Up - and then Down Again

Thursday night we got into it.  I don't even remember why and I don't care.  I certainly don't care to wrack my brain to try to remember it.  It was probably about the baby's "sleep problems."  (Husband thinks the baby has problems.  I absolutely do not, which, apparently means I'm an idiot and a horrible parent.  Whatever.)

I've been working on doing what my therapist suggests.  Seeing the ridiculous and futility of it all.  Recognizing my emotions and stepping back from them.  Its hard.  He says terrible, hurtful things.  Often out of the blue.  He will go from pleasant to angry in seconds flat.  It may sound biased coming from me, but I am no exaggerating.  He has serious anger and impulsivity issues.

But I stepped back from it and tried not to get too embroiled.  It didn't blow up into anything crazy, which is good, but I still came away from it feeling horrible.

Friday morning, though, I was determined not to let this ruin our weekend.  I called first thing and set up an appointment with my therapist to take place following MY next appointment, which is this Friday.  I emailed him and told him I had set up a new marriage councelor.  Maybe since my therapist knows about how effing off kilter he is because I've gotten to talk to her alone, she'll be able to do something about it.

He needs serious help.  He needs someone to help him tear apart his past and all the horrible feelings and residue tied up from that.  And it will take a LONG time.  But I'll stay with him if he gets help and it helps him.  He's an amazing man when he's not irrationally angry or sneaking around stalking me.  If he were better able to deal with his emotions and speak to me rationally, we could have the best marriage on the planet.

So I emailed him to tell him about the appointment and asked that he drop his anger in the meantime.  He can still stew and hate me inside (which, if lunch today was any evidence, he has been doing), but we should enjoy the weekend.  You never know what's going to happen.  I have a constant, HUGE irrational fear that one of us is going to get killed in some sort of accident while we're mad at each other.

For the Baby's sake, I pray to everything on the planet that I don't die and leave him with Husband.

And we had a great weekend.  It was a blast.  Husband and I took a nap cuddled up together on a park bench while the kids played and Baby napped.  It was romantic and happy and wonderful.

I'm pretty certain we had sex.  Though for some reason I really can't remember.  How weird is that?  I mean, we have sex pretty much every weekend, and I'm pretty sure we did this weekend.  But for some reason my memory is crapping out on me.

I know I tried to initiate it one night and he was doing that bastard thing where he just lays there and makes me "prove" that I want to (and it takes a lot of proving).  He says I'm never interested in sex (which by the way is SOOO far from the truth), and I never initiate it (also NOT TRUE), so he demands that I initiate it the vast majority of the time.  Well, this time he was acting just a bit too uninterested and I gave up.  The next day, of course, I got flak for "teasing" him.  Errrrg.

BUT I'm pretty sure we had sex the next night.  I know it hasn't been nearly a week since the last time, I just can't remember it all that well.  Probably because I'm always so damn tired.

So it was a wonderful weekend.  The kids had a sleepover.  We had friends over.  It was fun.  Last night, we watched Easy A, which was hilarious.  The last two nights, Husband has let me have the Baby sleep in the bed, which has been wonderful, but last night every time the baby so much as whimpered, he got all angry, rolling over with attitude and grunting angrily at me.

He is convinced that Step Daughter slept through the night, in her crib alone, every single night without a single problem from the time she was 6 weeks old.  He's effing delusional.  That was 8 years ago and he does NOT have a very good memory AT ALL.  Something I pay for a lot.

It was a great weekend.  But, if you can't tell from the tone of this post.  That feeling did not extend past the weekend.

Where Things Stand

I don't intend for this to be an all negative blog.  It isn't [only] a place for me to come to vent and unload about the state of our relationship.  It just happens that I've started it during a rather difficult period.

Usually, we are very happy together.  And when we are happy, things are amazing.  There are times when we have an absolutely wonderful relationship.

And then there are weeks like these.  I don't know what has happened.  I don't know what has changed for him, but he is angry.  So angry, most of the time.  And so the eggshell walk begins again.  I will tiptoe as much as I can until things come lose and I can't do it anymore and we'll have a blow our row.

He'll tell me he hates me.  He'll call me a slut because he's obsessed with the idea of me cheating even though I never have.  He'll call me ugly just because.  He'll call me vain and conceited, a horrible wife and mother.

I will either disolve into a tearful pile or I will strike back, yelling at him that HE is the one with all the horrifically failed relationships in the past; the HE never listens to me and doesn't seem to care about me at all.  I'll ask him why he ever married me if he hates me so much.

I've been trying to break this cycle, but it is HARD.  It's hard to listen to the person who's supposed to be there for you and care for you, the person to whom you've tethered your life and produced beautiful babies, tear apart every shred of your humanity and value.  It's hard not to snap back at that.

