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L'Etoile Perdue by William Bouguereau







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Texian's Travels (Read 110830 times)
Kiraela
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #45 - Oct 8th, 2007 at 11:11am
 
first off, tex.. *hug* you sound like you might need a couple of those...


secondly, I think you might want to find a different therapist... it sounds to me like one of the ones with the problem is the therapist themself. If he/she didn't give you fully as much time to talk as your husband, he/she has NO CALL to be arbitrarily deciding what's going on in your relationship. If you haven't been given time enough to tell your side of things, how the heck can they get the full picture? not to mention that talking the entire session, gives me the impression that the HUSBAND is the selfish one (and I'm not even getting paid to figure these things out........ d'hurrrr on the therapist)

Anyway, You may want to contact the school your husband works at yourself to get the name of the orchestra director, since once again, the husband is failing to be a reasonable being.



IF you want my honest, true real opinion... based on your posts, it sounds like he's taking advantage of YOU. Treating you like crap, because he can get away with it.

You shouldn't have to put up with that. Not at all.

*hug*
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #46 - Oct 8th, 2007 at 6:50pm
 
I kind of agree with Kiraela - just what sort of therapist are you seeing?!  Shocked
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #47 - Oct 9th, 2007 at 5:44am
 
(((hugs)))  I too agree with Kiraela, you therapist sounds like a twit!  We tryed a few before we found one who worked.  One who can get to the root of the problem and who does not take sides and who knows have to draw out a response from my husband. What I liked about the one we had was she had a very long talk with both of us, got our back grounds and all then asked do you want to save your marriage or do you want to split?  She gave us time to think about it.  
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #48 - Oct 9th, 2007 at 8:05am
 
Jumping on the "WTH is up with the therapist?" bandwagon. While I've never been to couple's therapy, I don't think the therapist you have now is very competent. If it's possible, I'd try to find a new one.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #49 - Oct 9th, 2007 at 11:15am
 
texian.traveler wrote on Oct 7th, 2007 at 11:47pm:
Well, since you asked... Grin

My husband and I had a disagreement after our last session.  The therapist had said I would get my time, but I didn't.  So I was upset.  Which of course upset my husband because it was just another example of my selfishness.  In our sessions, I talk and he doesn't.  When the therapist asks, "How do you feel about that?" he just waves his hand and says he doesn't know what to say.

Anyway, the therapist's take on things is that I am too emotional.  I overwhelm my husband.  I have also been selfish, and taken advantage of his giving nature.  I am sure all of that is true.  But since I didn't get my time, I haven't had a chance to talk about the unreasonable demands, the temper tantrums, the way he can sit in his chair without interacting with anyone for hours or even days.


Wow.  Maybe next time you go into a session, you can smile sweetly at your husband and say (in front of the therapist) , "Well honey, since you got a chance to get things off your chest in the last session and I kept quiet it's my turn with a session, right?"  Gets the point across that he's had his time, and being fair, you'd like yours too.

Or you could take an egg timer in with you.. ensure your therapist that you do want to work things out with your husband, and by being fair about the things that bother each of you and being able to express them, you'd like to set the timer each time either of you talk for five minutes.  That way, you're not getting overwhelmed by feeling like the entire session is focused on things that you're doing wrong, and at the same time, you're making an effort to be fair, bridge the "selfish" issue your hubby is having trouble with.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #50 - Mar 25th, 2008 at 6:45pm
 
    I haven't posted in a while, and since I have some very important work I'm trying to avoid, I'll post now.  I've been thinking I needed to update things anyway.

The Therapist.

    We started splitting the time, 30 min. each.  That let me get things off my chest, but we were making no progress in the relationship.  So we went to 15 min. each, 30 min. together.  The therapist said it was like each of us knew we had to change, but was saying "you first."  Finally the therapist said something that convinced me I had to be the one to shut up, so I did.

