Frita’s Lost and Found

[J_]

J_ wrote: ↑Thu, 23 May 2024, 22:19
quote Frita: "Congratulations to you and your spouse phasing out of your work roles into retiring towards. How does having your own business affect the process?"

In our own (project oriented real estate) business we could decide in which speed and how we could dissolve our company. So we could easily steer towards less work and more freedom to do what each of us wanted to do with such freedom. Long before, we took time to discuss the idea and the timing. And made it in the end extra adventurous for ourselves by deciding to move abroad at the time of having accomplished our last (building) project.

Can you (make) your situation into something adventurous? Something together with your son?

[Frita]

Keeping some tracks…

@ertyu
Thanks for the questions. I love questions.

Am I trying to avoid divorce as a way to transform a bad marriage? Uh, no.

Do I believe that by changing what I do, I can control what my spouse does? No. It could be a side effect though,nothing to count on.

What’s going on? I am tired. I am at the point where I have done everything possible and ready to move on, just not sure what that is.

What are my fears? I have wasted a lot of time, modeled poor behavioral boundaries for my son, and contributed to this shitshow by being tolerant. Perhaps my fear is that I will just trade one sucky situation for a new set of issues. I fear my spouse will hurt himself and people will blame me me. I fear my son will repeat my mistakes.

@J_
Thanks for sharing. How wise to co-create a staged solution based on adventure.

Yes, I am thinking of (mini-)adventures to expand the container around my grief. I need to start a list. And I need to substitute resuming better self-care for overwhelm.

Shifting forward:
• I am headed to Yellowstone NP this next week with my son before going to my Mom’s to help with some projects.

• I am digging listening to Dehd’s “Bad Love:” https://www.google.com/search?q=dehd+ba ... ent=safari. The early 80s vibe reminds me of being hopeful and seeing possibilities. Dance party!

[ffj]

@Frita

Just read up on your situation. It's time to protect your assets: money, mental health, the rest of your family relationships. And it is time to stop caring why he is acting this way and simply respond to what is best for you and your children.

This relationship is ending, or has already ended. It is terrible, but he has abandoned you. You should feel zero regrets about reclaiming your life.

I don't know if this is what you need to hear right now but I can't see this ending well for you if you keep enduring this abuse and manipulation. Good luck and I'm sorry if this advice upsets you.

[delay]

• I am headed to Yellowstone NP this next week with my son before going to my Mom’s to help with some projects.

Thanks for sharing your story. When I was young in the early 90s we stopped holidaying with our parents around 16 and left our parental house after finishing high school. When I visited Italy on a study trip we were told that students often lived with their parents. We didn't believe it at first. But they surely wouldn't go on holiday with their mom. How times change!

[ertyu]

@delay: Starting w younger Gen X, many parents actually have good relationships with their children. This is due to actually having put thought into improving themselves as people and into actively striving for good parenting. I also have a number of younger friends/acquaintances that are much better friends with their parents than I can ever imagine being.

[Frita]

Thanks, I appreciate the reframe of abandonment. I will not have any regrets as I have done what I scan. My six-month counseling (abusive relationship focus, 1 double session per week) was on getting myself deprogrammed. That was effective and now it’s the action part.

Your take on the situation doesn’t upset me at all. I agree. Since I do not have family or friend support, I need to be wise how to proceed.

I have a cool kid so it’s pretty easy. As he’s aged, how we relate changed. Now that he’s an adult, our relationship is shifting to more friendship/roommates. He does have friends and college-/work-life beyond me, of course.

I appreciate you bringing it up because I am proud of the relationship we’ve created. Some people just want their kids out of their hair and out of the house. My mom was like that with me, and I swore I’d do better.

I had kids at age 37, so yes, I had time to work on myself and have my own life pre-kids. Family is one of my values so I do consider deeply how I approach it. My spouse struggles to interact/connect with him, says he doesn’t know what to say (downright hated the baby to young teen stage), and needed my coaching to relate. Now that DS is significantly more emotionally mature than my spouse, their relationship is easier (superficial and activity-based).