But I'm trying.  Because he's suffering.  I know he is.  I don't know if he knows it, but I do. 

There are moments when I want to give up and leave because it hurts too much and he just doesn't see what's going on.  But that would make me just another person in his life who abandoned him when what he really needs is someone to be there for him so he can heal.

But it is so hard sometimes.

And then there are times when everything is fine.  We're happy.  We laugh, play, make love.  Wonderful times when I can't even imagine why we ever fought like we did.  These times disapear in a moment.  With one wrong word - even one uttered in complete innocence.

But those times, for now, are worth it.  And I can't imagine how beautiful they will be if we can just fix us.  Individually and together.

Blame

He blames himself for the sickening things his slutty ex did to him.  He blames me for his emotionally abusive behaviour toward me.  WTF?

Rationally, I’m sure he didn’t manifest this self blame about his ex while they were together.  He was probably just as blaming to her as he is to me at the time.  Maybe that’s why she felt the need to f*ck so many other guys.  But just because I rationally know he didn’t blame himself then - that he wasn’t forgiving or understanding toward her when he was actually with her - doesn’t mean I feel any less slighted by it.

He has told me point blank a number of times, in moments of anger that I am the one with the problems and that things would be fine if I would just change.

I have changed.  Drastically, I’ve bent over backward and wrapped myself completely around the axle trying to be what he wants, but his expectations when he’s angry are completely impossible for a single human being to live up to.  And he blames me.  For everything.

So you know what I do?  I blame her.  Yeah, he had problems before her.  He had horrible, emotionally scaring Hell for a childhood.  But he still loves his mother [sometimes] and she will always be a part of our lives, so I can’t blame her.

But I can blame his ex.  Because she was a whore and a narcissist and I don’t really know her so I don’t have to deal with the guilt of knowing my blame is misdirected.  How can I know she’s a narcissist if I’ve never met her?

Because she has a blog.  A detailed one.  And I’ve met a lot of people who do know her.

She’s a completely self centered, narcissistic, hypochondriac whore.

She seems to be trying to “grow” and “change,” but I’m not sure I buy into that.  And ultimately, I don’t give a damn because I don’t know her and she’s an easy scapegoat.  It’s not like I do anything to her.  I just blame her and hate her.  In our rare internet interactions I’m perfectly nice because I recognize that she has done nothing to me. 

But I still blame her.

For not taking care of him.  For taking the damage his mother did and amplifying it tenfold.  For not only being a slut, but being an unsafe slut.  At least when I went through my promiscuous period in college I always used protection.  Not this one.  Hence the fact that she has so many disgusting problems with her vagina.  Like I said, it’s a detailed blog.

Sometimes he hates her.  Sometimes he defends her actions.  I’m sure he needs to feel like he wasn’t a complete idiot for marrying her and taking her back after her first round of whoring.  So he doesn’t blame her.  He blames me.

But I blame her.

Screw the Sunshine and Rainbows

I have over 100 blog friends (on another blog), and not a single one of them has any marriage problems.  Bullsh*t.  Am I surprised that people don't lay out the dirty details of marital fights on the internet for all to see?  Of course not.  Heaven knows I'm not about to lay this stuff out on the blog my husband's cheating ex stalks me on.  But I think someone should put it out there.  I think it should exist somewhere.  So here it is, my marraige and my flaws, in all their raw, human glory.

Will my marriage last?  Sometimes I don't know.  95% of the time, I think it will.  Of course it will.  I love my husband; he's an amazing man.  He loves me.  And we're both very devoted to our kids.

But that other 5% of the time?  That 5% is BAD.  He can lose his temper for 20 minutes and make me seriously consider the end.  When we fight, we tear each other to shreds.  And if something doesn't change, this could be the end of us.

So I've decided to make things change.  I've been seeing a psychologist trying to fix my part of this issue.  Eventually, I'll drag his ass in, too.

Things are better than they used to be.  I have no idea how we made it through the first year.  We were at each other's throats the entire time.  Ultimately, I think sex and stubbornness are all that got us through.  That, and a hell of a lot of conscession and capitulation on my part.  In that first year, we got in shouting, throw down fights almost every week.

It's not like that anymore.  We go weeks without a fight, which is amazing.  But when everything breaks lose (when Seeley has his "man period"), it's just as bad as it ever was.  We may have gotten better at meeting each other half way and avoiding fights, but we haven't gotten even a little bit better at actually fighting.

I don't want to get divorced.  Ever.  But there are moments when I think that somethings got to give.  So here we go, for better or worse, follow me as I either fix my marriage or I - don't.