[OffRoad]

Previous Thread: https://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=10367.0

Cast:
Offroad-Me
EXH
D22
S20

The road so far (Cue “Carry on my Wayward Son”)

2015- “I don’t want to be married anymore”
XH lives in the spare room for 18 months. Hell on Earth. So I drive. Off road, on road, over hills, dales, curbs, very steep inclines. I survive.

2016- HX moves a half hour away near Son’s school. Expects son to live with him. Son says no. Keeps coming into the house stealing things while I am away at work. I change the locks. And still I survive.

2017-Son Graduate from High school.  Xh moves to the next state over, to a miserable location. And still I survive.

2018- D graduates from college, S fails out first year at college. I am left out of the decision where XH moves to another town and S moves in with his father to go to community college out of state, when there is a fine community college here, cheaper, better, with transferable to a four year college degrees. Xh refuses to give me the address. I can’t insure S without the address. Hah! I get the address. And still I survive.

2019-Kids really realize how screwed up their father is. I’m living life. XH is off the radar except that S lives with him during the school year. My mother falls ill and passes. Her estate is an adventure, one I would pass on if I could. And still I survive.

And now…..

But first a word from our Sponsor.

[OffRoad]

Are you reeling from ILYBINILWY?
Come to
The Hero’s Spouse
Where you can read the same script over and over and over again, and feel less crazy.
Because it isn’t you. It really IS them.

Sung to the tune of the Coca Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing” song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQhtAh-SJM
I’d like to reduce MLC
And replace it with love
Stop cruelty, and all schmoopies,
and insincere Twu-Wuv

I’d like to teach the LBS
They aren’t the enemy
I’d like to keep them safe from harm
And save their sanity

I’d like to see us all be healed
Whether or not we stand
That we’ll survive this even if
It’s not the life we planned

It’s a real thing
What their hoping to find
But it’s all in their minds
It’s a real thing
Mid-life CRI-I-I sis

[Treasur]

Well nothing but an ILY from me, OR...I shall be singing that song on my allotment tomorrow. Thank you for the chuckle 

[OffRoad]

It's time for me to catch up with myself. I'd like to thank Ready2Transform, Disillusioned and Tyks, who weighed in on my last thread about how to decide who to sell the house to. I got lucky. Option 3 and 4 popped up, and either of those are equally ok with my sister and I, so we're taking the higher of option 3 or 4 and running. No guilt, and I like it that way.

But it did bring to the forefront that I still have some strange things to work on. When I thought of selling the house to the family, I knew what would be ahead work wise for them. I remember my first house, and the old couple who lived in it before I purchased it. I remember it was in such a state of disrepair that I had to replace all the pipes under the sink and halfway into the wall. I had to replace the toilet and the pipes in the wall and sewer lines under the house. I had to replace the wood planking some idiot had put on the tub/shower wall, and the water seepage had ruined the drywall beneath. I had to re-pipe the tub. I had to put in a gas line for the dryer. I had to replace the thermocouple in the wall heater. But I was 22, no kids, had the skills and friends with skills and could live in a half working house. None the less, I was still surprised that so much work had to be done to make the house livable when I had paid the going rate for the house and had to borrow money from my parents to buy just the supplies. That memory colored my decision making process. And yet, I cannot only do what is best for Offroad. That would not be me or even acceptable to me because as I have always said, we do not live in individual bubbles. I would not shortchange myself, and if the family had any skills other than being able to paint walls (I confirmed they did not) or reserve funds (they maxed out on the downpayment they could put down at 5%), I'd  have gone with that. They might not have take our counter anyway, because we weren't going to replace anything. And that brought me to my possible real reason I balked at the family. If we had countered, and they countered back, the house could be locked in limbo for weeks. And I want this done and dusted. A cash offer where the flipper knows they are replacing everything is a no-brainer and exactly what we described in the description and exactly what I wanted.

We got 6 more offers in and I didn't even look at the Owner to Occupy offers. I didn't expose myself to it so they don't count. It made things so much easier. But I wouldn't have gotten here if people hadn't give me things to think about. I appreciate it very much.

[OffRoad]

From my last Thread RE my friend and her mid life transition/crisis

Well, goodness me....all sounds very familiar doesn't it?
So, no spouse/m to blame? Did she treat her brother as the LBS target instead or someone/something else? Was the Kpop band like an FA or were there other RL 'affairs'?
Sounds as if perfection was a mixture of making the world safe and low self-esteem?