Interestingly, not all of his friends have good relationships with their parents. They have not invested the time over the years and seem to want to buy love/distract their kids with money/stuff. DS said that being expected to help out around the house, work (nothing crazy), and learn the value of money/savings are things he is grateful for. He also has mentioned some of his more anxious, depressed peers do not have involved parents.

[delay]

I appreciate you bringing it up because I am proud of the relationship we’ve created. Some people just want their kids out of their hair and out of the house. My mom was like that with me, and I swore I’d do better.

In my youth it was just the expectation. It was not discussed and there was no motivation for it. I think @ertyu says it right, today parents and children are friends. Back when I was young, your parents were not your friends. They didn't want to be your friend, and you didn't want to be their friend. Kids living at home at 19 were considered unhealthy.

It seems really time and place dependent. Twenty years ago in Eastern Europe you wouldn't see any man with a baby in public. That was a social taboo. Men could not pay attention to their kid before he could play football. You saw some quite visceral reactions when visiting men from Western Europe carried their baby in public and changed diapers. There were open mouths and staring, it was just unbelievable to them. When I visited Eastern Europe last year it had already changed. However, if you go further and visit Turkey...

On a separate note, I've heard another story of a husband who "just does nothing". This one was recovering from a burnout and sort of went back to work, but pretty much idles most of the time. His wife complained about not going on holiday, having to pick up the gardening that he used to do, and having to visit birthday parties and parent-teacher meetings alone. Maybe it's another sign of the times!

[Frita]

As you point out, context is everything. It sounds like Eastern European cultural norms have shifted dramatically in a short time (even more so perhaps than the US) in the past 20 years. The past expectations sounded clear cut: 1) Women take care of kids, not men. 2) Parent and children roles never morph into friendship. 3) Well-adjusted children move out after high school.

Even since my parents’ 1950s marriage, times have changed. My dad worked. My mom was a housewife who most likely would have preferred not to have kids. She likes to wax poetic about how my dad changed my diapers a few times. Big deal, women don’t get accolades for that. Being a SAHM meant one was not working class, so there was a certain cache to the arrangement. I always thought that I wanted to go to college and have a career to avoid such an unbalanced power dynamic. Oh, the irony!

There is another parent-child friendship dynamic in the US. Some parents want/need/demand their kids to like them so they treat them like friends before their offspring are ready. This seems to create conflict. At least for me, I didn’t really consider exploring a friendship with my son until this past year and that is a slow process to right-size however things land. (If he were less mature, I would have waited.)

I suspect that there are plenty of quiet quitting spouses out there. It’s especially tough when the kids are little. There’s really no incentive to get married to someone like that, which is part of the reason I question the whole marriage system. I used to think I was raising a couple boys, only one grew up.

[delay]

I suspect that there are plenty of quiet quitting spouses out there. It’s especially tough when the kids are little. There’s really no incentive to get married to someone like that, which is part of the reason I question the whole marriage system. I used to think I was raising a couple boys, only one grew up.

Thanks for sharing your views! One thing that strikes me is your mention of "raising" your husband. Often the way you think about something becomes the reality of that thing.

[Frita]

One thing that strikes me is your mention of "raising" your husband. Often the way you think about something becomes the reality of that thing.

Ouch, I appreciate your input and agree with what you said in some instances. My awareness of my spouse’s emotional immaturity does not create his lack of responsibility. It is more of a metaphor for the emotional labor required to be married to such a person.

[7Wannabe5]

I think one of the earliest insights that allowed me to have a good relationship with my children as adults was observing how from very early childhood, given a wide variety of choices, they would consistently choose books that were not what I would have chosen to read. So, I likely erred on the side of giving them credit for being self-authoring at too young an age. However, I believe that it is the case that holding the perspective that your children are self-authoring that allows you to eventually develop an adult-to-adult relationship with them.

One thing that strikes me is your mention of "raising" your husband. Often the way you think about something becomes the reality of that thing.

