End of the Road Farm

[lighter]

We'll Amber, I'm homesick reading your post.  I want to plant, and plan, and garden in the cool moist dirt too.

About your electricity and waiting....you might get a better plan with all this waiting.

 I'm grateful I have a week to prepare for the building materials, turns out. 

Besides rummaging through close quarters living with two other people on this job.... we're working kinks out.  Had to be done, and it's less stress this way.

 Boy are we working on it.
Hooo.....
Boy. 
 Are we.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

It's going to be a few more weeks before I can do anything in the dirt Lighter. Mother Nature has her own planning - and I can either get with her program, or sacrifice my work for no result.

The area around the garden barn is soup. The ranger looks like it's been mudwrestling. Spring is a month behind what I've experienced in the past. So be it. I still have lots of other things I can (and should) do... to get where I want to be in another 6 months.

[lighter]

Well....we both have to wait to play in the mud, Amber.  I so miss my yard.

And alone time.

And children.

And not being forced to manage other people's emotions.  I so suck at it, am repelled by it, remain mystified by it.

Non sense is my address.  I long for home.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

Well I hope you get accomplished what you've set out to do Lighter, in the time you have there.

The kids moved the piece of furniture (that the entertainment center replaced) yesterday. Holly & Matt had several butting heads moments... one where he thought she was being disrespectful to me - and he called her out on it privately; but it's just our way of talking through issues. She dealing with a lot of passive-aggressiveness/control issues with him... and trying to find her way. He can't seem to just let her be her.

I see her constantly calling herself "a bad person"; because Matt's always "correcting" her (playing parent). And she's fully expecting a week of crap of deal with. Matt overheard some of our conversation while he supposedly "went for a walk". More like eavesdropping. And I'm well aware that her frustration levels are working up into one of "hurt herself" or "hurt him" modes.

I've laid out what I see her options are. And she's not choosing - just enduring more & more, thinking I guess that being this unhappy and frustrated and alone within the relationship is just something that is like the "cost" of being with "such a great guy". Her friends are also trying to tell her she doesn't deserve to be treated this way, too. He IS a great guy, but he's trying to make Holly into what she is not. I've also covered the idea that she is an intense personality, and that he has been trying to work out just how to be in the relationship with her - as well. It's not his style at all but he is trying, best he can.

Sigh. She's 40. She has to figure this out and choose all by herself. Working on herself, isn't exactly all that's needed to be heard by him... and to be able set that boundary about how much he can criticize, shape, and change her. Chances are, that's a dealbreaker for him. But she knows she can't keep living like this.

Sigh. Values are far apart here. And IMO, that's a lot of the source of the problem - but knows that the boundary issue is something she didn't understand until after she'd moved in and it's incredibly difficult to shift it back where it belongs... especially, when your partner is disengaged from you.

My own personal soap-opera, how wonderful. Not. It's always the same episode over & over.

[Hopalong]

OOOF. This must be so hard to watch, Amber, and not step in.

I hope H finds her oxygen and is able to think it through so that whatever decisions she makes, she will fully own them.

Matt needs to read up on "critical parent." There's some basic great book about that dynamic, can't remember what it's called. But he might be surprised once he learns what that voice is, and actually be less interested in playing out his partnership that way.

One can hope. I do hope for you and for them, peace, happiness, and some emotional ease.
It's exhausting to be in struggle like that...reminds me of my first marriage especially. We were both critics in that one but I was the most vocal. It was my defensive offense, and we were both miserable for seven years. He avoided with alcohol and pot, and I verbalized everything pointlessly. No peace.

Peace for Hol and Matt AND for you. You have worked SO hard to create a family gathering place.

love
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

I let her vent and discover her own feelings, and validate her perceptions. Try to explain how the games work. There is gaslighting too. One thing that helps is their mutual friends have also affirmed her perception - and while they all love Matt, they're gently pointing out that they aren't right for each other.

