Slowly--Sorry for the mini hijack; I'm coming back to you in a minute, as I've been working on financials again, and that task seems to promote more left brain thinking for some odd reason.
Pam--I'm too busy to post much anymore, and I honestly feel as though my story is complete and what time I have here is to try and steer others into a positive direction. I'm only an e-mail away! Hugs to you, friend.
Back to Slowly...
Quote: But I know with certainty that with NG, the approach is to break up the problem, and tackle them in 5 minute chunks - any longer and he will run for the hills. And I cannot tell him what is wrong, or what makes me unhappy. I see far more progress when I am more prescriptive - as in what he can do that will make me happy.
I read you loud and clear, friend. And sometimes the answer is hardly clear, no? Sometimes it takes me some time to hash things out--with the right type of communication--to figure out what the answer might be. Mr. Wonderful and I are getting quite good at this, and I still think it's a shame that he didn't give us a chance to put all this to work in the context of a marriage. But we're doing it anyway, and it's proving to be very useful in our dealings with each other and parenting too.
So I'll prod again here. Please hear me out because I have a point to all this rambling.
You have noticed a pattern of him "not being able to take" more than 5 min chunks. I think if you reframe what it is you need, you'd disover that you're owning his stuff... because he runs or reacts in a way that you don't know if you like, it makes YOU uncomfortable.
Slowly, I can only speak for myself--and perhaps a few other friends here who have elaborated on this concept. Growth takes place through change, and change is not always enjoyable or comfortable. My biggest growth has occurred because I've been uncomfortable. It's been cultivated when I've done the growing in Rs where the other person has as much at stake as I do. Moving through the discomfort is where the real breakthroughs occur.
Discomfort doesn't give us license to act out or to judge or to approach someone or a situation harshly. To reiterate: as long as the goal is a healing solution--and you are owning your stuff while allowing him to own his and be himself--you are both going to grow in love and learn from this.
So... here's the mathematical hypothesis: If I grow and flourish because discomfort pushes me there, what makes this not true for others? And if this IS true for them, why would I set up communication to alleviate their discomfort (thereby alleviating mine) and have any faith that growth would occur? Basically, I'm denying them the wherewithal to grow and change with me... just because I'm uncomfortable with the conflict that it presents.
This is exactly what I'm doing with my D11... helping her work through her discomfort so she can effect change in the Rs she has with others. And that includes her dad. The more practice she gains doing this, the more articulate she'll be. The more articulate she is, the better position she's in to teach others how to do this.
It's a wonderful teaching cycle if you can practice with someone you know loves you and is committed to the R. I'm sure you're thinking that my R with Mr. Wonderful might border on the silly to the insane, but the fact is our decree didn't change our R at all. We may be divorced, but we truly love and care about each other. I love him enough to help him learn how to be himself with me... and it's improving his ability to communicate with other people too (especially the 150 folks who work for him).
I just have a ways to go with helping him work through his feelings about his R with his own father. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and all I can do is be me--without apology.
'Nuff said!
Hugs,
Betsey
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Lot of food for thought here, and I so understand where you are coming from, Slowly. I also still flinch every time my H changes the screen if I walk past. I wonder how long before I can trust again - he is certainly not working very hard on earning it or making positive changes in himself. So, I wait and get on with my life.
Your post and the responses have left me rethinking a lot of my own changes, responses to H, and communication in general. Thanks all!
Me:57 H:52 M:28 Got another lawyer last year and filed. D35,S/D twins28,D22 EA4/04 End? Who knows? "Life is like a mirror. Smile at it and it smiles back at you." — Peace Pilgrim
Quote: If I grow and flourish because discomfort pushes me there, what makes this not true for others? And if this IS true for them, why would I set up communication to alleviate their discomfort (thereby alleviating mine) and have any faith that growth would occur? Basically, I'm denying them the wherewithal to grow and change with me... just because I'm uncomfortable with the conflict that it presents.
I used to do this enabling with my H all the time. Is it any wonder that poor communication--or lack of honest communication--caused distance between us? Neither of us was really saying what we felt. Thanks for your wisdom, Betsey.
Slowly, I think I remember you saying on a past thread that NG has never actually admitted to you that he was involved in an A--is that correct?
I hope you don’t mind me butting in here. I follow your thread with interest. In some ways I see similarities between your h and mine. One of them being the reluctance to open up and talk and now the secretiveness.
