Maybe I'm not clear on something. What kind of "rules" does he keep changing?
Originally Posted By: Kaffe Diem
He tells me to do one thing, then he decides he wants me to do do something else and he keeps moving the boundaries. He tells me he wants to coparent and keep him involved in our child's life when she is with me, make decisions together, etc. Then when I have an issue to discuss with him, he refuses to discuss it with me, tells me it is "bullshit excuses" to try to get him to talk to me. I didn't want to talk to him. I am totally transparent and if I want to talk to him, I'll just tell him I want to talk to him. I am not going to use HER as an "excuse". He says he wants to keep schedules flexible and communication open, yet he won't tell me in advance what the schedule should be..."I'll let you know"......and he won't answer my texts or phone calls on a regular basis.
[quote=Kaffe Diem]Yes, as your therapist indicates, trying to make him happy is possibly pursuit behaviour. It can also possibly be co-dependent behaviour.
Oh, yes, I have had a lot of co-dependency issues. But what is wrong with just trying to give a person what they say they want? Why does that have to be twisted around and assumed to be some unhealthy behavior? I always try to do good and do things to help other people be happy. I try to be nice to everyone. I do not believe that is a bad thing and I do not plan on stopping. I do not have problems in other relationships, just this one.
Originally Posted By: Kaffe Diem
What are your therapists thoughts on how you can change your approach in order to solve these problems?
My therapist isn't God, but I pray and seek guidance from God as well. My therapist is the one who told me to go live my own life and quit trying to make this guy happy and to stop some of my codependent behaviors. Basically, he has told me to not expect this guy to change. He didn't tell me something horrible will happen if I try, he just thinks I won't accomplish anything. The best thing my therapist has helped me with is getting control of my emotions. It took me a long time to understand that other people don't "make" me crazy, I am actually choosing the way I respond. I was in really bad shape in August....I wanted this guy DEAD because I was so frustrated with how he kept complaining even when I wasn't doing anything for him to complain about. I didn't see any way out and I didn't think I could survive another 14 years of being attacked like I was. It took me about 3 or 4 months of really hard work and using Lucinda Basset's program on anxiety and depression before I felt like I really had control over my emotions. I'm backed against a wall now and I can't do anything else to try to make him feel better, so I thought my 180 should be to start pushing back. And something important to remember is that MY therapist is looking after ME, my exbf is NOT his concern. But my EXBF doesn't have anyone trying to help him except me. I have to do the best I can. My therapist doesn't seem to think my exbf's problems are mine to solve, but if I don't reach out to help him, nobody will and he has been suffering long enough.
Originally Posted By: Kaffe Diem
So, are you saying that there is no parenting plan in place?
Then, why are you chasing him (more pursuit behaviour) to work on the schedule. The onus should be on him to let YOU know when he wants to visit with D4.
MAYBE YOU ARE RIGHT. I WILL TRY LEAVING IT UP TO HIM AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS, BUT IT CAN BE QUITE INCONVENIENT FOR ME. HE LEFT ME WAITING 4 HOURS ONE TIME WHEN I LEFT IT UP TO HIM. I THINK HE BASICALLY INTENDS ON DROPPING HER OFF AT 10:30 ON WED AND FRIDAY AND HE CAN LET ME KNOW ABOUT FRIDAY PM AND SAT A.M. I WON'T ASK HIM ANYMORE UNLESS THERE IS AN ISSUE, BUT IF I DON'T ASK HIM ABOUT VARIATIONS AND MAKE ARRANGEMENTS, SOMEBODY IS GOING TO GET INCONVENIENCED. I DON'T CARE IF IT IS HIM, BUT I DO CARE IF IT IS ME OR MY FAMILY.
[quote=tnmom66]I do not believe that we cannot control others. I believe we can influence some people in some ways some of the time, if we know what buttons to push. I am only interested in a win-win situation and right now we are in a lose-lose situation.
ouch... that appeared to me, to be a very contradictory paragraph.
In my experience, one of the biggest challenges most people have is accepting that a solution or path to a solution that does not look like we imagined, can still be OK. People seem to feel that win / win is black white and everything that does not look like what we hoped win / win would look like, is suddenly dropped into the loose / loose bucket.
Oh, it has taken me a LONG time to learn to be content with my circumstances. My life is NOTHING like what I had anticipated. I have had a lot of disappointments, but also a lot of blessings. I don't think we ever get everything we want. Life is full of disappointments. If both parties can find a way to live relatively peaceful lives, that is win-win. It is not win-win when I enable someone to be inconsiderate and disrespectful and uncooperative of me. I won't stand for it. Like I said, I have been pushed against a wall and I am going to push back, at least for a while. This man is very lonely, disconnected, frustrated. He doesn't know how to feel differently. If I can help him to learn to relate to me in a healthier way, we can have a healthier relationship and we will both be happier. Life won't be perfect, but I think we will have more peace.I don't want to drag him forever.