It's exhausting for me, true. But I've been standing up and hugging her through temper tantrums since before she could talk - at 2 yrs old. I'm not sure she's really hearing herself sometimes. So that's where I draw my boundary and keep my distance. But I can't let her flail alone without some feedback and information. She's done alot of her own research, reading, talking & thinking. I think she misses the part of herself she's had to put away, to stay in the relationship. And yet - that place has been unfilled by the relationship. Matt looks out for his own interests and simply expects her "be there"... unfulfilled, miserable and lonely. She gets the 3rd degree going out to be with her friends.

Matt's miserable too. For now, it's best for me to stand back and wait.

[lighter]

Yikes, Amber.  My heart hurts for your DD and for Matt.  Don't you wish they could click their heels and find some great good therapist to spell it all out for them.....I do.

::Sending patience and care::..

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

Holly's asked him to go to counselling many times. There's just a no and a total shutdown, followed by sulking... because there's nothing wrong with him (in his mind). It's all Holly and who she is, that is the problelm to Matt.

As of last night, she's moved from being scared and thinking she's a bad person, to being angry and getting over that too.

I'm going to find something else to think about for awhile. Study up on cerulean warblers and their habitat. Log splitters. Skid steers. Finally order some seeds.

[Twoapenny]

It's very tough being on the edge of other people's realationship issues, Skep, particularly when they're your own grown up babies!  Very hard to listen, not judge, decide whether or not to voice an opinion, to do it objectively without criticising or berating the other partner, it's tiring just writing it down!  I think that you finding something else to think about for a while is a good idea.  Bit of head space and hopefully they can clear a few thoughts of their own in the meantime.  Tough one for you, I'm sorry it's all going on xx

[sKePTiKal]

Yes Tupp; it's difficult. Hol's been close enough to emotional abuse (thanks to her Dad) that she knows what it is; how she reacts; and has to find her own way through that mindfield. I have to really watch myself... and simply suggest ideas from my own experience... and then let her say yes, no, not quite... about her own.

What affected me the most about that short visit was the extreme hostility coming from Matt, directed toward me. I had to hold in my own anger, so was thankful that they left early the next day. Me having one of my infamous, fully honest, total nuclear meltdowns wouldn't have helped a thing. I've vented, I've realized now how angry I am... and most of why. And it's time to move on.

Not my job to sort it out; what will be will be. And Hol is really good at navigating boundaries between the 2 of us. She just flat out tells me to back off or butt out. And I usually do. A lot of times, we laugh and we just move on.  I'm hoping that serves as a useful example to her. I know it's one of the reasons she's been visiting so much. It's a place where she can just BE HER and not have someone "correcting" her, molding her, and trying to tame her... and make her what she is NOT. She IS intense; she DOES process things verbally; and when she goes quiet - be very, very afraid of what's coming next. She also knows herself pretty damn well at 40, and having been through her own form of therapy to sort out "what was wrong with her" feelings.

Without Matt's participation in sorting out what's wrong with their relationship, I think Holly knows it's doomed. But getting "out" feels like failure to her... I'm still trying to get her to see, that when an issue is big enough to consistently create unhappiness, that it's not a matter of failure... just a mismatch of personalities/being.

I simply do not understand people who feel entitled to tell other people how be, at this level. Seems to be mutually exclusive with "intimacy", ya know?

ETA: I've left it with her, that I've got her back like always. But for the sake of my own sanity and not wanting to interfere... I'm backing off. I really DID like Matt. And I've never ever had that feeling from him before. My responses to that are decidedly, clearly NOT productive or helpful... so I simply contained them and postponed pulling them out look at them. That came at a cost to me.

[Hopalong]

That makes complete sense to me.
You've made all the suggestions and shared all the ideas that it's possible (or maybe reasonable) to share with Hols. If you keep "trying to GET her to see..." --- well, anything -- I wonder if you might exhaust yourself and eventually strain the relationship.