Hope it helped her that you could listen. How did it make you feel to do so, OR?

Yes, she did treat her brother as an LBS target. Mind you, he was his own mid life bozo, but the things she would get angry at him for were ridiculous. She'd behave like his mother, then get angry when he didn't do things without her telling him to do it. Example: She'd pay all his bills except one and then get angry when he didn't pay the one bill. If he's never responsible for his own bills, where is he supposed to learn that he's supposed to pay that one random bill? That doesn't even make sense.  I had pointed it out to her in the past and her response was "He should at least be able to pay one bill!" Well, maybe if he knew he was supposed to pay it, OK. She was not this person when we first met.

And I can't tell if the kpop band was like an FA or not. On the surface it seems so, but.... you see, she used to dance in the SCA (Society for Creative Anacronim- you had to be there....) and she is a fantastic singer. But she lost all of that /let it go years ago for reasons unknown. To talk to her in her current state, she feels she wasn't good enough to do those things, yet at the time she did them, she was fantastic and knew it and everyone who watch or listened knew it. But somewhere in there, her confidence (?) got shattered. So I wonder if the Kpop band is like people who watch something they can't do so they can feel like they are a part of it, if that makes sense. She wants to do that again, I can hear it when she  talks about their dancing skills.

Another thing is that while she would not have any kind of physical affair (in her case, her religious beliefs held strong in that regard), she would end up in emotional attachments with remote people, including married men (very unlike her). Anyone for whom it would not be possible to have a face to face relationship. She couldn't understand why she could not  find a relationship, but she set herself up for failure. The "perfection" does the same thing.

[OffRoad]

From my last thread

Wow, that was a very insightful conversation OR.. I'm following Shock sis thread, I read Stayed's H letter and some other former MLCer threads and they all seem to say very similar things, right? What's interesting about your friend's story, is that she didn't have a marriage to destroy but I'm sure she still inflicted some pain on other people around her because of how she was feeling.. It does "prove" in some way that MLC is not related to the marriage, which we get told here many times but sometimes seeing evidence of it helps, doesn't it?

Thanks for sharing this with us..

After listening to her talk, I thought it was very important to share. No spouse, so it can't be the spouse. But she projected her thoughts and feelings on to many others. Often she would complain that X person did something, when that thing was what SHE was doing. I would gently point out that she was complaining about something she was doing, and she was genuinely confused. When I specified, she could see that she had done so, but couldn't see it as she was doing it. In this example, complaining that another friend didn't listen to her all while not listening to me. Totally absorbed in herself and her own needs without any regard for anyone else's needs. She'd slide in and out of this mode.

The only person she truly inflicted pain on was herself, though. She'd bottle up what was bothering her and hold grudges. She'd be angry at someone (rightly so in many cases) but they didn't know it and then she'd wonder why a person who treated her badly (and she was angry about it) would continue to treat her badly. It's was hard for me not to tell her "Duh." Instead, I had to explain that if you don't tell someone what they did was unacceptable, they will continue to do it. She ended up with mostly toxic friends. I even had to back off quite a bit because I couldn't take her toxicity for a while.

[Finding Joy]

You are hilarious!!!  I’m so glad you survived and hope to see you thrive!

[Kintsugi]

As I read your post, I couldn't help but think of "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor. 

[OffRoad]

Well nothing but an ILY from me, OR...I shall be singing that song on my allotment tomorrow. Thank you for the chuckle 

Awe, Treasur, thank you. If only I had your gift for saying the right thing. I'm glad you enjoyed it, humor is what gets me through. I'm looking forward to my own garden next year. We can compare vegetables and the climates they like. 

You are hilarious!!!  I’m so glad you survived and hope to see you thrive!

Thank you, Finding Joy. Thriving, I hope, comes when I quit being hit with one thing after another. I thought I had gotten there last October when I started to fix up my house, but was derailed when my mother fell ill. I have no doubt I will get there. I hope we all do.

As I read your post, I couldn't help but think of "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor. 

But of course! 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLHY0Pqeyzw

Though this is my song: "I Lived" by One Republic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINfQbfZwik

[stillbaffled]

Well, I see I'm a bit too late to offer an opinion on the sale of the house! 

Sounds like you have arrived at a decision that sits well with you. 

I was wondering....do you still have the surfboards!??!