Muddle's Waters III

[MuddleThrough]

Old thread locked up. You can find it here: Old Thread. Basically a nice weekend. W was busy living, and things went well. Now she's back in her head, she's busy hating her life again. During the weekend, I noticed a couple times when she consciously chose to love me. She appologized for being nasty and actually kissed me at one point. I found a lot of opportunities to be my best, and I know that she'll have a hard time finding someone as good as me. In fact, I keep thinking that I should just completely let go and stop being a part of her life. I don't think she quite realizes just how much I do. I guess I'm starting to feel angry again. I told myself about a week ago that I would really be my best for about three more weeks and then go dark (well, as dark as I can living with her). I think I'll execute this by really planning who has our son on what day, get a new bank account and deposit only my portion of the bill money in there, shop for groceries for S4 and myself and let her get what ever she wants that's extra for herself (she is a princess and gets whatever she wants at the grocery store without regard to price and then always complains about the fact that there's nothing in the house for her to eat - and this is always my fault).

Funny story: there was a typo in the vows at my BIL's wedding. My BIL recited that he "promised to love conditionally"!!! I almost asked him if this ran in the family! He has no idea of what's going on though.

So, that's my plan for the short term. I really am a bit concerned that I'm being vindictive, but on the other hand, she's getting everything from me and still crapping on me in the process. I don't really want to put myself in a superior position, but it's clear that she'll push me as far as I'll let her. Also, I can't help feeling rejected everytime I put myself out there for her. I love her, and I act accordingly. She never sees it (or says she doesn't) and uses this as a way to manipulate me to do for her. I think I'm done doing this - at least very soon. I want to show her (and really show myself in the process) that I can really go above and beyond what a husband should. Do you guys think this going dark thing is a good idea? I'm not sure how to accomplish it, and I'm also not sure if I'm going to do more damage if I do. Maybe it doesn't even matter at this point.

[whatisis]

Hi Muddle, Glad you survived the weekend. It must be very difficult to live with someone who is so verbally aggressive and, frankly, rude. Her laughter when you were explaining marriage to your son was actually quite cruel and totally inappropriate. It pisses me off! I can only imagine how you must feel dealing with it day in and day out. My W tends to just ignore me, like I'm furniture. If I begin a discussion which she believes is below her (my assumption here)e.g. my life she just doesn't respond and then I go away! If you are planning to "go dark" as you put it can I suggest something? Sit down with your W and propose what you want to do e.g. separate the duties, money etc. and involve her in it. This puts it right in her face and she can see you are serious. To just stop buying groceries for her etc is "vindictive". You can put it forward as a plan to best meet the needs of both of you at this point. You can present it as a plan to assist her in her stated desire to be independent etc. She becomes involved in the process this way. It is clear and straightforward. You respect her and want to do this together. Sell it to her. It may certainly cut down on the crap you have to take and if she wants, for example, for you to pick something up for her, she has to ask. I presented my W with a budget for her to go over (she always resents that I "control" the money, which means I pay the bills!), asked her to go over it and add anything I may have missed. We had agreed to sit down and discuss it together. Two weeks later she still hadn't gone over it. I asked again. Yes, she'd do it. Guess what I've never heard from her again about it. Now it is her who has not made the effort, not me keeping things from her. So think it through, guy. I hope others will hop in here. Just remember if you can't take her crap anymore then there are plenty of ways to DB, together or apart. Do what you gotta do!

[MuddleThrough]

Whatis,

Thanks. I know there's a lot to think about. My W keeps commenting on the fact that I should be with someone that treats me better than she does. Drives me nuts - because my response is always "so when are you going to start" because clearly she's aware that she's not being so nice and I can't imagine that she WANTS to be someone that acts like this. I guess it all comes down to the fact that she thinks that if she feels something she's justified acting however she feels. But this is a path she's chosen, and while I don't have to like it, I do continue to love her.

I agree that I have to involve her in any change in our living arrangements. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. I too have tried the budget thing with her, and while she's the one who reconciles the checkbook, I have done the budgeting. She refuses to look at it (it's clear to me that she feels like she won't understand it and like I'm going to have to teach her how to understand it like I'm better than she is). But, the trouble is, she'll resent me for making it her fault that she didn't do something. So, either I have to do everything (because I don't just do what needs to be done) and accept the fact that she's going to find fault in the way I execute most of these tasks, or I have to leave it to her.

Frankly, I'm feeling more and more like she's not going to look to the consequences of her decisions and actions until it's already in motion. Then it might just seem easier to go through with it. But, then again, I'm keeping things in a status quo position where she can choose to see all sorts of justifying, devaluing actions on my part and continue thinking this fantasy is something sustainable and worth destroying this life for. Again, I find myself wondering if it's not in the best interest of this marriage (and that is still, unquestionably saving it) to start progressing into separation. Going dark. Finding out the details. Giving her the responsibility that comes with being a single mom, or even someone that's not dependant.

