Brave Little Gerda Trods On -- My Faith Journey

[sjohns6]

Gerda, I know what you mean about your financial situation. H has not been providing you with a crucial element that is needed by you to feel secure in a relationship. Don't dismiss the other piece though. You also need to feel supported emotionally, which you also are not getting. The 2 main factors you need out of a relationship are not being met. I think its easier for you to dismiss the emotional aspect, but the financial one is something that you have to physically make up for. Its something that you can't dismiss as bad behavior because you have to make up for it. We are all experiencing it differently, but in the LBS camp, none of our needs are being met.

I'm also sorry to hear about your Ds conversation with H. I know you felt like you did the wrong thing, but don't beat yourself up over it. Just learn from it. You are a woman of integrity and that is why you feel bad about how you handled it. That is great!! Just use that to learn how you would rather have handled yourself and do that next time. You got this, girl!!

I get emails from random self help sites that I've visited. I got one today regarding healing from infidelity. I thought it had some really great points in it that helped me to read, so I want to share them with you. It isn't that I feel like I am needing to heal from infidelity today, the points just really spoke to me, so I hope they help you too. Here they are:

1. Self blame is exhausting, because there is nothing faulty in you that caused your partner's infidelity. If you are endlessly looking for that fault, you will never find what you are looking for.

2. After infidelity, anger toward the self rises due to the thought that one could have done something to prevent the infidelity - and yet did nothing.

3. Believing you can control the outcome of someone else’s behavior by modifying your own, leads the victim of infidelity to hyper-vigilance.

4. It is NOT your failure to predict the outcome of someone else’s choice that has left you victimized. The failure is not yours to shoulder.

5. If you blame yourself for someone else’s actions, making yourself the one responsible, there is no incentive for that person to make any changes themselves, because they can always dump the blame on you - and you’ll more than likely take it.

6. Your spouses infidelity is not a reflection of your inadequacy, but a reflection of theirs.

7. If someone continually asks for the benefit of the doubt and consistently delivers doubt, eventually one will begin to doubt their benefit!

8. The unfaithful spouse's right to privacy does not trump the betrayed spouse's right to truthfulness

[Notavic]

Sjohns6, thank you for posting this! Number 6 speaks to me especially, today. When I first read #3, though, I thought, isn't that what we are trying to do here? I guess that means I need to GAL some more. It's so hard when all I want is for my marriage to improve. So much anger right now.

[HaWho]

Regarding your statement that you will lose much in D, while this may be true, you will also gain lots of other (unknown) things. A whole new world will open to you. The grass is greener where we water it. And then when we see the garden growing we're even more motivated to nurture it.

I know you work hard. This is completely unsolicited advice so do with it what you want, However, if you foresee that this business is going away, one thing I might suggest is that you consider ways of transitioning out of those various patched together jobs for something more stable that will eventually offer you more intellectual stimulation. You are clearly bright.

Perhaps call a temp agency and start there. Or are there people with whom you can network? Don't underestimate how much you can grow. My ex kept telling me no one would ever hire me as I'd been a stay at home mom for so long. Truth be told, I was scared to re-enter the workplace. I was worried about my age, the length of time I stayed home, the rubbish he was filling my head with, etc.

Long story short, I started temping with a company. I went back to doing what I did 20 years ago. I worked hard and was transitioned into a new department--completely different role. I was promoted and now am heading up a brand new product launch all by my lonesome! Recently my boss told me they have their eye on me for another higher level role and said he'll pay for me to take night classes for training!

Several employers have told me they would MUCH rather hire moms re-entering the workplace than millenials. I was told women our age have more grit, less ego and are just doers. And time and again I've seen this. I've been astounded by how many young employees won't do work that is not in their job description. Not sure if it's laziness, arrogance or a bit of both.

After juggling all that you do, working in a more stable environment would be a walk in the park for you. It would give you more interesting goals to work toward.

After "managing" with an ex who thought I was trying to shoot and poison him, work was a breathe of fresh air! It now takes a lot to ruffle my feathers, After dealing with your sitch, I think you'll find the same.

Don't underestimate your own worth and potential. This is a great time to be our age in this country.