I know first hand how the click click of a screen closing can raise the levels of insecurities within ones self. I have experienced it many times myself. I have asked, (nicely) bargained and begged my H to be more open and honest with me in the past to help build trust and intimacy- to no avail. He does not see the need for openness and honesty to build a closer relationship for some reason – to him getting closer is all about ML.
So anyway, I wanted to share a couple of things with you. The first is that I too am guilty of clicking down screens when h is around. For example when I was looking at Db notice board recently I clicked the screen down as he passed. He made some comment about me doing this and I truly resented it. I felt I am entitled to have things that I do not share. It does not make me a bad person or a person guilty of a misdeed does it? This made me think further about how He must feel when I question him about what he has been doing on line and why he clicks pages down when I pass and won’t let me read his email. If he had badgered me the way I have done him in the past I would have been really cross.
However – this doesn’t stop these moments when you feel anxious and apprehensive. I wanted to eliminate them as I find it hard to act in a loving way when I feel anxious, suspicious and resentful. So I (rightly or wrongly) tend t check the history of the computer to see what H has been doing on line. Yes I snoop. I know it is against all DB theories but if it stops me nagging H, getting anxious etc and helps my R then it can’t be such a wicked deed.
Over xmas H was very distant. He was on-line quite a lot, I was starting to feel very anxious and resentful. (I was panicking that he was having an online affair) Instead of brooding on it or asking him and it ending up as a row I ;looked at the history and saw that he had been gambling. I knew what was going on and this seemed to reassure me and I could let it go. It wasn’t my £ he was spending as all finances are totally separate now. It was up to him. So that is how I cope with my secretive H.
Other things that work for getting H to talk is taking a long hot bath together with candles and a glass of red wine. The wine relaxes him, there are no distractions and we are sat facing one another making eye contact which is something that rarely happens with my H.
Anyway, my final thought is that if your H is unwilling to put your mind at rest by opening up about OW then he is unlikely (IMVHO) to open up about what he is doing on line. It is up to you to take care of the way you feel and fix it. Not for it to be dependant on whether he will tell you or not. If you need to know find out, if not the resentment will grow inside you. Best Wishes. Pink xx
[quoteMy h seems (an ASSumption on my part) to have a heightened sense of shame over things that wouldn't freak me out at all.
Sage.
Although I had never thought of it that way before it is very likely that my H is the same. During a recent chat he admitted that he didn't tell me about the gambling because he was ashamed and embarrassed. To me gambling is legal; it is not a crime, what is there to be embarrassed about? To me the crime is not telling me about it, lying and saying he is not doing it. He doesn’t see it like that and I can’t change the way he sees things. All I can do is educate myself to be able to understand him.
Think of it like this…if there was something I was doing that caused me to feel guilty and embarrassed and someone FORCED me to open up and talk about it just so that it could make them feel better (regardless of what it did to my feelings) I would not feel very kindly towards them.
Hope this other point of view doesn’t add to your confusion Slowly
Quote: Think of it like this…if there was something I was doing that caused me to feel guilty and embarrassed and someone FORCED me to open up and talk about it just so that it could make them feel better (regardless of what it did to my feelings) I would not feel very kindly towards them.
Pink,
I completely agree with you on this. At one point I likened it to each of us having a "box" of thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. I'm pretty free with my box -- I'll show it to just about everyone! But h holds his box pretty dear -- and for a long time, I was demanding to see his "box" and trying to rifle through it. Not pretty. It just made him hold his box more closely...how could he trust me with it if I didn't know how to respect it?
Sage
Relax. Appreciate. Be calm. Laugh. Enjoy. Be secure. Be loving. Be loved. Don't personalize. Don't ASSume. Accept. Be grateful.
Quote: At one point I likened it to each of us having a "box" of thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. I'm pretty free with my box -- I'll show it to just about everyone! But h holds his box pretty dear -- and for a long time, I was demanding to see his "box" and trying to rifle through it. Not pretty. It just made him hold his box more closely...how could he trust me with it if I didn't know how to respect it?
I love this analogy! I am definitely guilty of this as well. I think I do a better job of backing off now, but sometimes I still demand. You'd think I'd leave that cheeseless tunnel alone by now!
I understand what you're saying and agree with you--it's definitely Slowly's job to take care of how she feels. Truer words have never been spoken.
I hope I'm not coming across as a person who is suggesting that she manipulate her H into revealing the contents of his box to make her feel better. In fact, that's not what I'm saying at all.
What I am saying is that she's been having difficulty with how she feels for quite some time. He's not changing his behaviors, and she's no longer able to stuff her feelings into a box and pretend that she doesn't have them.
