Badger Epiphany
 

Had a sort of stand up for myself breakthrough last night. Homegrrl was opining about me and my failure to make her life teh fluffeh and I suddenly realized I didn't have to go into ignore mode to preserve my mind so I just said, "You know what? I don't really care what you think of me and I'm not interested in listening to your opinion of me, my life, what my problem is or what you think I need to do."

"If you'd like to talk about yourself, I'm happy to listen and would be very interested."

So then she started in with "I feel disrespected, taken for granted, taken advantage of..."

and I interrupted her and said, "You're actually still talking about me. You're saying 'I feel disrespected by you, I feel taken for granted by you... If you want to talk about you and your problems, faults and weaknesses I'm happy to listen, but I don't really care, at all, what you think about me."

It may seem really obvious to some of you, but this is new territory for me to just tell someone that I don't really care to hear what they have to say, w/o getting angry or emotional or feeling like I need to fight back or give as I get.

It seemed to work.

So, w00t 4 m3 and my l337 relationship skilz

:bravo:

:)

l337?

Sorry, I meant to type L337

L337?

Your mate Dani can 'splain it or you can http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

If you don't stand up for yourself, nobody else will either.

Good for you foot.

I knew me some leetspeak. Just didn't recognise that one (like, the basic one!)
In my defence I's always seen it as l33t.
I've even used it in passwords that require numbers.

Still, colour me pignorant and paint me purple.

Do you mean she actually started talking about her own problems, or she just STFU? Just wondering what level of success we're talking about here.

I'm guessin the latter. That's what I called success with my ex.
(half kidding at most)

Just a quick catch up for me because I'm a doodle head.

foot, are you and homegirl still together? I thought you were not any more?

I go to school for years to learn this shit, and people just up and do it?

Where's that Walmart application?

This sounds like the beginning of the end, one way or the other.

Or maybe the middle of the middle, come to think of it.

mostly STFU and a tiny bit of hers but mostly my mind was relatively unmolested.

Ali, we're still married and in the house. There have been ups and downs of togetherness but mostly I have given up and my attitude is to keep working on my thing and let her do hers and see what happens. But not really "trying" anymore. It's time for her to take some steps towards the middle of the middle.;)

Well, there's the sudden school of enlightenment and the gradual school. hard to tell them apart though once you get to that point...

Whats that saying?
"In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test.
In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."

I've been under increased pressure at work to be in a leadership role, requiring a lot of dealing with people very diplomatically, but also with very set expectations of what the allowed "rules of engagement" are. I've been applying my Asperger's towards mastering the mechanics of this arena. It has spilled over somewhat into my homelife--how I interact with my children and my wife. I see it as a huge positive--I'm having ideas like drafting a "standards of behavior" for the household, and other corporate-type structures. I think the kids will benefit a lot from having consistent, defined expectations, etc.

But I have to say, just because you're trying to make improvements to behavior and conduct...not everybody immediately appreciates that. I've found that what is 100% acceptable in the workplace, and in fact straight by-the-book, can somehow be "frustrating" to spouses. The thing is, I'm not trying to "trick" anybody--I'm perfectly genuine in my effort. I'm just doing what I think has been proven to be best practices.

I hope it works out for you.

Yay F3!! It really is rather freeing to realize it's perfectly fine not to care what someone else thinks of you.

As I tell abuse victims frequently...you are under no obligation whatsoever to explain, defend, justify, apologize or otherwise discuss your feelings, opinions, or wishes.

The important thing to remember is, the goals for the workplace and the goals for homelife are different, so their best practices are going to be different. At work, optimum efficiency is completely desirable in pretty much every scenario. At home, however, children will not necessarily benefit from an optimally efficient bedtime process, for example. Sometimes an extra hug is needed, for a variety of reasons, and at-home best practices have to account for that difference in priorities. Just one example, there are of course many other daily scenarios to consider and no two will require exactly the same balance of structure versus compassion. I can tell you, though, that as a child I often felt like an employee, and I hated it.

Just don't schedule a "performance review" during post-coital snuggling.

That you think it would not be positive is shurely a reflection on your performance!

The paperwork would spoil the mood.



Really, I was just raising the point (ahem) that the office and the family have many differences.

hope this helps...


.

Good on you foot.

Zen, your post was totally unexpected. I chuckled.

well, i am just going to make a wild guess: your lying out of your ass.

possibly as someone coming out of a marriage broken by lack of mutual reaffirmation being the broken brick in the tower... i am somewhat biased to see that as a main problem, but... it seems to me that the only reason you stop caring what she thinks of you would be a defense against not liking what she thinks of you.

if instead of blaming you she'd change her tone to a detailed ongoing thesis about how awesome you are and how much she admires you, your newly built wall will crumble.