[Gerda]

Hawho, thank you for taking the time to write such a caring and wise reply. I also really liked that you thought I was bright! : )

I have not mentioned what I do for a living here because of trying to stay anonymous but I am paid well for work at a very high level because of my advanced degrees and extensive experience in that field. I do consulting work at three universities as an adjunct and I do creative work that I won't mention here. I have only been a SAHM while working consultant jobs and while we had a very public and community-oriented biz for 15 years with my H -- I ran that by myself, dealing with a million bucks a year in gross (and almost a million in expenses, sadly) and now I run our rental biz in addition to all my other work. I like to have a flexible schedule to be there for my kids and for the creative work I can't explain in detail here. But the trade-off is that I don't make that much, even though my hourly rate is quite high.

And I have been the sole support for my kids for some years now. Before that my H did work hard and we did everything together and shared all income and expenses and accounts and were never apart. But of course we ladies are often working doubly hard since after work we have to do everything at home!

i did apply for a full-time job in my field last year and didn't find anything; I was relieved because i did not want to give up my creative work, though it only brings in a small amount per year. I will work full-time if I have to. But if I can squeak by, ffor now I want to keep the door open for my creative work and I have all my teaching work in place, including teaching at a prison next semester, which I am especially looking forward to. I have thought a lot about what I would do if I didn't have to worry about any of this, and I still feel like I like my creative work in this city enough to want to stay and do what I am doing.

My H has had moments of severe wack-a-doo crazy but maybe not as deep as yours, he thought I was doing a lot of awful things to create his bad life but never thought I was killing him! It is so painful to live with someone with mental illness and so hard to understand how they can be trapped in there, I know you have really been through the ringer. Right now my H is being very friendly and trying to eat dinner together though he has retained a lawyer, it is so weird. A friend mentioned involutional psychosis the other day, I looked it up and it was basically midlife crisis times ten -- especially in my case, it seems accurate because the diagnosis mentions that the person suffering from that did not display any symptoms of it until late in life.

Anyway, thank you so very much for taking the time to think about me and offer me your wisdom and light.

[DnJ]

I have thought a lot about what I would do if I didn't have to worry about any of this, and I still feel like I like my creative work in this city enough to want to stay and do what I am doing.

Now that is Gerda!

Do that for you.

[Gerda]

sjohn, I keep reading these and trying to let 'em sink in. Thank you so much for all the encouragement. I have so many thoughts when I read your posts but then I get overwhelmed by everything and end up not replying at all. But rest assured that I read them over many times and they are a great comfort.

[Gerda]

DnJ, thank you also for the encouragement. I feel that you are right but I am so limited by circumstances beyond my control that I never know if I am doing the right thing. I can't tell if this house is enslaving me or if I should keep trying to hold on to it for the sake of me and my kids. The thought of trying to make a life here without this house is so daunting. It is a very expensive place to live, and we already have this amazing place, but the debts are clawing at me because it has been so long since I had a normal income or a spouse who contributed.

I should not be posting right now as I am feeling a bit low from last night's incident, which I posted on your thread.

[Gerda]

Journaling, I guess is what we call this --

Something I am struggling with lately is my son's unwillingness to eat food that I make. He constantly wants "outside food," and rejects everything he used to like to eat. I think his appetite issues are exacerbated by his anxiety but he won't listen to reason except in those moments when he is letting his guard down. For a couple of weeks, we were doing amazingly but now he seems to be drifting back into anger at me. He started hanging out with friends again a little and I think this is part of it. He is constantly talking about how weird and embarrassing we are, but it's not in a regular teen way, it's sort of pathological. In between sometimes he lets his guard down and shows me some love, but it's like all the gains we made are slipping.

The one thing I always had was my ability to prepare good and nourishing food for my family. I am not a world-class cook but I am good at making things homey and comforting. As my H drifted away and started taking on all sorts of crazy eating habits, I tried to adapt to that and make new things but mostly he was so angry and living his own life that he started to cook for himself and would get angry about my cooking too. Sometimes he swings back into having family meals but extremely inconsistently and always with huge bitterness lurking underneath about whatever I am doing wrong. When he is out of money, he will eat my food but mostly with such resentment that I can take no pleasure in that.

And of course now that he got a D lawyer, I am totally flummoxed as to how to act/behave. I don't offer him food or ask if he will be eating with us or anything, but sometimes he offers me food and I don't know what to do. Usually it's just on the table and no one is eating together. It's all such a sad scene!

Then my D is a bit portly and constantly wants to eat so that is a problem on the other side. I am very sensitive to the problems girls can have around food and try not to make a big deal out of it either way with her, but we struggle because I try to keep things a little healthy and to stick to meal and snack times. But our imperfect food relationship is made shaky by my H constantly commenting on what she should eat even when she is eating, but then after buying her sweets every time they hang out. And then usually it's just me and my D eating dinner alone, so instead of counting my blessings, I notice how sad it is that our family is so broken. I try not to show this to her of course, but I am sure I am not as cheerful as I should be.