    And we were off, into the realm of what has been bothering my husband all these years.  And I am listening, and realizing that what I am being told is that all these years I haven't been enough, and I'm still not, and I am going to have to give up even more of myself to become what he needs me to be.  And the therapist is saying "we're making progress" and my husband feels like "we're making progress" and the only thing that has really changed is I am taking it in silence rather than protesting like I did before.

   But I am figuring this is what I have to do for awhile, and that maybe when my husband feels listened to he will actually start listening to me.  

    BUT THEN...

The New Realization.

    My mother called to tell us about a job possibility.  That was January 9.  She had gotten a call from someone looking for a Director of Technology, and she told them about my husband.  Now this was right during the time of final exams and grades and whatnot, but I am figuring with as badly as my husband hates where he is, he will do whatever he needs to do to get out, including take a day off from work to work on his resume.

Wrong.

    He doesn't send the guy an e-mail, give him a call, or any sort of contact until January 15, one week later.  Now I knew that part of the slow down was that he was having trouble finding time to update his resume and letter of interest.  So I said, on Friday the 11th, that the job posted on the website wasn't the same as my mother had told us about, and that maybe he could send an e-mail asking about the discrepancy.  I figured that could show interest and initiative while giving him time to update the other stuff.  He didn't do it.

    By the time he DID send an e-mail with his resume, one week later, I was furious.  And I realized something.

    For years I have told myself that he was fragile, that the abuse of his childhood made him reluctant to face life.  I realized a long time ago that this might be a lie I tell myself to cover the fact that he is simply LAZY.  But I had a new realization.  It doesn't matter.

    It doesn't matter whether he can't or whether he won't.  WHY he doesn't isn't as important as the fact that he doesn't.  

    I want a man who if he says he will go get resume paper while I am driving the four hours to make it to the job fair next morning so we don't have to stay up until ungodly hours printing resumes after I arrive, actually does.  Who repairs the washer within weeks of its breaking down, not months.  I want someone I can count on.  And I'm not talking about mindreading, or realizing that the dishes in the sink don't wash themselves.  I am talking about a clearly realized, clearly verbalized need (and not necessarily by me) to which he commits and then doesn't carry through.  

    About 90% of the time.  

    Actually, since we've been attending therapy, it's probably down to 60%.  But for how long?

The New Realization, continued.

    Anyway, I realize that even if he changes in the most important ways he won't change in all of them, and that this is one where he probably won't.  So I quit scheduling appointments.

    He figures this out and schedules a solo appointment.  The therapist tells him that if he sees him solo, we can't come for marriage counseling anymore.  I'm like, okay.  So my husband schedules a solo appointment for me when he confirms his.

The New Therapist.

    I thought about not keeping it, but then I thought, hey, I've got a few issues, so why not?  So I saw her yesterday.  And I told her this.

    My family takes the position that I have been emotionally abused and they are done watching.  They no longer want my husband in their lives.

    I looked up emotional abuse and many of the behaviors don't fit.  My husband has never tried to control me through money or sex, he doesn't put me down in public or private, and he has been supportive of all my plans and dreams.  He moved to Houston when I wanted to go, changed districts when I asked him to, and quit a dream job so we could go overseas.  

    But...he blames me for killing his career and ruining his life.  He blames me for where we live now, claiming it was never where he wanted to be, though he didn't tell me so at the time.  He blames me getting upset about not contacting the man about the job.  He says he knew all along they were going to decide not to create the position, which we found out about three weeks after he sent the e-mail.  I said, "But you've been talking like the job was real."  He said, "I was trying to psych myself up."  And I said, "So you're blaming me for RE-acting as if the job was real, when you ACTED as if the job was real?"

    But this is the kind of thing he does, and not just big stuff either.  He twists everything so it is my fault.  And my family says, no more.  And so do I.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #51 - Mar 25th, 2008 at 7:37pm
 
But his position is he is a VICTIM.  My stepfather was out of line (which he was.)  He claims I have never been committed to him since day one.  He says I have never supported him except in words.  