Did you watch "The Miracle Worker" with Anne Bancroft? 1962? It's my inspiration.
If I can help this man learn some relationship skills, he might actually have a mutually satisfying, healthy, normal relationship with a woman someday...the one thing that has eluded him his whole life. If I can help him get to that point, I will feel like I have served a great purpose in his life. He and I will never be able to have a romantic relationship ourselves, but it is my hope that we can be civil and cooperative in our parenting relationship.. You have no idea of how unhappy he is right now. It hurts me to see him like this and I have to try to help him.
I will make this a little more simple than going point for point in your other two posts.
Just so you know, I accept that D4's dad could be a complete nutbag...
that said, I do my best to remain subjective. Many people are simply misunderstood.
Regarding the schedule, how far in advance do you KNOW what you might be doing with D4? There are a number of online (and free with advertising) parenting or family calendars. It could go a long way to help you and D4's dad work out when D4 is available.
Are you worried that he might take you to court on custody? Why?
I think we're getting into some really good stuff, here.
Are you indicating that you are generally a free spirit and work hard to help everyone get what they want? Do you find that you have trouble enforcing your own boundaries? Does it bother you that even though you can understand someone else' perspective, that no one seems to appreciate yours?
Basically, if you were to chart out what he wants and what you want, there's probably very few "sticking points". You may find that the two of you agree on more than it seems, it's just that the ones where there is friction are very prominent.
What would YOUR boundaries be?
How do they conflict with what you feel HIS boundaries are?
As far as passive-aggressive, I'm not suggesting that it IS passive-aggressive, so much as it could APPEAR TO BE passive-aggressive.
Do you find that when you want something, you form a picture or mental story board on how it would look, for you?
He is a good man. I love him. He is a good father. My daughter loves him. He is very complex and I believe he is misunderstood and he doesn't even understand himself. It isn't my intention to vilify him.
He's not going to mess around with any online calendars. I am going to stand my ground on this point. I expect him to communicate with me about drop off/pick up. Like I said, I will leave the onus on him and see how it goes. But part of my feels like that is the wrong thing....it is giving in to his "don't ask questions" and I think that is silly. I guess I will just make assumptions unless he informs me otherwise.
I do think he might take me to court. I don't think a judge would make any changes, though.
I do try to make people happy. I am easy-going in general, but I do have boundaries. I try to understand people and in general I don't feel like I have problems understanding OR being understood. But in this relationship, I am having a very hard time understanding AND being understood mostly because there is no effective communication.
Really, my big issue is with his ATTITUDE. Since we are parallel parenting, we aren't making decisions together. I know I want to home school and he doesn't want me to...that will be a big blowup, probably. We might have to go to court over that. I may lose. I'm building a case.
I just think if people have conflict, they should work together to resolve it. I can't imagine why people would WANT to have a BAD relationship/feelings toward someone they are connected to by family.
I can pretty much "paint a picture" of what I hope to achieve. I can "see" what a civil and respectful relationship is. I have experienced it before with him, so it isn't hard to bring it to mind. I can actually remember a warm, loving, intimate relationship, but I can't picture ever experiencing that in real life with him again. He has been civil and respectful and cooperative since he dumped me, so I guess that is why I think we can expect to achieve it again.
I'm shooting in the dark. I just wanted to share my plans and my experience. I do think this is a pretty unique situation, but I do think a lot of people give up when they should be tenacious like Annie Sullivan.
lol... sorry, I chuckled hard when you said he tells you that he wants to keep a flexible schedule and then you ask him how a flexible schedule might look like...
ummmm... flexible... I think his answer is appropriate...
But I do get your frustration in that.
I am glad you are going to consider simply creating a schedule that works for you and letting him work around that. That can be your boundary to enforce.
How would you enforce pick up and drop off times?
I have seen the movie "the Miracle Worker" and it is very inspirational.
I also agree with you that wanting to help someone does not always imply co-dependence. Our happiness is NOT dependent on their happiness. Although it can feel really good to know that someone that you supported has positive growth.
So lets talk about "responsible" and "detached".
I'm guessing you aren't detached from this guy, yet. I get wanting to help people, it is certainly one of my motivations for being here on this site and also the people that I support and encourage growth in, in real life.
It has been a hard lesson for me to learn that some times, the best way to support someone is to give it up to God.
Why do you want the responsibility to help this man, other than the fact that he is your D4's father?
Did you watch "The Miracle Worker" with Anne Bancroft? 1962? It's my inspiration.
If I can help this man learn some relationship skills, he might actually have a mutually satisfying, healthy, normal relationship with a woman someday...the one thing that has eluded him his whole life.