In my experience this is a very chicken-egg situation. Hugely common in early age peer marriages, because women generally mature earlier. Also frequently acted out in standard TV situation comedies. This is what I mean by being in the "big sister" role as opposed to the "little sister" role in relationship to a man. The weird thing that happened to me is that I never dated anybody over the age of 25 until I popped out of my first marriage, in which I was "big sister" with a bullet, at age 42, and even though I had already raised a family and started my own business, a lot of the men I dated tried to "baby sister" me, sometimes because they already had a relationship with another female in a de-sexualized "big sister" role. Finding yourself in the "big sister" role is also more likely to occur when marriage/family is more in alignment with your purpose or vision than his. My second husband was even more Paterfamilias in his own core purpose than I am Materfamilias, and was also extremely naturally dominant. I practically felt like a "child bride" at age 46 in relationship to him, but my own children were already young adults, and I was very accustomed to independent adult functioning, so it was definitely a case of waaaay too much, too late vs. the too little, too soon of my first marriage. If I was to offer advice towards a rough rule-of-thumb most likely to work in modern/post-modern context, it would be towards an 8 year gap around female age 29, male age 37.

[Frita]

I believe that it is the case that holding the perspective that your children are self-authoring that allows you to eventually develop an adult-to-adult relationship with them.

Yes!! One gift of having one child with significantly more challenges than I ever considered adopting was learning the self-authoring child thing early. My job was to accept and support that kid, both kids, and check the other BS at the door.


Day one of the mother-son Yellowstone trip today: I so appreciate that he’s his own person and not some sculpture of me or my imaged perfect son. Visiting the South Pass City historic site in Wyoming was a highlight. We both love history. Scenic drive. Spaced gassing up in Lander and drove on fumes to Dubois, lovely historic lodge with an unexpected upgrade to a lovely historic cabin. The clerk H from NYC was pleasantly surprised we were traveling together. Campfire dinner with plans to hot tub by the creek under the stars. My spouse chose to pass and I chose not to let him change his mind.

Grrr, I see how big sister-little-little-brother or little-sister
-big brother are role dichotomies. I just don’t like them. As a junior, I actually dating a first year teacher. I know it is sick by our current standards. Back in the day, we were both considered catches. It was romantic. My geography teacher validated that he’d met his spouse the same way. My computer science teacher, later a subsequent boss, was my BS’s roommate. No mention EVER of such a messed up situation. Yeah, I get the dynamic and obviously inadvertently married into it.

Never, ever again. I don’t care for a father-daughter dynamic either. When I whet to grab ice, the clerk asked me if I was traveling with my son. Yes, of course. When I mentioned it to my son, he teased me as a “cougar.” Cringe, that is equally creepy. Two months per year of marriage equals more than 5 years of rebound…damn, I may need to start wearing form-fitting yoga pants.

[7Wannabe5]

Two months per year of marriage equals more than 5 years of rebound…damn, I may need to start wearing form-fitting yoga pants.

It is interesting/funny how they seem to start popping right out of the woodwork as soon as you even start to slightly signal availability.

[Riggerjack]

Wow. This thread needs a contrarian view.

@Frita,

If nothing else from this post gets through, consider:

One thing that has happened with my spouse’s isolation is that I, too, have become isolated. I want to (re)discover who I am.

And I need to substitute resuming better self-care for overwhelm.

Your husband is depressed. Depressed people suck. Being around people who suck, sucks. Your first and only option at this point is to find a way to recharge yourself. Until you are successfully recharging yourself, there really isn't any hope of things getting better. You have to be in a good place, yourself, and be able to maintain that good place to be around people who suck without getting dragged down yourself.

Interesting the parallel you draw between retirement and divorce with both being catalysts for self-discovery. So, retiring from is more avoidance of role-based demands that are not congruent with temperament. Retiring to is substituting temperament-aligned pursuits for roles that may or not continue to (or ever have fit).

How well one knows themself, can choose life-pursuits that match temperament and values, and can verbalize this determines how synced one becomes. With the 2x2 outcomes, it is possible to have a mismatch and convincingly assume the role. The irony is hating the performance while lacking substance under the costume while being accepted as being the mask. I think I have more compassion for how retirement affected my spouse, thanks for the framework.

