What do you do if your W says that she wants MC to work on the MR, but doesn't know if it can be fixed? I always get the sense that she is just trying to break the news to me softly, but I have to admit that I am completely paranoid now.
Sh74, good question.
I get paranoid too. My case is a little different as we stopped MC in January, I asked to go back, and she is delaying for a few months and at the same time has detached heavily from our M. I may not get the BD in MC, but it's fairly clear to me that my W's goal is *not* to work on our M. There's a lot of anger and resentment coming from my W in the last few months. It sounds like your MR is not at that point yet.
Also given my history of seeking reassurance and pressuring my W, I'm not surprised she might consider MC as a way to break the news to me softly. At first I thought this may be her way of feeling safe. Now I recognize she might do this because she's so worried about my emotional fragility, that BD in MC may be the most LOVING way she can do it. Either way, I need to work on my emotional health and part of that is differentiation and not being so co-dependent on our M. I sense you and I are similar that way.
How is MC going so far? I defer to the experts here to answer your question... I keep waffling how to respond.
Trying to focus on simplicity. PMA, 180s, GAL, Validate, Detach, Boundaries. Simplicity helps.
GAL Went for a walk outside after kids went to sleep tonight. We live in a remote area in the woods. Best 30 minutes of my last week, just clearing my headspace while dusk turned to darkness. I felt great about this.
Also decided to go shop for some new clothes tomorrow. This is new for me, in the past I have relied on my W alot. I have a lot of old, shabby looking shirts so a wardrobe improvement is long overdue.
Detach W asked me if I received a b-day card from her D’d friend who I believe is her closest confidante in this ordeal. I said, “Yes” then paused and said “She sends me a card every year, she is so thoughtful. Have you heard from her recently?” Then just listened. Not sure how well I did here.
W also mentioned she is trying to contact MC’s but having no luck finding availability. I said, “OK” and that was that.
180s I am still confused here as many newbies are. On the one hand, I need to 180 from attempting to “fix” things and have R talks. On the other hand, I have also been accused at times of being distant and withholding affection.
I get really confused on 180s. It seems like there are a few categories: - Obviously toxic behaviors (abuse, etc.). - Behaviors which may be viewed as toxic by your spouse, but not yourself -> what do you do here? - Ways to improve (chores, becoming a better parent, etc.) - Conflicting behaviors (don’t chase, but don’t be too distant) -> very confusing to us newbies I think
Anyways - my biggest 180 is just not bringing up the state of our M. I have the constant worry that I am making a huge mistake by not trying one more calm approach, but I’m going with it.
Overall today was a good day, for me. I’m not worried about whether it impacted my M, at least not today. Changing up little things felt great. Not much of an opportunity to work on Boundaries or Validation. PMA is a work in progress.
What are examples of behaviors you w views as toxic but you do not?
One example (from months ago) would be trying to talk about affection or intimacy in an open, loving way. Just raising the topic made her feel shamed, blamed, and stressed out. Was this due to my prior actions? It’s a chicken-and-egg thing... I feel like she never felt comfortable discussing these things. Before kids it was no problem because we were both happy with our intimacy. Of course once I did bring it up and she didn’t respond, I spiraled into excessive reassurance seeking which was clearly toxic. But before then not toxic. Even in MC it was clear she was just uncomfortable talking about it. It’s my 5LL.... just a tough situation.
There’s other things I would call differences of opinion but not toxic. Housework is a big one. I feel like I do my fair share at this point. I won’t go into it too much... the FT/SAH split the last 2 years has really tested us. I’ve made some incremental improvements in both what I do and my general mindset. I’m much more likely now to see something that needs doing, and just do it. No asking W. we finally have a twice-monthly house cleaner which I have pushed for for years.
Other stuff? Once a MLC/WAS is angry I think even innocuous things can be viewed as toxic.
For your question regarding emotional health, there was a combination of things I did, and still continue to do so.
The first plan of attack was IC. My IC was helpful, but not as helpful as I wanted. But at the same time I probably had unrealistic expectations of IC curing my emotional problems. Talking to her allowed me to really figure out what some of my problem behaviors were and then I did a lot of internal reflection to see the root causes of it.
I'll give you one concrete example.
Whenever my kids didn't do as I asked them, I would feel disrespected. When exW wouldn't do things the way I wanted or messed up some sort of system, I would feel disrespected. It was as dumb as not putting dishes in the dishwasher right or meddling in the kitchen when I was cooking.
My IC challenged me, very graciously, about the concept of disrespect. She just asked me to consider why I felt disrespected. And then took on the role of the kids or my exW and played what they might be thinking or doing. I didn't like getting challenged at first. But as we dug deeper, it came down to my need to control the environment I was around. The control gave me a sense of stability. Then we went deeper to understand why I needed to feel that level of control. It came down to my childhood traumas of abandonment and neglect from both parents and how I have always living in survival mode. My survival mode required me to have control so I didn't feel destabilized like when I was a child and a youth. IC made me take a wider perspective, but she did it gradually over time by picking my arguments and thoughts apart slowly so that I could see differently.
And then once I knew why I was having these behaviors, I started experimenting with taking different approaches that would require me to let go control. And I did that gradually and it was kinda maddening at first. But over time my kids relaxed around me. They saw that I was more predictable in my emotional reactions to adverse things. I also relaxed and it improved my ability to deal with my emotions and understand them. My survival strategy had been to suppress emotions and this allowed me to slowly let them out and manage them.
