There Has Been Good

      Husband and StepDaughter were gone up North for 9 days.  At first it was a welcome relief, but by the end of 9 days I was definitely ready to have them home.

      I wasn't sure how it would go since we had a couple of pretty strained phone conversations, but it was good.  The first hour we were back together was great.  I will give no details, as it was a physical reunion.  It's enough to say it was good. 

      We've had a number of happy, enjoyable outings lately.  We've played in fountains and gone swimming, gone to movies and to water parks.  There have been tense moments, but there have also been lots of wonderful, peaceful moments and moments of shared laughter.

      I have been making a concerted effort ot bond more closely with StepDaughter.  She seems pretty receptive.  Her attitude still grates on my nerves like crazy, but I'm trying to let more of it go.  Since she has so much attitude so much of the time, it will be impossible to strengthen our bond if I don't start ignoring the attitute.  And really, it makes sense to ignore it.  Heaven knows I shouldn't be giving her attention for it.

      There have been good, happy moments.  I'm holding on to the possibility that this can work out.  That with some work and growth, the good happy moments will overtake the negative ones.  Because all of us deserve that.

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.