Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Farm Doin's - 2020
Hopalong:
Amber, this is a reply to your latest post on CB's Thoughts thread about men and women and power, since I thought I was helping hijack that one off topic....just being anal. Librarian gene. And, maybe all this stuff about me is likely a hijack too!
Last para below is my actual answer to your question.
----------------
NOPE.
I remember when my D was grinding at me, crunching me like an old soup bone, the hardest...she kind of peaked in her desperation to control when she told me I wasn't allowed to think about certain things. Or want something. Or remember something. She didn't realize what she was expressing but it was about control. She was actually beginning to become emotionally abusive then, and it went downhill from there.
At one point when I mentioned an insightful bit of wisdom about our struggle I'd gotten from a minister, she railed that I was not allowed to mention her name, ever, anywhere, with anyone. I know she was battling for control as her own world was melting down. And fighting a feeling of shame as her mental illness escalated. But I told her in that moment that she could not set restrictions on my freedom to speak, about whatever I needed to. I know that was very hard for her. It was hard for me too, that there were privacy issues to negotiate. I wanted to create a safe space for her, but not one in which she could continue to focus pure hatred and rage on me. The bald truth was, if I couldn't carry my heartbreak to a few trusted friends (including here), not to mention a T, I wouldn't have survived. She was in a way trying to isolate me then.
When someone tries to control how you process or share or articulate...or demands you share what they want you to at their command, I believe then boundaries are pudding and, having lost their own self of self, they're trying to absorb yours to gain strength. (A theory out of the blue, but I'm owning it.) It's unconscious I think, and not always malicious. But it
Sure
Ain't
Healthy.
I'm so sorry you're dealing with this, (((((Amber)))).
hugs
Hops
sKePTiKal:
PUDDING, those boundaries are. Yes indeed.
In this case, the difference is that her need to control isn't about me - she's "rehearsing" in a way - for the person she NEEDS to talk to directly, get answers from that help her relax and feel secure enough that the relationship won't end as a result.
I have made tangible, visible steps that she asked me to take - in the interest of lowering the tension levels around here. And over the years, I've made significant progress being able to share my space. With lots of different kinds of people, in fact. (That progress is dismissed, when we're locked into one of her analysis trips.)
I have zippo expectation or realistic hope that I can teach her SO, by example. So my focus is on her. If she sees me not resorting to co-dependent strategies, perhaps the lightbulb will come on. That does presuppose she can accurately separate what she FEELS she's doing, versus how that is manifested in the caretaking she indulges in without discernment. There are other parts to this story I haven't shared... mostly because we are making some progress there and I'm gently nudging that progress on. And again trying to model the behaviors that will help her in the long run.
Under all the external stuff - is the horrible self-shaming fear she has that she won't be able to have a child. I'm pretty sure she has some work to do, before becoming a mom. This is one reason the transgressions of SO are so overlooked and excused by her. LOL... but I'm still trusting that things are going to work out, in the actual nitty-gritty of hard work, and 3rd party (ie, not ME) therapy. Obviously, every single time we go through a repeat of this behavior... I back off some more, and point out who owns what - who's responsible for what - and we take care of our own stuff. I don't get to tell her who to choose for SO. At all. Any way shape or form. Not my business.
That is the only way to manage this kind of shared living space, that I can see being useful after the ground rules of communication & cooperation and basic values are shared in common.
It will help a LOT if she can learn to mind her business, and not mine. I said it to her a little differently. Think I said, we each need to mind our own business - and NOT each other's. Sounds like planting a flag on a boundary to me.
LOL.
Mind you - this is a NOT constant reality between us. It only erupts under very specific circumstances, and knowing what I know now about that... I can be responsible for not letting ALL those circumstances come together into the "perfect storm". It is decidedly NOT useful to either of us.
sKePTiKal:
So... because of this virus going around, the hospital has pushed back Buck's next appt - for the infection. His cardiologist is attempting to get both Infectious Disease and Pain Management to do their jobs for him - because it's the infection & pain pushing his BP up. (Oddly, it comes under control - to normal - with physical activity and mental relaxation IF he can work at that.)
Which means our week together is getting delayed - AGAIN - by forces outside his control. But by June - it will have been a whole year since he was here last. And he needs to be cleared medically, to do this training for the Navy over the summer. So it's looking more likely I won't see him, till after his D goes to college.
I have some pretty big sad feelings about this. Not blaming him; just disappointed. I told him; he took it pretty well - all things considered.
I really don't like going through getting my hopes up & then disappointed again. Thinking I might step back a little and shift where I'm looking at things from.
Twoapenny:
Oh, Skep. Can you not go up to him? Or is that not an option with all the health issues and so on? xx
sKePTiKal:
It's not an option, for other reasons, dear.
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