You mentioned your husband wanted out early (Dissatisfaction with work rewards), but topped out at Optimizer. jacob sees the danger of loss of life satisfaction, and going back to work.

As someone who has dealt (poorly) with his own depression (only getting diagnosed in late 40's), I see a different danger.

I'm going to steal quotes from another journal for how an optimizer could face problems in retirement. This is not to imply that poster has or will have any of the issues I'm describing. I'm using these as great examples of optimizer thought patterns.

If maintaining my garden takes me away from fruitful social relationships or creative pursuits I'd like to spend my time on, how do I figure out those "across systems" benefits/costs?

It's challenging because we're weighing categorically different currencies*. <-- this is what I'm trying to systematize / learn from others.

The argument for subscriptions is that they free your time and attention from the costs of ownership as maintenance. The cost of subscriptions is being beholden to a recurring payment and its inflation, acknowledging that sometimes we have to subscribe to things to get enough of them (food, end of life healthcare).

Let's say that money is no longer the bottleneck in the system (post FIRE) and you can trade it away for other currencies.

Using the swept floor example, is there an argument to get a robot vacuum to save me time that I can spend elsewhere, doing the things I really want to be doing? I trade one currency (money) for another (time, relaxation) to get what I really want (more time with friends, lower cortisol).

Is a dishwasher bad? A washing machine? My annual physical? <-- trading money for time to do X.

If money is abundant, why wouldn't I try to own certain things that free up my time**, or even potentially subscribe to them***?

If one spends their career placing a high value on $$, saving for one's retirement, one will make sacrifices. Those sacrifices are justified by the high value of the reward. One is "making progress", plus whatever social rewards are available. If this doesn't change, it becomes a pattern of self sacrifice and reward. Reach the end of the game, now $$ don't mean much. Rewards from previous self sacrifice are gone. But the pattern is still there.

Sacrificing time for money is rewarding, until one has both time and money. Then one has the capacity to sacrifice, but no rewards are available.

Depression is getting stuck in a discharged state, with a decreased ability to get charged from previously rewarding behaviors. The chemical rewards are both harder to come by, and less rewarding when activated.

If an optimizer achieves his goal of less demand and more time, and is prone to depression, I see a real danger of early retirement causing a life implosion. The rewards from work end. The rewards from retirement are increasingly less rewarding than anticipated. The time to inventory the damage one has done to oneself to get to this stage is now everywhere.

This:

These are my spouse’s current favorite activities:
• Lying down on bed or couch for hours at a stretch during the day (intermittent episodes or even majority of day).
• Eating heat-and-eat frozen foods (burritos, corndogs) or going to McDonald’s.
• Moving around house speaking to no one with no eye contact.
• Going to library and reading or listening to podcasts for a few hours.
• Shutting door to his bedroom/former guestroom and doing whatever.
• Attending basketball games alone.

looks like the sort of thing a depressed person might do, trying to recharge*. If so,

My expression has been that he wants me to take action so he can still be the good guy whose mean wife divorced him.

Your idea that you can intuit his wants from his actions (or lack thereof), is going to be deeply unhelpful to you, here.

I feel confused, a secondary emotion compromising of sadness/anger/surprise/disgust with numerous thoughts condensed to, “After 30+ years you only now realize you’d prefer to be a permanent-bachelor?!”

Or, after 30+ years of not fitting your expectations for how he should fill the roles of husband/father, he has given up trying.

Not meeting expectations can feel devastating. My personal experience is that I find it intolerable in any core part of my identity. So I must either find a way to exceed expectations, or I need to shift that role outside my core. Failure to do the first means I will ABSOLUTELY do the second as self preservation, and I will rationalize any shitty behavior along the way. I know I will do this, I've seen me do it.

As one who has suffered greatly from Expectations**, I am going to ask how long you are willing to punish yourself with unmet expectations before you are willing to do the mental/emotional work of reconciling your expectations to reality? This is long term, exhaustive work. Not something to be tried before fully charging.

So long term, if you choose to try to rehab this marriage, building an image of your future husband and relationship that is appealing and achievable to both of you seems necessary. Right now it seems he doesn't have anything like this, nor is he capable of generating such for himself, with a long history showing that failure is inevitable, and trying a waste of effort. And effort/agency is at a precious minimum, nothing to waste on known failures...

