[Ready2Transform]

I discovered an interesting thing.

Whenever you find yourself speaking in absolutes, even if just to yourself....that is a thing you aren’t giving yourself yet expecting from other people.
It’s your inner child telling you their experience.

“No one EVER cares what I have to say” is my inner child saying “you don’t listen to me.”

No one EVER asks me how my day was” is my inner child saying “you don’t check on me.”

You begin to see the point. It’s my own projection onto other people of my unmet needs.

❤️ Courage ❤️

This is BIG stuff, Courage. It's the map making material for the work you're doing and going to do. From experience, it will serve you well to keep exploring.

[Seahorse]

Courage - following along.
Your week alone sounds so lovely, peaceful and relaxing.  Glad that you could take some time for yourself and do the little things that you were able to do.  The embroidery sounds nice.

Congratulations on CTO.  That's quite an honor and I'm sure you'll head up the reopened program quite well.  I'm proud of you...  I agree that doesn't sound like a coincidence.

Lastly, I'm sorry about the domestic dispute upstairs.  I can imagine that it would trigger you, and it's horrible to be in that place where you can't run and you have no idea what's going on.  And then feeling guilt on top of it all?  Sheesh.  That's a lot for you to handle.  Please take care of yourself and try to get back to that self-care place, and hopefully no more triggers. 

Sending you hugs.
Sea

[Couragedearheart]

S16 is at stbxh house this week. Tonight xh starts texting me....telling me he never realized how hard it was to work full time and then come home and parent and do dinner and care for another person. I thanked him. Then he started calling himself an idiot. I told him he could call.
He said he was in a bad place. He wasn’t sure if s16 had done his schoolwork, he said he felt like a failure because he didn’t think s16 had done his work. ( he was in a shame spiral).

So I asked if he even knew if it was done or not? He was too scared to check.

I told him he had about 2 1/2 hours before midnight....which meant he had time to change the reality of this day.....but to do that.....he had to face the reality first....

He said I’m worried I’ll mess it up. So I said....it’s a tough day...all you have to do is do your best. He said “what if I’m just lying to myself and thinking I’m doing my best but it’s really not the best?”

I said “what else can you do??? Can xh do someone else’s best???tell yourself I’m going to do my best tonight, and I can always do better tomorrow but for tonight I’m just going to do my best and it will be good enough and I’ll be proud of myself for trying”

7 minutes of silence

Then he said it really slowly.......big sigh

Then he says okay....I hear him get up....”I gotta get off the phone....I’m going to go do my best.”

Yes.....your mlc spouse is in the body of an adult.....these are emotionally child parts trying to unlearn all the bad stuff. This person doesn’t have the capacity for an adult relationship. They are literally wallowing in their broken parts trying to find a way through.

Am I worried for s16....no, he knows I’m close by and if he needs me I’ll come get him.
Xh just doesn’t have a lot of tools to work with when it comes to pulling yourself out of a tough place emotionally.

But since I get occasionally a front row seat....this is what it looks like. An emotionally broken child in a grown man’s body....who has to struggle with the idea of being a complete failure because a 16 year old may not have done their homework......

It’s a dark hole....I’ve been there....I would never wish it on anyone.

❤️ Courage ❤️

[barbiedoll]

Yes.....your mlc spouse is in the body of an adult.....these are emotionally child parts trying to unlearn all the bad stuff. This person doesn’t have the capacity for an adult relationship. They are literally wallowing in their broken parts trying to find a way through.

.

This is the sad truth and I see it more and more in my H. I wish I had come to understand this earlier in this entire calamity ..it might have softened the blows . Whether they manage their way thru this journey and heal into a new understanding of themselves is not within our control whatsoever.  We can only care for ourselves and our kids and take our hands off someone else's journey. Hard lessons to learn .

[KeepItTogether]

But since I get occasionally a front row seat....this is what it looks like. An emotionally broken child in a grown man’s body....who has to struggle with the idea of being a complete failure because a 16 year old may not have done their homework......

