Makin’ Progress

well, i decided it was beyond time for another update… i really should post more so i have to do less updates LOL…

Hubby has honestly been making an effort. he certainly falls off the wagon as far as speaking to me in a decent manner, but he is trying. He has asked me not to go, told me he doesn’t want me to leave and asked if i really want to go. i will go so far as admitting i don’t really want to go, but i have not yet committed to saying that i will not leave. I don’t know how convinced i am that he can make long term changes.

a note on my side activities.. i am still seeing BB quarterly, or less! far from ideal. things with CC ended up only being one lovely encounter, his job changed and no longer entailed daily freedom and extensive travel. sad, but not tragic… the tragic part is trying to meet a decent man to see on the side seems to be impossible. i met one for coffee a few weeks ago, i didn’t really feel it and was going to let the man down slowly. I didnt have the chance. he got way obsessive FAST! i had an email before i got home and the next day he sent 6 text messages before 10am!  i am home busy with my kids and i cannot have that! i don’t have the time or the inclination to engage in that! so i shut him down hard and fast, he wasn’t happy but he has since sent only one e-mail asking me to please reconsider which i do not plan to respond to.

My son starts school soon, I am starting to think about going back to work and to help that along i have started upgrading my schooling. i have only sent out a couple of resumes, i am really only looking for part time so i can bring in some money (i told hubby half of my money would go into our bank account and the other half is mine that i want to save some money up, he isn’t happy about it and keeps asking if it so i can leave him. i am undecided but i want to have my own money).

My summer has been busy keeping the kids occupied, my parents have been visiting once and are coming again soon. it will be time for school before i know it.

I hope you are all enjoying your summers 🙂 i will try (ya i know, i’ve said it before) to write more often LOL….

updates

well, in regards to my previous post, sure enough that cycle quickly ran it’s course and he was even more miserable than before. about one month after i wrote that letter, i sent it. then had huge assed panic attacks waiting for him to bring it up and see what his reaction would be. i didn’t expect that he would ignore it all together. it really confused me.

my daughter and i went out of town together for a week, and when i came home i started implementing some of the things i had mentioned in the letter and he seemed totally confused by them. i mentioned the letter and he feigned ignorance. so i sent it to him again. we were in bed that night when i mentioned the letter again, so he read it while i lay beside him.

i don’t think he got it the first time, holy christ did he react! he was LIVID, and he got NASTY! FAST! he started talking about how i wasn’t going to take his kids, that i could do what i wanted, etc…

i took a tear break in the bathroom, when i got back he has calmed down, but it was not a happy conversation.

the next night we were in bed, and i told him my head and my chest were aching. he asked if i really wanted to leave, i told him that it wasn’t ideal. he said he realized that if he didn’t make these changes that his family was going to fall apart. i told him it was already falling apart, he just hadn’t seen it. i would do ANYTHING for my family!! he said and i corrected him, he would do ANYTHING for his children.  we had a far better conversation, but i didn’t promise to stay, am still looking for work to save up some money… honestly the best i think we can hope for is a bandaid solution that will make it easier for me to stay a bit longer. i do not believe he is capable of long term, permanent, necessary changes.

for now, he promised, for the first time ever, to change his behaviors. and he had a few earth shattering epiphanies… let’s hope he follows through and that they stick

anger

well, back to anger again.. lol.. i think it’s partially hormones and the rest is circumstances building.

i had it out with TH not long after my last post and i started suggesting medication. He has been awful and miserable, like over the top! impossible to be around, even the kids were complaining to me and afraid to say anything to him. he didn’t react well to the idea of medication and went straight on the verbal offensive, which of course i reacted to.

so i told him flat out that he was awful to live with, told him what the kids were telling me about his moods and said that if he refused medication then to “happy the hell up on his own”… LOL… of course he got mad that i… *gasp*.. swore!!! such a prude! good thing he can’t hear what i say when he isn’t around lol….

anyways, he took my message to heart and has genuinely been trying to happy up and generally be easier to be around and for the most part he is doing ok. it isn’t going to be a long term change, i already know how this is going to play out. he tries for a certain amount of time, then he gets upset that “he is the one that always has to do the changing” and then in the midst of that something minor will piss him off in a major way and things will gradually go back to the way they were.

and when they do, sadly i am ready. i have an e-mail that i have written to him telling him why i can’t live with him anymore. it is a great e-mail, it is sitting in my drafts folder of my e-mail… and i really hope he gets to read it someday. i hope i can send it when it needs to be sent.

in the meantime, i need to get my anger back under control. i have started exercising again, but i need to get my eating back. i am exhausted all the time and having naps everyday.. which isn’t a good sign at all.