So I would say, "Drop the rope". You have work to do for you, before you can even get to a path forward for anyone.

Don't expect this to fix any damned thing your husband is doing. But do protect yourself from same.

After you are in a good place, consider where you want to be going and pick a path.





Now this wouldn't be a proper riggerjack post without a completely unrelated story plus awkward analogy combination.


I own a 40v Husqvarna chainsaw. The engineers at Husqvarna designed the electronics such that the battery will discharge if left in the tool for storage. Almost all battery chargers include a circuit to ensure the charger is attached to a battery, for safety purposes. A fully discharged Li ion battery will not produce enough voltage to read as a battery to the charger. Husqvarna's tech support says the battery is unrecoverably dead, buy a new battery, $200-300, please.

So I got a couple of 20v Dewalt batteries (cheap knockoffs, actually), some wire, and hotwired the 20's to each other, then to the 40. Angry pixies changed places, as the smaller 20's equalized with the discharged 40. Soon, the 40v battery was charged enough for the charger to take over. Now I have a fully charged 40v battery again.

Once again, I'm the owner of a functional Husqvarna battery powered chainsaw. To get here I had to ignore conventional practices and wisdom. I had to improvise a solution for my situation, accept that my efforts could result in failure to resuscitate the dead battery, with all the hazards of hotwiring batteries, meaning real hazards of greater loss than mere time and effort. Even if I were successful, odds are good the battery's capacity as a battery may be reduced. Perhaps by enough that the battery will still need to be replaced. I had to factor all of this against a replacement cost.

My chainsaw works, but I haven't used it enough to discharge the battery. I don't know what it's capacity will be. Maybe I will still replace it. But for now, it works, I'm happy with it, and my investment feels recovered.

But if I don't change my own behavior, if I leave the battery in the tool, I will have this same problem. This battery, some new battery, it doesn't matter.

I'm 53 years old, now. If I find myself with a dead battery, and I don't change the circumstances and behaviors that lead to a dead battery, I think I'm going to have a battery problem, again.


...


So, long term, if one were invested enough were to try to revive a depressed family member, (despite all of the very good reasons not to try) I would recommend:

1. Be fully charged, with maintaining that charge as first priority.

2. Be protected. Shitty people do shitty things. Expect dealing with shitty people to be unpleasant and messy. Refer back to 1.

3. Get the help of the personality gurus on the forum to get a good feel for the rewarding parts of experiences that fit your husband's M-B type/Ennigram type.

3. Find a personally rewarding activity your son and you want to do together. It doesn't need to appeal to your husband, nothing will. But if this activity is done in his presence, where he has to expend energy to remove himself...

4. Strategize with your son to find ways of introducing your husband's rewarding experience opportunities into your daily life. Success here won't be pleasant or fun.

5. Repeat, in hopes that your husband gets charged enough to begin searching for rewarding experiences on his own before you lose interest in supporting him.

This may feel gross, like rewarding shitty behavior. Inviting someone who has been shitty, to spend time with you is not generally considered good practice. But learning to be you, even among shitty people with the will, knowledge, and desire to share their shit with you, is how you assure yourself that this is a broken personal pattern. This is how you move forward, knowing you did all that could be done. You will know how to maintain your own battery under stress. You will know how to spot charging and discharging patterns, and how to intervene before a crisis forms. You will know that you won't need to repeat this pattern.

But that knowledge will come at a very high cost. And there's no shame in choosing not to pay that cost, or choosing that your son not pay it. Sunk costs are no reason for further investment.




Peace.






* Well, except for the basketball, alone thing. WTF? If I said that to Mrs. Riggerjack, it would be her signal to surreptitiously begin the search for mind control devices...


** Expectations I have of myself. Expectations I have of The World. The World's expectations of me. Two of these are under my direct control, the third, with enough work, indirect control. From this perspective, unmet expectations are a self inflicted wound.