She's a chip off the old block. The amazing block that you are. And she really will find her way to her own decision, in her own time. What comes up for me (being a very impeachable source) is concern that if she makes any decision on the force of the wave (even a supportive wave) coming from you....do you have any sense she might waver? Just to feel as though she's not a person who needs, as an adult, to be held up by their mother so much? Or might postpone her autonomy further by getting into a brand new relationship with the same kind of man?

[NB: I'm also concerned I'm projecting all over this, so do dump out your salt shaker on my advice today. Tx. XXOO]

I'm sickened by how it must've felt to feel that wave of hostility coming from Matt. Almost as sick at heart as I felt reading that he refuses counseling and makes all their problems Hols' fault.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. I hope spring seduces you into the things that renew you.

love,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

One thing she's not Hops, is dependent on me; LOL - hasn't been since she was about 16. And she finds ways to talk to/see her friends too. Some of which are more my age... and experienced folks. I've finally met the closer circle of friends. Impressive crew.

Ever since we first worked through the crap her Dad dumped on her (and there was Ex#2's participation in that too)... our tried & true method is mostly just giving her the space to feel her own feelings, say them out loud... hear herself... and then if I think she's missed something - or has a misleading perception, I say so. She takes that in, goes away and chews on it, and THEN decides. By herself.

Yeah, I catch myself seeing the parallels between some of her thought processes and yours sometimes. Up until Matt, she NEVER would've tolerated this kind of treatment. She's doing a lot of sorting out; trying to get to why she's putting up with it now. She hasn't been this self-unsure... since she was a teenager. Her self-respect has always been pretty healthy.

Thinking there might be a bit of pre-menopause starting. Hormones flipping out.

[lighter]

Lordy....hostility toward you, Amber. 

I don't see that relationship getting better, I'm afraid.  Holy will have to survive, and Matt seems determined to stomp her Hol Ness into the ground.....at some point that arrangement implodes, ime.

If he's hostile to you it might mean Hol shares information or opinions you have that aren't highlighting her as the identified problem in the relationship. 

That he's openly hostile, at all much less to women he's supposed to love, doesn't bode well for working things out, but neither does his world view..... he's perfectly fine, everything is someone else's fault, he has zero responsibility in it.

The pouty shut down blaming Hol for every sounds exhausting.  Not productive. 

I'm hoping Hol finds clarity around this situation soon.  Until then, what's going right in your life, Amber?

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

LOL... going RIGHT? You're kidding, aren't you?

The weather has me pretty well socked in and not "doing" much of anything. Too cold, too wet, too windy (like yesterday) or too "white". I'm expecting 3-6 in of snow again over the weekend. The lovely little herb plants I bought need to go outside soon. And I don't dare right now. They're too tender and I'll have freezing temps for another two weeks (at least) yet.

Projects are kinda at a stand-still. Don't know what happened to electrician; I'll call today and let him know the lights for the barn are here. Weather is likely the holdup there.

I did have a lovely chat with the local forestry and wildlife guys on Monday. Have most of the paperwork done to get signed up in the forestry stewardship program. There's a tax break involved and even reimbursement for paying the consulting forester to develop a management plan. I'll probably schedule the consultant for the end of the month; it'll be easier to get into the back 40 then. Not sure if I'm going to sign up to create bird habitat or not. DNR is concerned about the "cerulean warbler" population in our area. I think what I plan on doing with the trees will automatically create the kind of habitat they (and turkeys) like. I'm not enthralled with the idea of having regular visits to inventory population numbers.

I'm "flailing" a little bit... spinning my wheels... reprioritizing back & forth... and not quite sure what I feel is the most important thing "to do" just yet. Guess I'll go back and look at the journal from the end of last year... and see what seemed important then.

[lighter]

I'm sorry you're flailing, (((Amber.)))

I'm flailing a bit too.

Lighter