided motives, i would say i was doing it then for those reasons.

i'm ashamed that i thought that way, now, and sad that i didn;t understand what that said about me. now i DON't feel like that and really understand that it's not about h coming back it's about BOTH OF US figuring it out together.

you know, i read other people's posts and they talk about how their WAS's call at random times to talk to their kids. ours is strange. there's this weird unspoken rule that we can only call s at bedtime to say goodnight. i think it's really sad that neither h nor i feel the freedom to call and talk to s when we would like to? i don't know if h would like to, but i would.

and also if the worst thing that happens is S has dinner at 9pm it's not the end of the world

yes i know - and i am so pleased that i have moved away from that kind of thinking. please understand - and i don't know if there are many of you out there who followed this way of parenting, but s was brought up with attachment parenting methods, as well as going to an alternative school with quite a different outlook on how kids are raised, compared to mainstream thinking. in that style, one focuses a lot on how the whole day goes, and stays away from disruptive evenings and bedtime schedules. we had very consistent schedules - and the reason i suggested it was because we could both see that s was much more tired than usual and it was getting to be a strain on him.

i will add - that it seems as if it was ME who chose all that - the parenting style etc - and h just went along with it, apparently. at least that was what i was given to understand at the time of the bomb. i bitched a lot if we didn't have dinner on time etc - i was so damned rigid - sigh!!

but the flexility that i have acquired and am able to practice now, is phenomenal compared to where i used to be. these issues don't come up for me any longer - and i will often have dinner with s really later myself.

i guess that i should point out that these were things in the early months of the sitch - in fact now, i would say i am the worse parent - letting s stay up late etc - - i've really learned to relax as a parent (and please take in the cultural differences too, i came from a world that raised children very differently from the way they are raised here - and sadly both h and i never considered that in our interactions)

so i guess i wrote way more than i warranted - but there it is.

i wonder if i am being defensive here.

i just feel a bit sad and hopeless right now - all of this discussion and trying to figure things out - all it shows me is how much i need to figure out myself and where i stand - i think that is the biggest work for me - it's not clear to me how all these things should be when one is confident , self secure and has good boundaries.

[zig]

you're not hijacking at all need grace. i welcome everyones comments and discussion. i have so much to learn and there is much to learn in everyone else's comments

[zig]

[censored] my posts are too long what is the deal with me, why can i not write more concisely?

just to add another layer - i described how i have been behaving with h - to my IC today - and she applauded me on staying consistent and friendly and pleasant NO MATTER WHAT h is doing.

she observed that even though he did a shameful thing last week, i stayed consistent. she thought that chastising him in any way would just be damaging. she also pointed out that if i could keep doing this in the face of all this, it would be the best thing for son. i described how i have offered that we are more flexible with s and she thought it was a great thing to do.

we talked about it in the context of agape, and i said how i felt that i was doing this from a place of love rather than because i wanted h to change his mind.

she also pointed out that h's warmer behavior yesterday was like a child who had known he had done something bad, and was coming back to check where i stood on the issue.

i asked her whether my continuing to be really nice and friendly in the face of that was enabling him to continue what he was doing. her answer was a bit obscure - she said you have 2 choices either to chastise him directly or indirectly (by being cool) or staying consistent in your behavior no matter what is going on. she thought the second choice was a better one for me

she asked me which of us i felt needed the other ones approval or disapproval. i said i thought that i didn't seek his approval, as much as he sought mine, in some way. she replied that in all our talks that was the sense she had also. that even while he's doing this, he comes checking back in to see where i stand. we talked about how in the past, i showed so much disapproval about so many things, and that my "doing something different" here as been to stay consistently pleasant friendly and supportive no matter what

i admitted to her today, that i feel almost done - that i almost couldn't care less that he's having the affair, and that i'm trying to figure out whether i'm shutting down because the hurt is just too much, or because i'm truly detaching to the point where i am now willing to lose this.

i have to confess - that recently i feel as if i'm about to plunge into the WAW role myself.

maybe it's part of the whole cycle the LBS goes through also.

we also talked about how i have just discovered about myself that it is very easy for me to deal with physical challenges but absolutely not at all with emotional ones. and i think that's where the real work lies for me - to be able to stabilize myself emotionally - and after all these months, it seems as if i'm just starting the work - it has taken this long just for me to get to the starting point of what really needs to be dealt with within myself.

all of this has made me realize that wanting h to come back is moot in the face of what i really have to deal with and that's why i have really dropped the rope. i have no business being in a r right now - i have to build a relationship with myself first.