The Talk – the immediate aftermath

normally after one of our talks, he changes. well, he makes the changes he needs to make as per my requests. this normally lasts for a few days, perhaps even a couple of weeks, before he reverts back to his natural state having done what is necessary to make me stop my pissing and whining.

He doesn’t seem capable of a real change, only short term damage control kind of changes.

I heard a brilliant phrase for it on a blog really recently, but i can’t even remember which blog, never mind what the phrase was. sorry.

This talk, the change doesn’t seem to have happened. there has been no change his attitude, tone of voice, or how he treats me.

so night before last, i asked him he had thought about our talk. and yes, he had but he was tired and didn’t want to talk now. later. i hate that!! i feel like everything is on his terms only. and yesterday he was an ASSHOLE. i have no idea what has been up his ass all day, but it’s something.

he is in the kind of mood where everything i do and everything i don’t do was intended to piss him off and sets him off. i am doing a pretty good job of ignoring it (the only way to deal with it because otherwise he gloms on to one thing i have said, repeats it over and over, laughing, and walks away).

i went to bed early to avoid him.

The Talk – part II – Eloquent Monologue

Last night, with the night before’s talk still foggily ringing in my ears, i went to bed late. TH had been in bed for hours which means he was due to wake up and lurk about the house for hours. I didn’t intend to continue our talk, i hadn’t been planning a speech or anything and i had had two hot rum and honeys. i think this loosened my brain and my tongue, but it worked.

i knew he was awake, we had said a few things about the kids. and then, without warning i gave an inspired monologue along the lines of George C. Scotts opening monologue in Patton (which i have to mention i have never actually seen, but i have heard about it enough to get a good idea).

I told him that you can only ask for things for long before you just have to stop. You cannot keep asking for the same thing over and over, you get worn down that these little tiny things gets bigger and bigger until they are insurmountable and turn into the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 i even made a car analogy that was brilliant. can you image actually relating a relationship conversation and difficulties to car repair?? i did! He totally got it. I told him (because this happened to my parents when i was in my teens) that sometimes to have to buy a whole new engine for your car because of a $5 part that you didn’t replace when you could.

I told him that these things that he considered small and unimportant were building, i told him again that i am angry at him every moment of every day because of this and i that i had reached my breaking point. i told him that things feel irreparably broken and that i was staying because i felt i HAD to, not because i WANT to.

He sat up, looked at me and said “well said, darkerside! well said! i get it.”

all the muscles in my stomach relaxed, so much of my tension dissolved. he got it!

then he says “what do you need to not feel like that?” my stomach dropped again, did he really not know? was it possible?

“please tell me you don’t want me to repeat every conversation we have ever had over the last 12 years!”

he said ok, and it was dropped. but 10 minutes later i asked him what he took out of that. i’m glad i asked because he really doesn’t know. He mentioned silly little things without understanding the reason behind them. so i summarized it for him; i want to feel wanted, and appreciated. i feel like a piece of furniture. necessary, but not particularly wanted and not worthy of necessary attention.

i have the feeling this isn’t done yet. it is going to require more, and it may not fix anything. but at least he gets it now.

The Talk – part I – The haze

So, we had a talk the other night. i tried for two hours to tell him i wanted to talk but he doesn’t consider it a priority. he fell asleep, then my daughter took forever to get to sleep, one thing after another and i gave up around 11. TH came to bed aggressively wanting to know what it was that i wanted to talk about. i told him i was too tired, but my brain started working on it again and he was willing. so i did.

first of all, i took one of my meds that calms me down. i was hoping to keep calm and rational, it kind of worked.

i told him that i was angry at him every moment of every day. i told him that i had long given up on asking him for things because he would always agree and then nothing would change. i told him that i had years of resentment built up and that i didn’t know what to do about it. he suggested that i keep trying, keep hoping (a very familiar litany), because the reasons that what i wanted wasn’t panning out could change from day to day. he told me that i am stubborn, marriage is work, we both need to keep working.. yada yada yada.

i was calm, i didn’t fall apart, no blubbering or wailing but i still didn’t feel like i had a strong grasp of the conversation.

after the talk i was left with a hazy unclear feeling of not knowing whether we had accomplished anything at all. he was still convinced that it had to do with us going out, i have no idea why he is stuck on that. he still turned the conversation around and i had to try and keep him on track, but towards the end i wasn’t even sure where i was going or if we were resolving anything.

Uncaring??

it’s probably not a good sign to have a question as a topic title, but i am sitting here and don’t know what to call this post. I was talking with TH last night about a bunch of things. One of which is my up coming surgery. I told him that he would need to take a few days off work, the day of my surgery and a day or two after.