Not probably. I am highly suspicious of flattery, and know that actions speak louder than words.;)

Except of the Cellar.

So she has put her foot down and is actively investigating finding a marriage counselor or mediator. We have begun a civilized discussion of going our separate ways and how that might be accomplished with minimum upset to the kids.

I suspect this will take a while.

Well, you've got her beat there.

Then you put your footfootfoot down, and she fainted.
;)



Seriously, I hope this works out well for you and yours.

I'm waiting for the beaver ephipany -not sure if your or hers...... :eek:

That's the hard bit and the only part that really matters.

To everything, turn, turn, turn. -some hippie

I know I was born and I know that I'll die, but in between is mine. ....I am.... mine. -edward veddar


I see your situation through the lenses of my own... As we do...
And although you precede me and wisdom and in age.... I think I precede you in experience...
from the outside looking in, it seems a foregone conclusion.

you have always referred to your wife as she who must be obeyed, or described her irrational behavior....
everything I know about your relationship, everything you've told us about her..... it is all negative. I don't recall ever hearing you say how you love her.... Maybe that's just the nature of how people complain about spouses....


it is a big ugly mess, unraveling two intertwined lives. no one can know if you should, and you cannot make swmbo happy. nor she you.

Where is your center?

Homegrrl was opining about me and my failure to make her life teh fluffeh

For what it's worth, I've used this turn of phrase with several gents since you made it, and they all agree that it has weight-bearing qualities.

"I'm not happy and it's your fault." Really, now, can this condition be overcome, ever? Ever ever?

and is actively investigating finding a marriage counselor

I did that for a while with the ex. Useless. Every session caused us to fight for an hour afterwards. She was generally unsatisfied when something was not considered my fault. I cannot see how couples therapy has any benefit to anyone except the person getting paid.

I suspect this will take a while.

Rip it off like a band-aid.

Sometimes it's better to plan for the rip, as in have plans and resources ready.;)

Word.

People's experiences in this area have always fascinated me, because when my own parents got divorced my brother was really torn up by it, while I honestly could not have cared less. It was hard for me to try to understand why he was so sad.

In school, I had a friend whose parents tricked him and his siblings about their divorce. First, they said, "Kids, guess what? Dad got a big raise, so we're going to get a vacation house!" It was just some random house, but the kids didn't know any better. Then sometimes dad wasn't home in the evenings, because he was working late or "remodeling" their new vacation home. And then when the house was ready, they went to stay at their new vacation house a lot, and they would go swimming and do lots of fun stuff because they were on vacation, except sometimes mom had a headache so she'd stay at the vacation house and nap while the kids went out swimming with dad, and then she usually had a lot of errands to run too, and sometimes she was so busy that dad would pick them up from school himself and they'd start the vacation without her...

And the crazy thing was, even after the routine had settled into a typical custody arrangement, and the dad eventually moved to freaking California and the kids would get on a plane by themselves to go visit him in the summer--even then, my friend would insist that his parents weren't divorced, they were married, and that the situation wasn't weird at all. Dad was in California because that's where the work was, you know, and he didn't want to make the kids change schools, and he had this really nice friend to help him keep the house clean and cook for him sometimes because, you know, he always needed mom to do that stuff for him.

At some point the gang was back together in our 20s, and he got drunk and admitted that now he understood, and he couldn't even decide how he felt about the deception, because he was definitely happier as a kid because of it, but now he was far more bitter and jaded than he would have been had he known the truth as a kid. "It's like Santa Claus!" he yelled. "My parents made me believe in Santa Claus until I graduated high school! Who the fuck does that?" Yeah, it kind of messed him up.

WOW.

Admittedly, he was in denial for WAY longer than a normal person would be. I wasn't close to his siblings, but I'm pretty sure they figured it out and accepted it years earlier.

Sorry, foot3 ... I would get with the planning before doing any ripping. With kids in the picture there isn't any way to do things quickly anyway, so use the time to get good advice and interview a few attorneys. I thought I was clued-in but it turned out there was a ton of stuff I didn't know, stuff that made a huge difference.

If you go the route of mediation it'll likely reduce the collateral damage - but you still need all the info you can get, to help you plan.

I think you handled that really well, foot. Turn it back on HER. It is, after all, HER problem. There's a saying, "What you think about me is none of my business," and that's what you've done. "I will fight no more forever," is good mojo. Good gris-gris. Good muju. Whatever.

What I resist persists.

Be a Ghandi. Resist no more. It will work.

I think I picked a bad week to go on vacation. I am just catching up and there's no way I can do anything but read from this phone.

eta... he posted ...from the phone. durrrrr. I mean I will respond more fully later.