Can't even begin to imagine how long those 7 minutes must have felt like.  But yes, good reminder of how incapacitated these MLCers really are. For many years I only saw my H's public mask, the one that made him look like a competent adult. Now I am seeing the most broken person I have ever laid eyes on. And it is sad. You have shown great strength in allowing stbxh to learn these lessons on his own. SO many of us would simply try to fix it. Great job. Hoping he learned a 16 year old's homework status is not the stuff catastrophes are made of.

[Couragedearheart]

Feeling rather pensive tonight. I am reminded how alone I am.....not lonely.....just alone. I am after all the only person on earth that knows what it feels like to be me.....

I find myself watching others.....as if I can see the interplay that goes on below the surface of their interactions....the fears the insecurities the bids for attention, validation, approval......none of that information is mine....it isn’t really my business.....so I just watch. Maybe it’s a useless skill.....I’m uncertain why I have this ability.....it just is.

Mainly I just love them....the people in my life....with their fears and foibles and struggles.....it is the very fragility of it all that I love in them. It’s a thing I am slowly beginning to love about myself.

I no longer have the urge to fix....to advise to prevent others or myself from experiencing pain....we all have our own lessons to learn in our own ways....God will use our lives to show us what we need to know. So I just watch.

Maybe we aren’t meant to know other people so intimately when they are unaware that those parts of them are even being seen.

I spent the weekend with my sister.....I love her and miss her.....but I don’t need her the way she thinks she needs me....
She wants me there because she is comfortable being fully herself around me....and in each other we have experienced unconditional love....so she trusts that it is safe to be herself in its entirety and know that all the parts of her will be loved.

I am unfurling in a way that shows me I can unconditionally love all the parts of me.....and it satiates me in a way that makes the acceptance of others less necessary.  I can accept their love....but I no longer need it or seek it.

I grow slowly now.....deeply but slowly.....often times I find changes that I didn’t realize I had made in my mindset until I am present with a situation and my response is different.

Happiness comes and goes, sorrow too...even anxiety but that soon passes....what I feel most often is peace.....just existing in the moment. It feels refreshing.  Who knew the cure for my lonely marriage was solitude and reflection.....

Stbxh sent a nice message today.....it said all the right things and even asked about me and thanked me for letting s16 come for a visit and offering a meal delivery any night that I wanted if I was too tired from work one night.

I read it. Then back to work. I don’t have anything left to say. I am weary of this game, tired of words and apathetic as to any outcome....I do not care anymore.  I no longer concern myself with what he wants.

I sat with a pen and paper for days.....to find and write the words I needed to hear from him that would assuage the pain, heartache, loss and destruction that was caused.....I was left with a blank page.....

He has nothing to offer but words....it’s all he ever had really.....and I, I am no longer satisfied with words.

Besides.....I am no longer her anymore.....the girl who would have clung to the words and put her hearts desires into how she interpreted them. That girl is gone, an old version of me I have outgrown.....

He is writing to a girl that used to be....
❤️ Courage❤️

[UrsaMajor]

That girl is gone, an old version of me I have outgrown.....

He is writing to a girl that used to be....

The ultimate "dropping the rope."

[Couragedearheart]

It doesn’t mean anything.

Ex husband reached out yesterday . It's been months of nothing but polite necessities. I say almost nothing usually.....in my opinion.....there's nothing left to say.....he did what he did. He left without a conversation or explanation, no long phone calls or drawn out anything....just a hastily scribbled note on a notepad underneath a list of my current bills I had been working on. Apparently that's all he thought our 15 year relationship and marriage warranted. Then he packed his stuff and left on a Tuesday while my son was at school and I was at work.


so I gave myself closure....I gave my brain a story that was empowering to me and let the door swing shut on my old life. There was love there, and beautiful memories....but there was emotional abuse there, and loneliness, and neglect, and in the end an enormous amount of heartache.

Today he answered a question about a car warranty for me. I thanked him for answering so promptly which opened the door just enough for him to make it a relationship conversation.


He stated he was horrible about responding to me over the last 15 years.


To which I replied

"I don't know what to say to that. The truth is, you were bad at that. The other truth is....I wasn't your priority....work was...and I should have taken that hint when it was given. You were honest in your words and actions that work was more important than family. I should have believed you. I got hurt because I didn't want to believe that truth. I wanted you to be what I was and what I wanted.....which is a person that thinks family is most important. I shouldn't have tried to change you."