I don’t have to take time off, he says to me. so i tell him that i won’t be able to look after the kids. “whatever, we’ll figure it out. and i don’t need be off the day of you surgery. i can drop you off, and pick you up.”

i am angry. i stood up and told him that it was wonderful to know he didn’t give a rat’s ass about me and i went to bed. i am pretty sure he rolled his eyes and it never crossed his mind again. God forbid anything should interfere with work. I can almost guarantee he is going to try and make me continue on like i am fine, and keep the kids, go about my day as usual.

UPDATE: well, TH just called me and said “i don’t know what happened when we were talking last night, you didn’t think i was serious. did you?” yes i did. i told him that. Don’t be silly, he says… there are some things that just don’t even need to be talked about. of course i will drive you. arrggghhhh. i have no idea what we are doing about the kids though.. between school, maybe and extra daycare day and my mother in law;…. we’ll see

naked

dont’ get all excited.. there is no nakedness here LOL

years ago, TH would make excuses why we couldn’t have sex. Typically male, he blamed me in so many different ways. When we decided to have children this because a HUGE problem. It got to the point where i told him an old-wives tale about a turkey baster. i am sure you have heard that one to. I became desperate because he would lay there, spread eagle and say “ok. start.” what the fuck? ok, start?? i wont’ describe the argument that one brought on, but it finished with a turkey baster. well, actually an eye dropper. voila, daughter. span the years, and it became a medicine dosing syringe.  two miscarriages, and viola, son. All were the results of him jacking off in a cup, and bringing me “the baby juice.” If i touch him anywhere, he giggles like a little girl. kinda disturbing actually.

He hasn’t seen me naked in 8 years except for whatever bits he managed to see of me in labour and two c-sections.

When TH came after me physically we went to therapy for the 40 millionth time. We got to the end of the 4th session and the therapist was stupidly impressed with our progress (keep in mind that TH is not only passive aggressive, but incredibly smart. smart enough to figure out exactly what the man wanted to hear and fed it to him) he finally asked about our physical relationship. i said ‘never,’ “define never?” so i answered with “more than 7 years.” I shocked him silent, then he said the funniest fucking thing. “there was a 300lb gorilla in the room this whole time???” I think the man was more concerned with his ‘closure rate’ or whatever because he classed us cured and fine. idiot.

The reason he hasn’t seen me naked? cause i enjoy being naked, but he has made me ashamed. everytime he saw me, he would look me over like a prize heifer he was buying, and tell me about some good diets. Then he would tell me it was for my own benefit, and that he wanted me around for a long time. I am not a small woman by any accounts, but he makes me feel fat.

Buddy Boy? yeah he plays all the games i have heard MMs play reading blogs lately. yeah i feel like i am on his timetable. He likes big women, he loves me naked, with him i feel beautiful. It is a rare thing for me because of what i have at home all the time. and take into account the fact that i don’t have guilt that married women in affairs have because he told me he would rather i go to someone else for whatever my physical needs are. How does all that leave me with a marriage.

darkness

i am a dark mood for sure right now. i had an exhausting morning! There are so many things to do around the house that i am feeling overwhelmed, my body is aching. TH was an ass last night over a diaper. not changing one, one that had been taken off.  i won’t go into it, but he was snappy nasty. i didn’t react, but i did get up and deal with it. i always do. then today i came in exhausted and when he did the garbage last night he didn’t put in a new bag. i don’t even have the energy to put in a new bag and i feel like just leaving the garbage on the counter and letting him deal with it. so juvenile.

i will deal with it, it’ll be done before he gets home because little things like that aren’t worth a fight. save the fights for the big stuff, right?

another reason for my dark mood, other than the fact that my special lady time started a week early even though i am on the f*&king pill, is that i have been reading all these blogs about women who have had affairs, got caught or didn’t and are working on their marriages. not only do i not have enough of a marriage to work on, he wouldn’t care to. he likes things the way they are. his needs are all taken care of, so why would he be unhappy? he doesn’t have any physical needs. i HATE that if i want it, i have to go elsewhere. why does it have to be like that? why is it such a big deal? why do i not matter enough to him? why can’t i have a real relationship? am i being too whiney?? lol. it is raining, i am menstrual, i feel like crying.

weekend

i had a lovely weekend away from my darker side. I enjoyed the sunshine, i was busy, i enjoyed my kids. I was even able to completely numb out his nastiness (notice the lack of capitals. i am not calling him this, just describing his behavior). He did try to be nasty, but i didn’t react at all. sometimes it is just so hard to do, but i managed all weekend. It helps tremendously that it drives him crazy when i don’t react at all. 😀 It also helps that he had to go to work, and he has been helping his mom out at her place. as a totally unexpected bonus, his mother sided with ME!! LOL, poor sucker.

I am leaving in just over a week. i don’t imagine i will be in my darker place alot when i arrive at my destination. i might even break down enough to post nice things about him because i am far fonder of TH when he isn’t around, sometimes i even miss him. It doesn’t usually take very long for me to remember why it was better being away.