[ertyu]

OK but, what is this teaching the son? "When you have issues, swan around like a melodramatic diva and expect the women and the children to fix you?" I know I bring my own baggage into this, as someone with a shitty unpleasant depressed father who can't be fucked to see life from a wider perspective than his own navel and do anything but feel sorry for himsel, but, when is enough enough when it comes to pouring yourself into the leaky bucket? How much draining of your son's life is enough before you give it up as a bad job? I did try it, looking back, I'm thankful as a side effect of my family's dysfunction my mother didn't guilt me to keep letting him suck out my life force bc faaaaamily (she was doing a lot of that herself, too, but in different ways). Eventually, even though I'd have preferred to have an authentic, open bond with my parents, I had to give it up as a bad job and go no contact. Usually, with people like this, the whole world guilts you bc how could you "abandon" your family member, he's family, you should work harder for him, while at the same time not recognizing how hard you -have- in fact worked and how much of yourself you have already sacrificed in the process. Or how he never has, and never will, work even 1/4 as hard for you.

On behalf of someone who didn't get parents, thank you for making sure your son has at least one, Frita. Beyond that, the setting yourself up on fire to keep others warm and the can't fill a leaking bucket quotes come to mind.

[mathiverse]

ertyu, I totally agree that one shouldn't self sacrifice to the bitter end. I also see that Frita has already done a lot for her marriage to this point, so I wouldn't fault whatever decision she makes.

However, I don't see Riggerjack's reply as suggesting that Frita must or should rehab her marriage rather than divorce. The very first part is him suggesting Frita get to a good place personally before doing anything for her husband.

The next part is a reframing of her husband's situation. A different interpretation that might help understanding and decision making. Riggerjack ends this part with advice to the tune of everyone else. That is, "Drop the rope" and make sure you're in a secure and healthy place before trying to help your partner *if you choose to*. The "if you choose to" part is important. I think you both agree to that. Sometimes it's better to choose not to.

The subsequent advice (after the analogy) is prefaced by (Bold added by me.):

So, long term, if one were invested enough were to try to revive a depressed family member, (despite all of the very good reasons not to try) I would recommend:

Doesn't the bolded part imply that whoever walks this path has decided for their own reasons to continue to help the other person? They aren't at the point at which they've decided cutting them off is the right choice. They may decide that later. That is left open as an option in everything Riggerjack said. Sometimes the depressed person won't come back into the fold or it takes long enough that the other person decides to cut it off. So be it.

In addition to that, the first three steps are about setting things up so you are living a life you actually want and care about while only leaving an opening for the other person. Of course, leaving an opening for the other person cuts off some options for the time being, but the person doing the proposed process has decided it's worth it *for now*. That's a part of the assumptions made before the advice was given.

So to answer your question, what is this teaching the son? *Maybe* it's teaching the interpretation you gave. But I don't think that's the only lesson that can be learned in the situation no matter how it turns out. Maybe he sees his father and he decides that he has learned what *not* to do. And maybe he sees his mother and he decides he has learned what to do or how to handle such a situation in an adult manner. However the situation ends (divorce or not), I can imagine learning how to be and how not to be from either parent (Which is which? Ask the son afterward.) The lesson the son takes isn't solely up to either of the parents's actions anyway. The son will have his own interpretation of both sides that may or may not match the intended picture of either parent.

[ertyu]

Yeah I was definitely bringing my baggage in. Thanks, mathiverse! I'll step back and ponder cause I clearly have shit here

[Frita]

Two full days in Yellowstone and some notes:
• My son likes a road-trip so this tour was drive-intensive. My preferred time in a car is zero and only for more utilitarian transportation reasons.
• Despite the above, I am still capable of driving for hours as well as sitting as a passenger. (My spouse typically insists on doing all the driving.)
• Each day we did 12-13 miles of light hiking, which is just slightly above my daily average of 11 miles. Perhaps I would be interested in doing longer hikes and extended backcountry trips again. Single me was into that but in groups. (My spouse stopped liking camping shortly after getting married.)
• Lots of great geological diversity to see and reconnect with past experiences there. Mammoth stood out as the features had dried out so much. Everything changes.
• The highlight was spending time with my son who is interesting. Without my spouse, things are lighter, easier, certainly less confusing.