He said

"It's not as black and white as that. I struggle with confidence and basic human needs and self esteem. I struggle with how I view myself and true self honesty and self worth. That being said, I ASSUMED that you and s16 would always be there and if I could just achieve and achieve and achieve we would have the life that I envisioned us having. Never anticipated that those thoughts were 1 not real, 2. Mine and not yours, 3. Fair, 4. Realistic , 5. Based on collective 2 way planning. They were just what I thought and expected all to be ok with that. I was way off base and in some ways it was controlling and manipulative "

Me:

"You are correct in that it is only my perspective from which I view the past.

Recent circumstances have taught me that you cannot change another person and that you must honestly face who they are and what their actions are telling you....not just avoid reality by deluding yourself that you can change them.



I thought I could love you into being the person I thought you should be. You thought you could control or manipulate me into seeing things from your point of view. It was toxic and immature on both of our accounts. "


me:

"I'll be honest....my focus isn't on you, what you did wrong, what you should or shouldn't have done.....I have no control over the actions of other people.

So I keep myself focused on me. On what I need to heal or repair in me. On what part I played. On my actions, inactions, or role I had in the relationship.....because me is the only thing I can change."



Conversations like this always make my brain want to pick it apart and analyze it and try to discover some meaning or intuit some expected outcome. I refuse to let my mind wander down that path.
it doesn't mean anything....the reason people have these conversations is mainly to understand themselves and their choices and actions better......it isn't often about me or understanding me.


but I do want to examine me and what I said and my own motivations. It causes me anxiety to speak with him.....I know this because it makes my jaw ache every time I do.


so why did I reply....why did I allow the conversation? Why did I say so much. What was I trying to accomplish? Why am I still attempting to mitigate the damage his actions caused.


Why am I writing entire novels to a man that thought a note was sufficient for me?


Was I just reacting instead of responding?


why am I explaining myself to a person that still asks me no questions and doesn't seek to understand me or know me??

ugh!!! I feel disappointed with myself.

[OffRoad]

Perhaps you simply seek knowledge. No, we cannot change anyone else, but we can understand why they do what they do in hopes that we learn better not to project our own thoughts and morals onto them.

A conversation I had years ago with two other people struck me. The topic was Why are you a "good" person. One guy said "Because if I'm not, I don't get to go to Heaven." The other said "Because my parents raised me that way." I said "Because I want to do what I believe to be the right thing." Three people, three different reasons, and I would not have guessed that anyone would only be good to get into Heaven.

What you both got out of that conversation was understanding each other's previous expectations, something you never had before because they had not been verbalized. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with having expectations of someone, just having ones the other person has no knowledge of.

Think about it, your choice was to tell him if you needed something different than he was giving, live with something that really wasn't enough and say nothing,  or change your situation.

What was it you said that made you feel like you were trying to mitigate anything?

[Couragedearheart]

OR,

I feel like me choosing to just focus on myself and change the subject instead of acknowledging “yes, you were
Controlling and manipulative....and this is how it felt.” Was me mitigating thats statement he made.

Truthfully, I don’t trust him with my emotions...he has demonstrated a complete lack of ability to a) stay present in his own freaking body when I say say how I feel. B) able to respond to how I feel in any constructive way. And c) shown any interest in how things made me feel.

He can acknowledge he did things wrong....but hasn’t asked about the impact of his actions and doesn’t seem to want to know.

So why bother have the entire conversation. I’m not trying to reconnect....I don’t desire a relationship or marriage with him? I can validate my own thoughts beliefs and feelings.....so why bother even share those with him....he didn’t ask.

I think that’s a thing I struggle with.....I want someone to show a level of interest in getting to know and understand me. To do that....I have to break that habit of telling people all about me without ascertaining wether or not they desire that first.

I think the other part of this is in rebuilding my own self esteem. I need to go and spend time and effort where I am wanted, supported, encouraged. And it feels a bit like backsliding into old patterns to be once again....giving or showing myself to someone who hasn’t shown any desire to know or understand me.
Courage