[MuddleThrough]

Oh yeah, one more comment/question: during the reception, W was dancing and having a great time. I told her many times how much fun she looked like she was having. She was doing a little grind dancing at one point with a Marine buddy of her brother. She asked me in the car how I felt about that. I felt like she was asking me, as her husband, if I was jealous. I told her that it didn't bother me, but that it made me wish my shoes weren't hurting me because I would have liked to get out there with her. I wonder if she actually wanted me to say that I was jealous. I am not a jealous person, and have never been in our relationship. I don't own her, and she chooses to do what she wants to. I won't try and manipulate or control her actions through my feelings. If I'm jealous, I tend to think it's my problem, not hers. She and OM are jealous. I think this makes her feel like he values her, and she values him. Maybe this was another nail. . . It's still interesting that she asked me that the way she did. We're still there even though we're not. Go figure. How do you interpret this?

[whatisis]

I know someitmes I start thinking maybe it would be better for the M if we were apart! I know if I were not here my W would be living one challenging existence and it might blow her little dream world out of her head. But, then again, she might just resent the hell out of me for putting her in that position. Who's to know. Somehow I feel safer in staying where I am and working from here but, again, I'm not you nor am I living your life. Damn, it's hard to just not be affected by what they do or say! Detach yet work on the relationship??? Whew, It sounds like oil and water sometimes, doesn't it. I know I continue to allow my W's moods etc to effect my mood, even when I know it's happening. She decided it was "clean the kids rooms" weekend. You can imagine how that went! The kids loved it My W had just worked eight extra hours on her job Sat (was exhausted and not feeling well physically)and yet decides Sun IS cleanup day. That's that. It was one pissy day, I was on the verge of telling her to F Off (one of the kids did on their recent vacation together! First time for everything). I was thinking "Why am I letting this person control my mood?" yet I did. Oh well, to ponder...to ponder. In the evening it improved as we watched the movie"Take the Lead" (dance movie, she was happy!)together. So, I know where you're coming from with this detachment thing. Maybe somebody out there has some ideas on detaching that both of us could use. Take care, Muddle

[believing_isaiah43]

just a quick post to say hi, been out of touch and adding you to my favorites. will be back in a day or so Muddle. Hang in there.

God, your W sounds like ME before the H bomb. It makes me cringe. And also makes me want you to leave her, to wake her up. For me, I don't think anything but my H's A was going to lay me low enough to open my heart and look at it. I hate to say it, b/c I would give ANYTHING for that not to be the case. And he tried to make me see it. But nothing worked except the VERY real threat of losing my H. He'd 'fake' threatened before, but I really FELT him unplug from me and then found the A, and I was scared out of my mind and into real work.

[MuddleThrough]

Thanks guys. The idea that she needs a wake-up call is dangerous to me, but I think it might just be the risk I need to take. Right now she "knows" she can do whatever she wants to and I'll stick by her, practically begging (not actually, but my presence and constant kindness in the face of her abuse screams this) her to turn around and try again. GH has said before that sometimes it takes the LBS completely giving up before they are able to make the changes necessary to win back the WAS, and I think for my W, being left without a life or resources will make her think about whether there is more to life than just feelings. It's a fine line, and very slippery. I want to agree to stop doing things for each other, but I fully expect her to manipulate and badger me to do for her when she feels like it. From the beginning of this sitch, I have always felt that separation is the only way through this, but I feel my hands are tied getting that done because we will have to move out of our family's home to accomplish this. Not something I want to do. My son shouldn't be punished for this.

On some level I'm really nervous to do this because there's a chance that she's so committed to this that she will force herself through it rather than allow herself to recognize that she's doing the wrong thing. This makes it critical that I can live with the fact that I initiated action to end our marriage, should it come to that. I'm not really there yet.

I keep contemplating writing to my cousin and copying his parents, to put more pressure on the A relationship. In the past this really strained it. I know there will be some real fallout in my R and I'm not too sure it can survive that, but the A is certainly not something this M will survive if I continue to treat it the way I have been.

Last night, W kept talking about how her stomach was hurting from nerves and that she was emotional. I didn't pry into this, but I can only assume that there was realization that she is losing face with her family - because at the wedding things were great and I got along really well with her family. They like me. But I also can't help wondering if there's some trouble in paradise.

I know I'm too reactive and fixated on this whole situation. I should be more focused on myself, and then she'll have something to admire and focus on in me should she choose to. I find it hard to do that because I feel like I'm just distracting myself from her walking out of my life, and while I know that giving her all the attention I'm giving her may be giving her more reason to run, the fact is that she's still here and WANTS the attention from me. There's a real power struggle going on still, and I don't really know what to do about it.