[needgrace]

incredible insight zig!

[labug]

we talk a lot here about how when we change it can/might instigate change in the other person. is that wrong to want?

zig, you make your changes for you, you work on what you know you need to work on to become a better person and sometimes that creates changes in the relationship. We do all hope for that.

But if I feel good about me and the changes I've made and it doesn't affect the relationship, I'm not going to turn myself into a pretzel trying to find the thing that will change the relationship.

I'm also not going to do something that's not in my best interests.

h has deliberately kept his life with s separate from my life with s for years. should i continue that pattern, in fact, as you suggest insist on it?

I'm not insisting on anything, just offering observations and asking you to be aware of your needs as well as your motives.

I think flexibility in child custody is very necessary, it's finding the balance that works for you that's probably the most difficult.

If the above has been H's pattern, why and/or how would YOU change it?

[RoRoinMD]

she asked me which of us i felt needed the other ones approval or disapproval. i said i thought that i didn't seek his approval, as much as he sought mine, in some way. she replied that in all our talks that was the sense she had also. that even while he's doing this, he comes checking back in to see where i stand. we talked about how in the past, i showed so much disapproval about so many things, and that my "doing something different" here as been to stay consistently pleasant friendly and supportive no matter what

I can definitely relate to this. Even before the bomb, I can remember my H doing something he considered good (and actually it was, I was just being stupid), he was always looking for approval/validation. I just didn't know that's what it was until just recently. And I certainly didn't give it to him.

So I'm going out of my way to say thank you, I appreciate that you did that for me, etc., because basically I suck at it. Mainly because I never really saw my mother say any of those things to anybody, so I didn't know how to. I think it has changed the dynamic of our M even at this stage.

[zig]

thanks need grace. i hope realizing these things will help me move forward in my own healing.

i am humbled by how much i still need to learn.

just went on my library's website and reserved several melody beattie books - thanks labug for the suggestion.

amybe i can start to read them to night

[needgrace]

i listened to a cd yesterday..

and i am paraphrasing greatly but..

it was saying that the goal isn't to change ourselves...

but to be able to access our true selves in the midst of everything.

i like that...

bc it isn't saying that something is wrong with us that needs to be fixed, but that we just get pulled off track from being who we really are and want to be and need help staying on our track..

we already are those things (loving, compassionate, calm)..

[zig]

zig, you make your changes for you, you work on what you know you need to work on to become a better person and sometimes that creates changes in the relationship. We do all hope for that.

But if I feel good about me and the changes I've made and it doesn't affect the relationship, I'm not going to turn myself into a pretzel trying to find the thing that will change the relationship.

I'm also not going to do something that's not in my best interests.

i feel a bit misunderstood here labug - and for all i know i'm being defensive - but here goes. i'm don't think i'm doing this BECAUSE i'm trying to change h or the relationship.

god knows - the changes i've made haven't made a hill of beans of difference to what h is continuing to do. my usual reaction would have been to "change" for a while, get what i wanted and then revert to my old ways.

being nice and flexible and loving are all huge 180's for me. i didn't do them to try and get h back - i did them because i 'woke up" and realized that i never wanted to be that old way again. i realized that no matter what he did, i would take the higher road and in spite of what he did i would still take the higher road.

granted, i am beginning to realize that taking the higher road also includes that i take care of myself - as you put it - what's not in my best interest.

well sadly - right now, i will admit that i don't know what's in my best interest here, and that's what i'm trying to figure out.

If the above has been H's pattern, why and/or how would YOU change it?
i'm not trying to change his pattern - i was trying to change the pattern.i don't expect him to agree to it or want it or care for it. i want to do it for myself - i want to know that no matter what he does, i am capable of taking the higher road and letting them be together if they want to.

this discussion has been really good for me - i can't say that i have full clarity on it, but i can say it's helped me to see where i short change myself and have always done with h - lack of boundaries and lack of knowing where and how to set them?

actually -- for months it was all very clear, and then i decided to be more relaxed about it and that's when it seems that things went downhill? or did they? all i know is that after i started h has been more relaxed when he comes to the house, and s has been less pained at transition time.

thanks for taking the time to go through this with me. i feel that i am resisting something somewhere within myself - i do seem to be arguing amy point to you, which is a good indication that i am not getting the message. so i'll read through again and see if i can get what you're saying in a different way.