Recently we had the reading about Elijah being nourished by the angel after total collapse so that he would have the strength to do God's will. I always asked God to do this for me, sometimes I am begging Him! But this week when I read that passage, the image of my son refusing my food flashed into my mind and I saw it in a different way, understanding how God feels when we won't allow ourselves to be nourished by Him. It's so painful to know that I could at least feed my son well but that he won't let me. I feel so sad and powerless.

My S is also obsessed with brand name clothes that I can't buy for him. So I can't even buy him some back-to-school clothes because he won't wear anything I could afford. I keep trying to give him his own autonomy wherever I can, so I gave him $200 to buy clothes and I think it covered 2 t-shirts and a pair of pants!

I guess what I mean is that in some ways, being so limited in my ability to SHOW love is more painful than all the ways that I am not receiving any (as per sJohn's post above). I need to make a change and break these cycles a little but it seems to all come down to money that I don't have. Though I guess even if I had tons of money, not eating as a family is always going to make things head south.

[sjohns6]

@notavic - you are welcome! Yeah, #3 is one of those "fake it till you make it" type of things. I think we all pretty much start out adjusting our behavior to influence our spouses, knowing full well that we shouldn't be doing it for that reason. Then, after some amount of time, our reasoning for changing shifts to be more about us. It's an ongoing effort.

Gerda, I know what you mean about replies. I have found that the posts that make me think the most are often the hardest to reply to, whether I agree with them or not. Those lines (above) helped me at the time so I wanted to share.

I read through your back and forth with DnJ on his thread. Imagining your H in short shorts (despite not knowing what he looks like) gave me a laugh. I really loved reading that back and forth between you guys. DnJ can sure tell a story. If he wrote a book I'd buy it in a heartbeat!!

What you describe about mealtime and cooking I can totally relate to. Not in the same way, but this mess has affected meals for me too. I miss the family togetherness of mealtime on a regular basis. I can cook, and I do it well. Having said that, W was always the meal planner and cook. She went to the grocery store and planned the meals. I would sometimes too, but that was one of the things she did on a daily basis. She cooked variety. We did not always eat at the dinning room table, but we always ate together. Sometimes we would take turns reading poetry. We all liked Where the Sidewalk Ends and would pass the book around each reading one of our favorites from it. I realize that I am not as creative at cooking. I end up cooking meals that wife used to cook. They turn out well, but I don't introduce much variety. I also find that when I get home from work, I need to start dinner immediately without unwinding first or else dinner will be ready very late. I realize now that W would have to do that too and she never complained...and I never appreciated that about her day. I cooked too (sometimes) so I never considered the stress of feeding the family on a daily basis. Now, if the kids aren't there I either eat leftovers or don't eat at all. I figure this is something that I'll get a handle on a little better as time progresses.

Regarding your S, why does he not eat with you? I know you said he wants outside food, but why? I get why H isn't eating with you guys. He is going through MLC so there's no telling his reaction to an invitation for dinner and it probably isn't worth your time. But I would think that S, regardless of being a teenager, would still eat your food. lol...I say that but my S is 14 almost 15 and there are things he won't eat too. I make him, though

Hope your day is going well today, Gerda. I see others doing this ((( ))) around a name and sometimes by itself. Does that mean hugs? if so, (((Gerda)))

[job]

Gerda,

There is no rhyme or reason when children grow into teenagers. They become mini MLCers who are experimenting w/life and trying all sorts of new things. They are testing their parents and their boundaries. They want their freedom to pick and choose and sometimes that comes down to the people they associate with as well as what they eat and where they it.

About the clothes...he's at that age when he's starting to see what the others are wearing and wants to be like them. This is peer pressure in the sense that they all want the same things that others have. My sister went through that w/both of her kids. If the kids don't dress somewhat like the others, they got bullied. Again...peer pressure. It's not easy raising kids today in this society of easy come, easy go and let's all have the same things, no matter the price.

When he learns to be more comfortable in his own skin, the son you knew will be back...I would suggest that you listen and observe and try not to put any pressure on him...he's just teething and learning about himself. I know, it's frustrating when you are dealing w/two of them who are teething. If your son is allowed to do his teething, he will be much stronger for the time to grow.