Poor you, you must be feel exhausted, I’m so sorry. Can’t imagine how hard it must feel right now to be one vaguely standing adult with three small humans. Any local mum’s groups where you live? They may not be able to bail you out in the middle of the night but as we know from here it can make a big difference to kvetch and roll your eyes and even chuckle with people who know what it’s like to be you
And way too exhausted to deal with your h’s nonsense.
Have you heard of DARVO? Worth a Google if not. It’s what disordered folks do to try to control the narrative….essentially it’s about distraction. Bit like how a teenager asked to tidy their room throws a tantrum saying ‘you’re so unreasonable and you didn’t let me go to the party last weekend and…and…’. So you get sucked into an argument which is about anything BUT the pigsty of a room
This is your h right now imho.
Keep it simple.
It’s not about Lapland or dancing.
There is no relationship conversation to be had with you until there is no OW. Simple. Full stop. No family trips. No shared walks. No future shared plans or discussions about what he wants from you. Nada. Just a visitation schedule following your lawyers advice. No R conversations at all bc, while ow is in the mix, there is no available marital relationship with you to discuss. Simple.
And if he chooses not to retain a lawyer, well that’s his choice….whats that saying about a person acting as their own lawyer having a fool for a client? Not your circus. Inform your lawyer, give him/her his contact details and take their advice on how/if you can use that to your advantage. And perhaps reflect on the pros and cons from your pov about moving slowly legally vs moving quickly - in so far as you can control that. Recognise that few of us do our best quality thinking when we are as exhausted as you feel right now, so it’s worth giving yourself time to breathe a bit. And, if you can, get out of that cabin for 45 minutes each day for a walk or a bit of yoga or just to smell the flowers….like a virtual lunch break…even a Power Nap lol.
I don’t know if your h was always this entitled and given to avoiding accountability for his own actions and making demands. But he is now. It’s very MLCish, of course. We usually say here that if you feel confused, they are still cooking in the MLC oven so time to close the oven door and go do something else with your time. At a basic level, the underlying principle of most faith’s take on forgiveness or reconciliation tends to involve the person stops doing the bad thing they want forgiveness for as a kind of starting point before all that remorse, forgiveness and redemption stuff etc etc…. ::…..your h is not even at the starting gate, is he? He wants forgiveness and a list of demands to be met by you while he just carries on much the same based on what you say. So, no point letting any of that suck up your precious time and energy imho. If he gets to that point, you’ll know and you can decide what you feel about what he is bringing to the table then. Until then, it just sounds as if you see that it is mindf**kery and more of the same. That’s sad, as you say, but I think it’s pretty clear to you, isn’t it?
On a practical level, it sounds as if you might have two short term priorities?
Taking care of your own basic wellbeing needs…sleep, energy, good company that fills you up instead of draining you. My suggestion would be to try to do one thing every day, no matter how small, that feeds at least one of those needs a little.
Make a plan for the coming week. Ask a friend or friends to help….i have sometimes found that even a short phone call with a faraway friend can improve my day, and that people come up with some great ideas when you ask for help.
The second is to minimise your time and energy in the Mystical Land of F**kwittery. Bc it takes energy that you do not currently have spare. I’m sure you are right that he is using the baby as a gateway to you….talk to your lawyer about his/her suggestions on what you might do to minimise that. And do not take even a shred of responsibility that he has chosen to move out to a place where he cannot take care of his own children independently in his visitation time….thats not your circus either. Not your mess to tidy up for him. Let him figure it out like a real grown up while you do on,y what you are legally required to do. No more, no less.
It may be the case, at least for a little while, that the only way to avoid the Land of F**kwittery is to minimise contact with the F**kwit. To hand over the kids on the doorstep and shut the door. Or leave him with the kids and physically go out somewhere else. There are probably also some ways in which you can learn some new tips and tricks for shutting down conversations you don’t want to have or politely hmming your way past them without getting pulled in. Cool, bummer, wow responses. Pretty much the way you’d respond if you find yourself sitting next to a very boring person talking at you about stamp collecting at a swanky dinner or in a seat beside a crazy person wearing a tinfoil hat on a train.
Hmmm, shrug, minimise eye contact, be busy with something else, say very little. If you read about DARVO, you will also find some techniques for how to deal with it….things like grey rock. It can take a little practice but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier to do. And tbh it really helps you to climb off someone else’s emotional rollercoaster. Idk if you have an IC, a wise friend or a coach who might help you get the hang of shifting some of your own behaviour like that, but if not, it might be worth thinking about it as a short term investment in your own wellbeing….no different really from how you teach and coach dancers who can a,ready dance to a certain level but need a fresh external eye on some of their technique.
I don’t know if you are interested in standing, or open to it as an outside option, or if you think that you are just not sure. Or too tired to even think about it lol. What I can see is that you do not want this version of a husband and that you can see clearly that if you did what he wants, that’s exactly what you’d get. Removing yourself from the Land of F**kwittery gives him the opportunity - if he chooses to take it - to wrestle with his own monkeys and consequences, and decide if he wants to move out of that land too. If he does, you can look at what’s left. If he doesn’t, well you and your kids are no worse off and you can carry on enjoying a new different life you make for yourself in the Land of….what do you want to call it? Niceness? Yum? Peace? Bounce? Pick a name that works for you
No kids here, just a cat diva, but I do remember days past in my own situation where I felt so emotionally and physically exhausted that buying coffee felt like climbing Everest. So what I do know from over here in the cheap seats is that two things are true….it will not always feel how it feels right now and that small things help way more than you imagine they might bc they have a compound effect like saving a dollar in a jar every day. So, do that. Plus, from your posts so far, Hollie, and from the tyoe of dance you do, it is so obvious to me that you are a bit of a bada$$ when you need to be, that you have a bedrock of strength and that you can do big joy. These things are your superpowers and will be easier to use when you are no longer spending much time in the Land of F**kwittery
One week after papers come through MLC wants to talk
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