Rethinking

I thought this would be a blog about my marriage.  He always claims that I "exploit" our happiness in my other blog and cover up our problems.  So, I thought, Fine.  I'll lay the problems out there.  But I'm sure as hell not going to do it where every person you can google me can find it.

So this was going to be a blog about our marriage journey.  Last week, I was starting to worry that it was actually going to be a blog about our divorce.

Today I'm starting to realize that maybe I need to look a little deeper than the surface of our relationship.  Because, ultimately all our problems come down to this fact:  Our relationship is one between two very flawed people.  Two people with less than ideal childhoods who are still carrying around a lot of pain and disorder.

I can't help him.  I want to.  If there was anything I could to to truely ease his pain, to help him move and grow past the trauma of his childhood, I would do it in a second.  I would bend over backward to help him heal.  But there is nothing I can do.  He has buried it all so deep that he doesn't see it.  He'll give it cursory lip service in our counselling sessions, but he doesn't believe it.  I know him well enough to know when he truely believes something.  And he doesn't think he has any emotional problems.  He only sees mine.  How could he possibly be part of the problem when I obviously have so much wrong with me?

So I can't help him.  I can only work to fix me.  My fear is that if I get myself right, or at least on track, it will destroy us.  If he doesn't come along in the process I know it will end us.  I hate that thought.  It will be StepDaughter's third broken home.  Baby Boy will be without a Daddy at the very beginning of his life.

But something has to give.  I have to fix something.  And I have to start with myself.

During my first session alone with the marriage consellor weeks ago, she suggested that I research the "symptoms" of adult children of alcoholics.  And I did, sort of.  I glanced through it one day and thought, huh, that's interesting.  And didn't give it a second thought.

I looked it up again today.  I'm not sure why.  I'm feeling emotionally raw this morning.  Husband has been out of town for 4 or 5 days.  The first couple days were so nice.  Calm, relaxing.  I got plenty done and spent a lot of time just hanging out with Baby Boy.  More than once the thought crossed my mind that if our marriage does fall apart, I'd be just fine.  But yesterday I was really starting to miss him.  I was ready for him to come home.

It was bittersweet because in my head I want him to come home and put his arms around me, tell me how much he missed me and how happy he is to be home, and kiss me.  In reality, I know that isn't what will happen.  They will rumble in loudly, carrying all sorts of mess and chaos with them.  If I'm home at the time I might get a cursory grunt from him.  I'll certainly get an excited "Mommy" from StepDaughter.  If he says anything to me before he starts unloading the truck, it will be complaints and annoyances or questions about what housework I have and haven't gotten done while he was away.  And he will unpack the truck.  And I will stay out of the way.

But I still miss him.  Because there was a time when he would have put his arms around me and it would have been about that wonderful moment when we were back together.  And maybe we'll have that back one day.

So last night, after some soul searching and writing out some of my concerns, I decided to call him before I went to sleep.  Just to say hi.  To tell him I missed him and wish him sweet dreams.

It didn't play out like that.  He sounded annoyed the moment he answered.  I tried to sound upbeat.  I told him I missed him and just called to say goodnight.  He didn't even respond.  Then he yelled at me for saying I called to tell him I missed him instead of actually saying I missed him.

And I started to cry.  I have no idea why.  It's not unusual for him to make me cry, but it usually takes a hell of a lot more than that.  But I was feeling emotionally raw.  He apparently could tell I was crying even though I made a half hearted attempt to hide it.

"What did you do?!" he growled at me.

I was so shocked and hurt.  I called to tell him I missed him, I loved him, and he was accusing me - again.  I told him I didn't do anything.  Repeated my reason for calling, and hung up.  I should have known better than to try to get reassurance from him.  That is not something he feels I deserve.

I watched 2 episodes of Bones and went to sleep. 

This morning, I saw that he had sent me a message about 40 minutes after the call that said "i love u."  I'm sure he expects that fixed it.  I didn't.

I'm still feeling emotionally raw this morning.  So I looked up Adult Children of Alcoholics again.  And it knocked the wind out of me.

We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
We are frightened of angry people and any personal criticism.
We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
We became addicted to excitement.
We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."
We have "stuffed" our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.

Most of this defines me.  I am a highly successful professional woman, but still much of this is me.  I am unbelievably intimidated by authority.  The psychologist has been telling me over and over again that I need to get over my addiction to chaos.  I judge myself extremely harshly and do not handle criticism well at all.  The scariest one, though is the point about having a dependant personality and clinging to relationships. 

The psychologist thinks I should get a divorce.  I can't even explain to myself why I'm clinging to a relationship that becomes more painful and distant every day.  Well, I have two rationalizations: 1) if I get a divorce, StepDaughter gets taken away for good.  2.) I would be leaving him instead of helping him work through his issues - which were caused by people leaving him!

So what I need now is catharsis and growth.  And I really want him to come along with me.

I may have to change the name of the blog . . .