We’re now at my mom’s. Oh, my, that is a whole different topic.

Your husband is depressed. Depressed people suck. Being around people who suck, sucks. Your first and only option at this point is to find a way to recharge yourself. Until you are successfully recharging yourself, there really isn't any hope of things getting better. You have to be in a good place, yourself, and be able to maintain that good place to be around people who suck without getting dragged down yourself.

Yes, my focus needs to be here.

Sacrificing time for money is rewarding, until one has both time and money. Then one has the capacity to sacrifice, but no rewards are available.

If an optimizer achieves his goal of less demand and more time, and is prone to depression, I see a real danger of early retirement causing a life implosion. The rewards from work end. The rewards from retirement are increasingly less rewarding than anticipated. The time to inventory the damage one has done to oneself to get to this stage is now everywhere.

The other behavioral programming I observe is hating work and wanting the relationship to end. My spouse doesn’t want to return to work, rather has shifted me into the avoidance target. Combined with the above, it becomes a vicious cycle.

In my mind, there is a huge difference between expectations and agreements. Pretending (not knowing and accepting self) has set my spouse up for a life that is a poor fit with no ability to course-correct. I think it goes back to “Life will be better if/when….” There is this chasing with no reaching and appreciating. I suspect that life-long depression and anxiety has been shaping this dynamic.

Anyway, I can’t care more than my spouse does. I have made it this far by honoring my marriage vow and commitments. Until I regroup with myself and am on solid ground, I don’t know that I am capable of making a skillful decision.

[Frita]

Family dysfunction is a challenging legacy for so many reasons, at so many levels. Perhaps it takes more than one generation to heal. (My sister went full no-contact about 25 years ago. That decision has complications of its own.)

Thank you for acknowledging that I have tried to be a present parent. Not modeling a marriage of mutual love, care, trust, and respect is my largest failing. Only time will tell how this has affected my DS and what he’s learned.

[quote=ertyu post_id=290003 time=<a href="tel:1717201053">1717201053</a> user_id=5374]

That was my take too. @Jackrigger offers insight of how depression affects an individual and those around. (This expands on @Jacob’s take that one becomes more of true self away from work/retirement.) It validates my notion of getting myself together as an individual (versus trying to survive well enough in an unhealthy relationship) before considering next steps.

[7Wannabe5]

Hmmm...I read Riggerjack's post as coming from a man who has evolved enough to have developed a functional adult feminine energy"big sister" perspective himself in midlife, but maybe doesn't fully grok that many women in our culture are pretty much taught this around age 10. So, it's just a variation on the theme of what a wise older woman told me in terms of my need to be sure to get enough sleep and hydration myself when I was breast-feeding my first infant. IOW, it's still towards promoting the ever-supportive "big sister" role for Frita, although with an abstracted nod towards revitalizing her own feminine energy and empathizing further with her husband's ego butt-hurt in terms of "expectations." Blah, blah, blah...

I don't think this is the way to go with Mr. "Where's the Kleenex?" IOW, my take is that he's not a "colicky" infant or even a severely depressed adult. My take is that he has been "spoiled rotten" by spending the majority of his adulthood in the company of somebody who is more purposefully committed to their relationship. IOW, his very poor behavior is actually a form of learned helplessness.This actually can go on longer and to greater extremes with men than women in our culture, because working 40 hrs/week at any sort of reasonable employment is generally considered enough adult functioning if you are male. I very well remember the day when at the suggestion of my support group, I self-aware simply stopped responding to my exes' "Where's the Kleenex?", "What's for dinner?" etc. requests. He had a complete melt-down and yelled "I will not tolerate being ignored!" at me, and although that was unpleasant, it was also a bit of an "Ah ha" moment for me.

You can only change a dysfunctional dance by doing something completely different. Not by doing the same old thing again, but with revitalized energy. I also remember taking a solo trip to Alaska to meet up with two of my sisters as being revelatory in terms of how much lighter and happier I felt traveling without my ex. Even getting stranded in two different airports overnight just seemed like an adventure without his complainy-pants presence.