[MuddleThrough]

Just wanted to journal some thoughts (what else do I do, lol). I have been thinking about cycles, in particular, certain cycles in my wife's life. This has serious pessimistic potential. I had a conversation with W's step father the other day. He has an interesting perspective on my W because his daughter went to school with my W and that's how he met her mother. So he has seen my W's character both through the eyes of his daughters (who my W has had fallings out with) and through his W (her mother) and his own observations. He reinforces my POV that this is very much about her issues with self esteem and depression. Also, he points the finger at her upbringing and the fact that she got whatever she wanted.

So, the cycles that came up were: her lack of follow through and tendency to sabotage things in her life and her feelings of entitlement (which my MIL often talks about). She often starts something and then decides, for whatever reason, that she doesn't want to do it anymore, or that she can't or it's not for her. For example, she started college and after about a year, decided that she didn't want to do it anymore. I think a lot of the reason she stopped going was because of social anxiety, because the feelings of the moment made it difficult to complete the course of study, and she was able to justify the feelings as a real disease, and this excused her from the responsibility she chose initially. I think a lot of this behavior stems from the tendency of people with low self esteem to not try rather than risk failure.

Now she kicks herself for not having completed college. She really recognizes that she made some bad choices. A big part of it now is that she doesn't have the experience or education to run out and get a decent job, so her fleeing wings are somewhat clipped - because of her choices. She has an expectation to be rescued, and she feels like all she has to do is destroy what she has and it will be replaced. Her mother has helped us out countless times financially, and I think she expects this (in fact her mother REALLY resents the fact that my W expects this rather than appreciates the GIFT when it comes). So, my W has never worked through anything and therefore has never felt the happiness and satisfaction of accomplishing what she set out to do. The closest she has come to feeling happiness has been in getting what she wanted. This is short lived, and I have no doubt is right in line with her motivations for the A and what it's doing for her. She now expects to get whatever she wants AND she thinks I should always want to get her what she wants, and should know this because it's my job to keep her happy. This is the only way she can see being happy.

So, either I play into this, by continuing to try and feed her desire for things, etc, and show her that I'm trying to make her happy, or I stop this almost entirely and encourage and support her doing for herself and realizing a different kind of happiness.

I have a sense of hopelessness from this sort of realization because she's a very smart person, but I think she uses those brains to support her feelings, rather than to analyze and see things for what they really are. I think she's got a long way to go before she can come to a place where she's capable of a real deep relationship.

Well, I see there's not a whole lot of useful stuff here for my progress. I think the real question on approach here is whether I continue to do what I have been, supporting her ill-founded concept of happiness just to demonstrate I'm trying or step away, force her out of her comfort zone and into the real world where she has no choice but to work through things that aren't pleasant, where she has to do what doesn't feel good because of responsibility or because of the good that WILL come out of it in the end. Again, I don't want to control her, but I can see her sabotaging even her plans to leave me. I feel like she's burning the candle from both ends, her A is going to fail, and she's devalued me and our M so she has no apparently good choices left. It's such a miserable place to be.

Last night when I got home I could tell she had been crying. I didn't really pry, especially when I asked her how she was and she said she was fine. I wondered whether they were having problems or if there was something else. There are so many things that I assume she could be feeling now, one of them being that she's more aware than ever that having this A relationship become her primary relationship will close the door on a lot of her family relationships that mean something to her now. I think this alone makes this A more of a dead end to her.

I don't think she has looked down the line at all. I don't think she's made any long term goals in her life. She has done what felt right, or what felt like it would make her feel good then without regard for what the responsible thing would be. Without regard for what impact she can have on her feelings in the future with her actions now. She has a lot of cycles to break, and I'm not sure she can/will before we're past the point of no return. I hope so, but that's out of my control. I need to really spend some time thinking about my own cycles now, lol.

[SRTogacihC]

That is one of the toughest things I am finding...what is my W thinking. Sometimes...like Monday she was very quiet and depressed all morning but I did not pry and she will not say a thing anyway. Seems like she is in a constant internal struggle and I wish I could be privy to it. At this point I would just like to listen...but I do know it would be hard because I am sure she still feels I am a negative part of her life in a lot of ways. We have had a good couple of days and I actually hope it is making it more difficult for her...she is realizing I am not all that bad a H and things are pretty good around here if she wants them to be and gives me a chance to make changes.

I also have the same thoughts that I would like to fulfill some of her dreams and let her out to be on her own to let her experience what it means to have to get a shitty job again and worry about paying bills and to be totally alone sometimes. What it means to be a single parent. Problem is if we did separate it would not be that difficult for her because we do have money in savings that I would likely have to split...probably enough for her to live for a year in a similar lifestyle as we have now...I am not really looking forward to my savings being flushed away. Would probably be easier if we were broke.

Oh well doing my best to focus on me...started some 180s yesterday and they seemed to pay immediate dividends in my happiness and she definitely took notice and started reaching out to me. One day at a time...