I have seen it, and while it's a great movie and very inspirational, I'm not sure there's an appropriate parallel to draw to your sitch. You sound very controlling to me, and now your response to your sitch is that you need to force your H to "learn some relationship skills". Well if your H has perceived you as controlling and that has driven him away, then becoming a hyper-controller is going to make things much worse, not better. MWD warns about this in DR- we expect our actions to give us certain results, and if they don't, we think we're just not trying hard enough and so we double our efforts behind those actions instead of doing 180's on them. The result is we push ourselves farther and farther from our goals.
So, ask yourself if trying to fix your H is just "more of the same" behavior on your part, and if it is, what would be the opposite of that? What would be a 180?
I don't understand why everybody thinks I am "controlling". Of course I am working very hard to be controlling now, I'm doing a 180! I really don't want to get into all the things my family and friends get mad about him for when they say HE is controlling and I need to grow a backbone. Honestly, I don't think either of us is really especially 'controlling"...everybody prefers to "get their way", right? He hasn't complained about me being "controlling," he just wants me out of his life. He doesn't want to see me, talk to me, have anything to do with me, but we have joint custody of a child. The farther away from him I have been, the less time I have spent with him, the more he complains. For 2 years he spent at least 2 hours a day, 5 days a week with me and my daughter, then we went to 2 to 4 hours a week. For the last year and a half, it has probably averaged less than 15 minutes a week because I changed the schedule to suit him, but also so I wouldn't have to spend time with someone who didn't really want to be with me.I never had him accuse me of harassing him or smothering him until I stopped hanging out with him and communicating with him about anything besides our daughter. And when I quit trying to coparent and went to mostly just communicating about drop off and pick up, he got even worse and would accuse me of trying to get close to him through our daughter and wanting to marry him. Just nuts!
Me confronting him and trying to demand that he treat me differently is NOT "more of the same" although he knows have always wanted a good rapport with him.
It is only because my life is entwined with this man that I have decided to take on the responsibility to help him. If he were not the father of my child and if I did not have 14 years of having to deal with him, I'd pray for him and wish him well, but I would not fight like I am.
From "The Miracle Worker: Annie Sullivan: "It's less trouble to feel sorry for her than it is to teach her anything better."
In my case I thought it was easier to cater to him and pity him and try to not upset him than to try to help him learn how to manage his feelings and our relationship better. And I can't really TEACH him, I can only try to facilitate his learning, to support him.
I am not TOTALLY detached, but I think I am detached and indifferent as I can be ans should be under the circumstances.
Today was wonderful. He showed up exactly on time. I had texted him last night asking when I should expect him and for the first time in a month, he wasn't at least 20 minutes late (that is 3 exchanges a week that I wait on him to drop off).
I had told him maybe we needed to work on "exposure therapy" and that spending less time together and in contact seemed to make his anxiety worse, so I was going to do all I could to do the opposite of what I have done this last month. I was going to see him face to face this morning, but I was sick and I texted him and told him I looked like crap and felt like crap and if I was going to see him, I would prefer that it be when I looked good and felt good, but I told him where I would be sitting (out of line of sight of the front door and the day care, but just around a corner, close proximity) if he wanted to make contact.
Interestingly, this morning he texted me "she is in" (he must have made a template of that to tell me when she is checked into the day care)and then started getting a cup of tea but last time, he sent the text after he had left the building, just before getting into his car. I texted him back, "thank you" and got up and looked to the door and there he was leaning over a table, fixing his tea. I would not be surprised if he didn't see me out of the corner of his eye...I was about 12 feet away. If he was trying to avoid me, he would have waited till he was out of the building before texting me, but I had already told him that I didn't care to see him. Anyway, it was nice and peaceful and I think we were all happy. I am glad that things went the way they did.
I have been texting him a lot the last few days...not asking questions, just sharing my thoughts with him. I told him I felt really good about HIM taking the lead in getting on a better track. My therapist told me I should not point out when he is acting "normal", but I do anyway. I told him I was sorry if I made him feel bad...I think it was a mistake to cater to his neuroses...just made him worse and maybe created problems that weren't there to start with. I told him I feel confident that he can lead us back to "normal" and that I don't really want to push. I want to do whatever I can to make things easy and treating him like some kind of freak was not the way to do it...
Now,I know him well enough to know that sometimes he feels "out of sorts" and so am I, for that matter. We can cut each other slack on those days it seems like we're "teething", but I want us to have pleasant exchanges as a general rule. If there is something we need to discuss, we should be able to sit down and discuss it.
Just thinking today how we can all be our own "Miracle Workers". We all lack skills, and most of us lack some pretty vital ones.