There's a dynamic present that I see here--and out in the real world--that, quite honestly, I've been guilty of doing myself. And that is pretending that I don't have feelings I do and then working hard at stuffing the resentment because I am afraid that telling someone else how I feel might be the R dealbreaker.
I'm not advocating being messy or unkind. Simply put, what I was trying to illustrate is that sometimes these issues must be discussed... but Slowly doesn't have to accuse her H of doing things that hurt her or even discuss his behaviors. What she CAN do is just tell him how she feels when she walks by and sees the screens switch.
How she feels is the problem, and letting him know why she's insecure at times might be the light cast on a shadow that can illuminate how things he does might not be loving in the context of their M. He's free to do what he chooses--and if he really wants to keep parts of himself to himself, it's certainly his choice.
She's not inviting him to tell him how he feels... just relaying a figurative photograph that is keeping her from moving forward and building trust. Whatever he chooses to do--whether that be to simply listen to her and offer comfort or decide that he needs to be a little more open--is his to make.
I don't think it ever hurts to be honest with others--as long as the intent isn't to manipulate or punish--and to clear the air.
I hope I'm not confusing anyone here either. I'd like to see all of you proceed past your issues of distrust and enter the realm of lives that are intimate and loving--by your definition.
That's all.
Betsey
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
So much good stuff has been said here on Slowly's thread - and I'm wishing I could print it out to refer back to some of it. But I'll just chime in with my own thoughts on what Betsey has been saying & how it relates to my own situation.
I've come to think that there's a Part 2 to DB'ing - that when you first read the book you learn to GAL, to focus on yourself, to change up what you do, and it often has the benefit of attracting the attention of the WAS.
If you're lucky enough like Sage & Slowly to actually be here in Piecing, I think that's when the REALLY hard part begins. (And just when I thought my first months here were the hardest!)
But at some point, you need to learn new skills to be able to grow together. I think that both Slowly and I have felt the discomfort of not being completely honest. That is, we have the desire to talk about things with our spouses, but resist doing so in anticipation of their discomfort, which in turn activates our own discomfort button.
But in my own situation, I have been feeling discomfort for quite a long time. And along side that a pretty big FEAR of not rocking the boat. But the net result of not opening up and telling him how I feel is that it leaves me still sitting in discomfort, and adding a bit of resentment, frustration and sometimes anger too.
Betsey's posts hit me hard the other day. I began to see how I take on his feelings of discomfort rather than allowing him to own them and choose what he's going to do about them. The truth is that our current situation is painful to me in many ways, as equally as our friendship is also delightful to me. But I feel the need to be honest & authentic. I do not want to tiptoe around the 'sensitive' topics in hopes that he'll come around. As Betsey so aptly said, it's really when we are in discomfort that we are urged to grow.
Life is all about choices. And by stuffing down my feelings to the particular dynamics between us, I am the one sitting in discomfort, and in essence giving him the notion that everything is just fine. And it's NOT just fine.
It's true we've come a long way in terms of communication and genuine care and friendship. I truly value how we've both grown - much of it together. But I do not want to stay 'here' where we are - avoiding any discussion of the other areas of our lives that the other one doesn't see. In fact, I feel that I have allowed him to construct a perfect little bubble around "us" to his exact specifications & to his level of comfort. But I am more than that person in the bubble, and I don't like being boxed in. Our friendship is limited in many ways because there are whole areas we don't 'touch'.
What I understand from Betsey's post is that there comes a time when we have to communicate our feelings and fears, without blame or judgment, and then step back and allow the other person to choose whether or not they are interested in solving it together, or not.
If SO gets annoyed or angry or retreats from my feelings, then so be it. In my experience, this is common, as is his eventual return to the issue after his discomfort settles down and he comes to understand what I was really saying. So I have to be willing to allow him his reactions/discomfort and know that I have come forth with the intent of making things better.
That's what I think was meant by the posts above. To be willing to be open, vulnerable & intimate, with a solid positive intent and trust that being true is the only way to grow closer.
I don't have much time but I wanted to weigh in on this topic too.
It seems that this conversation is stemming from the perception that we have no choice about or control over our feelings in the first place.
I would disagree with that. I have personally learned that indeed, my feelings ARE my choice. I have a choice about how I'm going to feel each and every day I get out of bed. And the choices I make about how or what I feel then set the tone for every interaction I have throughout the rest of the day.
Betsey 