[MuddleThrough]

You know, this is a real problem for me. I too often blame my W for this and other things, and she knows it. The trouble is that all my reasoning is sound, it's just not really useful. I always thought I loved my W unconditionally, and the fact that I recognized her faults and accepted them and loved her anyway was proof of this for me. Now she sees me blaming her for problems, and this is a problem. The fact that I see a need for her to change in order for her to recognize that things are different, or can be different is the most basic issue in MC, yet I can't seem to really get beyond this. I think I have been tolerant of everything she has been or wanted, I have loved her unconditionally, and I have loved myself unconditionally - maybe even to my detriment.

I think a big problem with me is that I'll do the wrong thing because either I haven't thought things through, I get sidetracked and get clumsy, or I'm motivated by my feelings of discomfort or desire for something else and I don't weigh the decision in the best possible way - then I am remorsful. My bad memory pisses my W off, and this is something I can't really change. Then I appologize for everything, and this doesn't mean anything. I guess I need to be more assertive in either standing by my decisions more firmly or working on making better decisions. I think the idea of unconditionally loving myself does me in to a certain degree because I can accept the less than perfect outcome of my decisions. My W complains that I could get used to or accept anything, and to some degree this is true. I think she and I have very different ideas of what it takes to be happy. She has this idea that if you strive for and eventually get what you are striving for, you will be happy, and I feel that the striving is where the happiness comes from. It's more divergent thinking than this example demonstrates, because my limitation here is that I can accept that it's ok to not get where you are trying to go as long as you tried and learned something in the process, whereby her thinking is that you shouldn't even try if you're not going to get what you want. I know I need to work on being a bit more ambitious - this is a part of becoming more responsible - but I have a track record of being ambitious on a smaller scale and being successful at it, and I'm truly happy with who I am and what I can do. My W blames me for our family struggling financially when I make a decent salary and I work a second job to supplement our living. Having to work this second job is a lot for me, and I would love to make more than I do at my day job, but at present, I'm working towards several things and it doesn't seem wise to me to move on yet. I guess this is my stubbornness, but I also think it's unreasonable for my W to expect more from me when we've already come such a long way in a relatively short time. I keep thinking that this is just a problem with her perspective - and again, that's the problem with me: I can't validate her perspective on why she's unhappy because I think the core of it is wrong. I have good reason, and I also understand why she's right when I see it through her eyes. This compounds her self esteem issues which make her VERY afraid to be wrong because she ALWAYS thinks she's wrong. So here I am always somehow telling her she's wrong (because of her sensitivity to this and predisposition to looking for this criticism) and here I actually think she's wrong in a lot of ways, even though I accept her thinking as legitimate. What do I do to grow to accept this? Is this an irreconcilable difference? Is the kind of growth necessary for her to come around to accepting that she can be viewed as wrong by another and still be right within herself possible while we are in a relationship with each other? I like to have philosophical conversations and to challenge people's beliefs and ideals. This doesn't mean that I think they're wrong, but I can't get into these conversations with my W unless I take her side almost completely. I think her world view is so fragile that if I don't agree, she shuts me out completely and dismisses me. I love to learn from others about their perspective on the world. I love to see different perspectives. I love to keep my mind open to new points of view because there is sure to be something I can incorporate into mine, some value and utility.

So now I have just rationalized my point of view as being superior to hers and her issues being the cause of our differences of opinion without taking a whole lot of responsibility for making changes in myself. Is it that she's insecure and a lot of our issues come from that, or am I badgering her somehow (certainly not intentional or even on the surface in verbal communication)? I want her to know I love her unconditionally - but to her (who I don't think really loves herself unconditionally), I don't think she sees that I truly see someone worthy of this. Over the weekend she told me that she has started liking sunny days. She's redefining herself in this A relationship and she wants to dump this person she was before the A started. I think on some level she's afraid that she can't be someone else while we're together because I know her as she was - even though I fight to see the person she is becoming. I want to be a part of her growth, and every time I see something new and different I try and validate it, encourage it, just so she knows that I welcome changes in her. Not because she was wrong or bad before, but because I want to grow with her and I recognize her growth as healthy and important.

How do I change myself more than I have to create a better platform for a relationship when I feel I am in pretty good shape to begin with? At least what I can control is worthy and pretty darn good. I know I can DO more, and this is what I'm working at. Going through this process is really difficult because I keep getting berated for characteristics that I can't really change, or that everyone has flaws with, and my response is to reinforce the positive side of this quality. Where does this change begin then? I have accomplished a lot in these months. Even my W recognizes that she admires the father I am and the husband I have tried to be. I have searched myself and I keep putting responsibility for things on my W. This to me is proof that I'm hiding things from myself, things that I will kick myself for later. I need to see these things for what they are now, before it's too late.