@7:
I read Riggerjack's post as coming from a man who has evolved enough
...
Yeah, this happens quite a bit. I post a wall of text, and you react to it. Thank you, I have learned a lot from your reactions. My understanding of, and relationship with my mom has improved as a direct result of your writing.
But I have to admit that I'm often disappointed by your reactions. I keep finding my wall of text posts reinterpreted in ways that seem to round off the parts I consider most elegant or relevant, leaving a much simpler context, that requires no contemplation to integrate.
So I'm wondering what happens when you reread my post with a different mindset. Rather than assuming that I'm:
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...
Maybe think of it as I meant it. Something like "assembly instructions" for the mental scaffolding necessary to gain a perspective to judge where her vector of personal growth would be, from where she is.
I only posted here because Frita's writings here, and elsewhere on the forum have emphasized personal growth, and the advice she was getting was about personal recovery.
I agree personal recovery is the is first order of business, but recovery works faster/better when associated with a known growth path. Resting to prevent exhaustion when lost, is a different experience from resting to prevent exhaustion, knowing where one is, and where one is going. The circumstances are the same, but the experience isn't.
But I an
INTJ among intj's, trying to give advice to an ENTP. I can't give emotionally valid terms to a framework I developed for myself. You have the right personality and history to give a relevant emotional interpretation of my framework in a way that could be useful to Frita. So I was hoping you would maybe flesh out:
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.
into something more "ENTP/depressed introvert facing divorce" relatable. I was hoping some of Frita's mental work of navigating out of her current circumstances could be offloaded to the forum in this way.
@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 imagine that could be one lesson. I was thinking something more like
"Your father is having a real hard time, right now. So, when your father swans around like a melodramatic diva, we try to smother our laughter until after he leaves the room. But sometimes laughing earlier is OK, too."
Beyond that, the setting yourself up on fire to keep others warm and the can't fill a leaking bucket quotes come to mind.
I agree. And I agree with your sense of urgency, though for different reasons. I think your advice to leave immediately is going to be hard for her to take.
The relationship between a child and a depressed parent is less voluntary on the part of the child. The child has a "script" for leaving that easily includes cut and run. Personal growth from here is nearly inevitable.
The relationship between spouses is negotiated, and often renegotiated. It's a dance. One spouse steps left, the other follows. By the time this dance falls apart this badly, there have been many mis-steps by both spouses. There are 30 years of adult choices that led here.
The easiest, simplest, quickest, and probably most likely to be successful solution is to stop dancing with this partner, and pick a new one, now knowing which direction to watch out for. Perhaps knowing this so well, one becomes hypersensitive to it for life. Growth from here, is far more chancy than growth from a child leaving home. The examples of divorced spouses repeating unhealthy patterns in future relationships are well known to us all.
Or, one could start to really look at that dance. Watch for where expectations diverged from results. Look for patterns. Look for the conditions that led to agreeing, allowing, accommodating, compromising, and cooperating in ways that ultimately allowed the dance to get here. These are the circumstances and expectations that will highlight a path out of where one is.
Viewed this way, changing one's environment, actions, and reactions to get different results is all within one's own hands. No cooperation required.
Then being stuck with a depressed person in a rut, could be viewed as a personalized mental/emotional/spiritual gym. A gym run by "AI, set on evil", that knows all your personal history and how to push your buttons.
One wouldn't go to a physical gym and pump weights without a goal or purpose, 24/7. One shouldn't subject oneself to a depressed person 24/7 without goal or purpose, either. One should engage such an experience, recovered, energized, knowing the results one wants, with a plan to get them, and awareness of which results to be wary of.
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 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.
Yes!!!!
Now, how about if we try to
create these "Ah ha" moments? Maybe we strategize on how to create them, and set them up. There are lessons to be learned, and changes to be embraced. It seems like it would be easiest to take the input of other dancers on tactical maneuvering?
Extrovert stuck with a depressed introvert doesn't seem like such an uncommon problem. Maybe hints from both sides of that dynamic will be helpful in Frita developing a strategy to move from where she is, to where she wants to be.
@Frita,
Not successfully modeling a marriage of mutual love, care, trust, and respect, yet, is my largest failing.
Fixed that for you.
I don't know if you get divorced. That is independent of you choosing your best path forward. But I do think that as you review your dance moves that led here, you will find that you have artificially constrained your choices based on inaccurate expectations of where you were, or where you were going.
Maybe just reviewing all of your degrees of freedom by expanding your awareness of the "edges" you have imposed upon yourself. Are those edges valid? What new possibilities open up as those edges expand?
You have done the things you were supposed to do, and didn't get the results you were supposed to get. One can adjust both expectations and results.
In my mind, there is a huge difference between expectations and agreements.
@7 often references something about contract includes enforcement costs. So her solution to this issue is to track enforcement costs of agreement back to the agreement making. This helps her align enforcement costs within the agreement process.
My own solution was to let my freak flag fly, and part of the package of better mental health practices my wife brought with her was a near alignment in what is meant by agreement. I'm an
INTJ married to an xntj. We don't think alike at all, but we
feel very similar. What we
mean by agreement is very similar.
One strategy helps make up for a personal values delta, the other minimizes a personal values delta. I don't know which is right for you.
@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.)
This is certainly not the impression I wanted you to leave you with. I would describe a state of depression such as you describe, as being what is left after anything like a true self has burnt away. What is left is no more his true self, than today's wet ashes are the truth of the wood burnt in last night's campfire.
All that's left are his personal demons, and every way that he interfaces with his world feeds those demons. From the outside, this may appear similar to the personality changes one expects in an exorcism movie, for similar reasons.
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.
Yeah, that seems accurate. I hope I have shed some light on why this could be. He won't (can't?) change this pattern. But how you participate in this pattern is entirely up to you.
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.
I couldn't agree more. If I haven't been clear enough, I don't disagree with any of the advice given so far. Recovery and Growth are a step function similar to to the models jacob references for Theory and Practice. My focus may be on helping your identify your path to Growth, but others have given very good advice for Recovery. You will need to plot a path between the two, according to your own needs and resources.
ETA: Congratulations! This sailing adventure seems exactly right! Charging for yourself, and breaking interpersonal patterns with him. Progress on both fronts!