There is a quote by Viktor Frankl that I live by and it goes something like this: Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
I put that into practice and I do it every day now. It doesn't mean I don't feel the emotion or understand it, but I have the power to choose how to react to it. This has been a game changer for me.
Another thing that helped my emotional health in tandem with this work and personal reflections was to engage in meditation. I aim to do at least 60 minutes a day. Again, this has been a game changer.
Other books/works that have helped me:
Emotional Agility by Susan David The Work by Byron Katie - you can find her stuff online for free
Reading biographies of high achievers - Rich Roll (Finding Ultra) & David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me).
Listening to a lot of podcasts - Rich Roll, Impact Theory, Gary Vee, Finding Mastery, Aubrey Marcus etc.
You have to go do the internal deep work. What are your emotional stop gaps from life? Work with someone who can help you uncover these things and then outside of IC sessions, take the time to reflect and parse through those experiences. I kept a journal that helped me put down thoughts on paper. I thought it was a useless exercise, but again very very helpful. I gained insights from it that I didn't even know.
For IC - What is/was your IC's area of focus or specialty? I started going last fall to an IC specializing in CBT, because of my anxiety about my M. Now that I am transitioning to focusing on the upcoming BD, and DB'ing, I am considering whether I should change to a MFT, or someone with a different focus. Someone who can help me work on myself, and also get through the pains of the D.
I also agree I need to work on the emotional stop gaps in my life. I am starting to connect some of the dots, but I feel like I need to do deeper work. And I am a bit frustrated that most of the dot-connecting is coming on my own time, and not in IC.
Thank you for sharing your personal examples. I like that Viktor Frankl quote. It is so easy to become impulsive when emotions run high, rather than taking that brief moment to consider how to react (if at all).
In my case, I see 2 major problematic behavioral patterns that have driven a wedge in our M.
One is that I sought reassurance, and responded to my W distancing herself (stimulus) by ramping up my reassurance seeking (response) even when she explicitly asked me to stop. These episodes were emotionally abusive. In retrospect, my need for reassurance goes back to unmet childhood needs with emotionally distant parents. Everything was exacerbated by us moving 18 months ago, where my W did withdraw quite a bit emotionally from the M, and I was looking for more closeness because I felt so guilty about moving. At least that's how I experienced it.
My second problematic behavioral pattern has been "giving space." My W explained in MC that she built up resentment over several things - how I handled issues with my parents, the division of household chores. The counselor even coached her to ask for what she wants, rather than build up resentment. It worked for awhile. But the anger came out a lot. My response to the anger (stimulus) was classic NGS - I would try to do everything exactly as she wanted (response), ask for permission to do chores (to which she would sometimes respond "that's not a priority"). Eventually I tried to approach her about her anger and general prickliness, and she responded by further pushing me away. So I decided upon giving space. She sometimes became angry about how distant I was. I was so confused. It is standard NGS - I was so afraid of my W's reaction that I made things worse.
You mentioned control - I also think many of my behaviors boil down to NGS and control. Doing things with the express intention of pleasing my W, hoping for a specific outcome. Initiating R talks, half convincing myself that I did not have an outcome in mind when of course I did. Covert contracts, etc. And as a father, realizing that sometimes I am trying to control my kids, control what we are going to do on a given day, instead of nurturing them and their creativity. And even worse, trying to control them to do things because that was what my W wanted them to do. Getting frustrated with them on her behalf.
In retrospect, I can see why my W started to view me as a controlling person. She started to accuse me of things that were simply not true - having an affair, being financially controlling.
For respect - I think my problem has been allowing disrespect. I have never respected myself very much in R (again NGS). I understand that one should command respect but I'm really just starting to learn how. My reaction when challenged by another person is to assume I am to blame, that I am at fault, to apologize, to fix it. I get stuck worried about how to react to particular situations, going over scripts in my head. This used to happen in my work life until I realized if I was confident and assured, the words would come naturally and I didn't need to worry all the time. Simplicity.
Thank you for the book recommendations, I ordered one of them already. And I love podcasts for my work commute, so thank you. Too bad there is not a DR/DB podcast!
Re: meditation It sounds like you do silent meditation. I have found silent meditation extremely challenging - even 5 minutes of my monkey mind bouncing around is excruciating. I have a guided meditation app which is much more relaxing, but perhaps not yielding much result-wise other than helping me relax.
Do you have any advice here? Did you have to ease into meditation? Do you find it benefits you more as a relaxation method, or that you have deeper insights (or both)? I have tried several times over the years and just find it very hard to be consistent with a practice even 5 minutes per day.
I am struggling mightily with intense worry and fear about this upcoming BD.
I'm looking for some advice how to handle myself in a BD situation. I would feel better if I was more confident in my ability to handle the BD - what to say, etc. Then I would worry less about when it's going to happen, or what W will say or do, or if I will be served D papers at the same time.
All I have so far is:
"OK. I understand you want a D. It is not what I want."
"I need some time to think about this."
My goals here are not to save the M. They are:
- Respond neutrally and respectfully - Stand up for myself (self-respect) and my kids - Feel confident I can handle anything thrown my way
I find my brain spinning about all the things that may come up.
“ This is not what I want but I understand that this is what you want and I won’t stand in your way.” Then I would leave the house Incase you have an emotional breakdown.
There is no sense saying I need time to think about this. You have no say in the matter if she wants to D you.
I can promise you that everything that is spinning in your head is way worse then how everything plays itself out.