Today I have been reading Sandra Fulton's "The Messie's Superguide". I am naturally disorganized, I have ADD and I am a bit of a packrat. I managed to keep a decent house during my marriage, but when I had 2 kids in 15 months, I found it impossible to keep up. On top of that, I have had health problems, mental and physical, that have made it even worse for me to keep order in my house and in my life. I, like Helen Keller, need to learn new skills, "crack the code" and build upon new skills and knowledge.
I saw something in the New Testament that I interpreted as meaning something like, "do what you can to help others do better". I have to look it up. I even thought it could be interpreted as "it is okay to "manipulate" others when it if for a good cause." Maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but still, it made sense to me.
I think we should never give up on ourselves or on others. It is hard to not "give up" on some people, but I have made a decision to NEVER "give up" on anyone. I may have to withdraw, take a break, regroup, look for a different way to help (sometimes "back ing off" works wonders for everyone). There is a time to work and a time to rest, but we should not ever just "throw in the towel" "Don't become weary in well-doing" is something we are told in the New Testament.
I feel like I have also been like the parents of Helen Keller....I created a bit of a "monster" because it was easier to let things go than to demand better behavior. Making excuses and "caving in" to tantrums and letting myself be intimidated has been my pattern for 5 years, for the most part.
Putting my foot down and defending my boundaries is a 180.
Your framework has a problem. You are expecting and working on getting him to make changes, and it doesn't work that way. You can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do, and you can't make him want to either. You don't need to figure out how to make him feel differently about disrespecting you. What you need to do is to stop allowing yourself to be disrespected by changing what you say and what you do. You can only change what YOU think, say, or do. He may or may not change, but your best course is to learn to set your boundaries effectively.
Adinva 51, S20, S18 M24 total 6/15/11-12/1/12 From IDLY to H moving out 9/15/15-3/7/17 From negotiating SA to final D at age 50 5/8/17-now: New relationship with an old friend __ Happiness is a warm puppy.
We need some flexibility on holidays and also his schedule varies on Friday and Saturday. Saturday he usually schedules around soccer games, which are different times. Could be 11, could be as late as 4. These are league games that are scheduled in advance. he is pretty good about telling me Friday morning when to plan on Friday afternoon, but when he gets bogged down in work or something, I just keep her overnight. No big deal.
What I find intolerable is how I ask for 24 hour notice. I am still waiting for him to tell me when he wants me to pick her up today. I literally was awake ALL NIGHT (but I was in bed till about 4 a.m. resting my body) trying to figure out how to deal with this.
The onus is on him to communicate to ME when and where he will drop her off with me. He complains about having an anxiety attack every time I ask him a question or send him a text, but if I don't ask the question, I am sure to not get an answer. So I haven't asked.
What I think I will do is when he calls or texts (probably 30 minutes before he wants me to meet him to pick her up), I will tell him I am sorry, but I have made other plans and I won't be able to pick her up until 5. If he wanted me to get her sooner, he should have told me in advance so I could have arranged my schedule accordingly.
I think it would have been a little "passive-aggressive" for me to ignore his call or text like he does me.
If he is waiting me out to make me try to call or text him (so he can complain about me harassing him), I will just wait till Tuesday when he takes her to Preschool and I will keep her till Thursday afternoon to make up my parenting time. He doesn't like that. I did it last year....he must he forgotten. He will get mad at me and threaten to take me to court and get a parenting plan (I don't know if we can be forced to do a parenting plan since we were not married, and if we DO get a parenting plan, I will insist on "right of first refusal" because I don't want her in preschool anyway. That was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. I'd rather be schooling her myself and planning activities with her like I do on the other days, instead of him paying strangers to take care of her. He also has threatened to have his child support reassessed. He told me I will get NOTHING. He lost his job, but he is self-employed. I asked him how he can tell a judge that he isn't making any money and can't continue to pay child support, yet he can afford to pay the preschool hundreds of dollars a month(about $40 a month less than what he pays in child support for part time and he keeps offering to pay more to enroll her full time). He didn't have an answer for that and I always point out how his threats and intimidation are not healthy or helpful and he needs to learn new relationship and conflict resolution skills.
Why would anyone want to maintain a dysfunctional relationship? I keep trying to do all I can to make it better, but he doesn't want it better. I can't escape! I do have better coping skills now, but I still don't want a dysfunctional relationship, even though I am coping better.I know he isn't happy. I know he'd be happier if he was healthier emotionally. I was telling a friend that I feel like I almost know what it is like to have a family member who is a substance abuser who doesn't want to stop, even though he is hurting himself and others.
I really don't think you can be totally detached and share parenting of a preschooler and have to handle 4 exchanges a week. He doesn't want me to be detached...that is why he keeps stirring up trouble. He needs distance, yet he strives to keep me engaged.