I believe this is because one summer he quit his job without having another one.  He did this with my full support.  I even helped write the resignation letter.  I knew that with his credentials all he had to do was walk in a school's door and he was hired.  I did NOT plan on him sitting on the couch for six weeks before looking for a job.  I had thought the job hunt would start on the first week in June and be over by the second week, not start less than two weeks before the teacher report date.  With his last paycheck a week away, and him still sitting on the couch, I got a little...nervous, to put it mildly.

Now that same summer he decided to take an upper level Math course, as kind of a testing of the waters for going back to grad school.  I was a little nervous about the course and job hunt going on at the same time, but I figured the job hunt wouldn't last that long, leaving him free to concentrate on the course.  But the job hunt never began.    

I tried, I really did.

The first week in June, I said nothing.  And the second week.  I think I mentioned a job hunt once the third week of June.  By the fourth week of June I was getting antsy, but I was really trying not to nag.  By July I started breaking down.  I tried to get him to see how much it mattered to me that we were facing no income in six weeks.  (I had a job, but child care ate all but $200.)  All he could do was sit there on the couch and say, "I'm sorry."  I can't remember if it was July 23 or July 27 that he actually started putting in applications.  I do remember his last paycheck was August 1.

He failed the course.  

At the time his explanation was it had been too long since his undergrad days, and he started at too high a level.  Over the years he has decided that I nagged him into failing.  And he says that my overwhelming need for security convinced him I was incapable of supporting him in his dreams.  I am the reason he never got a graduate degree, because all he was to me was a paycheck.  

He had the three years I was in grad school to think about what he wanted to do.  

He had the four years I worked in a dead-end job at the university to explore what he wanted to do.  I was bored with the job by the third year, but I stayed another year and a half, waiting for him to make up his mind.

But he chose the summer he quit his job to do something about it.  And because I couldn't face life without income, it's my fault he never got his doctorate.

The whole thing became about my lack of faith.  He knew he was going to get a job.  He was trying to trust in God the way he was supposed to.  If I had trusted God the way I was supposed to, I would have believed with him. 

All of this was confirmed by the fact that when he did go job hunting, in the second district he went to, there was a man standing in the lobby.  He asked my husband what he needed, and when my husband said he was dropping off an application asked him what he taught.  My husband said Math but that he wanted Computer Science.  The man happened to be the Director of Technology, and my husband had a job that day. 

So maybe it was about my lack of faith. 

He also had been blacklisted by his former district.  He thinks I don't put enough weight on that.  I don't.  Because a) we had no ties to that area and could have gone anywhere in the state.  Powerful that district might have been, but they don't influence the entire state of Texas.  B) if he was blacklisted in June he was still blacklisted in July.  If he could overcome it then, he could have overcome it before.  C) my mother was a VERY high-ranking official in Texas education that year.  If she had called up any district and said, "Give my son-in-law a shot", that would have overcome any blacklisting he might have encountered. 

As so often happens, he set up an explanation for his failure that was outside himself.  What he doesn't realize, as he does this, is that doing that often MAKES him fail. 

Anyway, he says that my stepfather refuses to see him as well, so that even if he was willing to reconcile he couldn't.  This is true.  He seemed surprised that my mother and cousin also don't want to have anything to do with him, and wants to know what he ever did to them.  The answer is nothing.  They resent him for what he has done to me.

They say my personality has changed.  They are right.  I was feeling myself becoming more bitter, more angry.  I was becoming like him, looking for slights, wondering if I was being treated as well as everyone else.  (This is a MAJOR issue for him.)  I didn't like it, but I didn't know how to stop it. 

They have seen him angry for no good reason; they have seen him withdraw his affection as punishment.  They have seen the way the children and I dance around trying not to upset him.  They watched me shoulder every burden when we came back from Egypt, and they have known that I carry the majority of the burdens most of the time.  I understand their attitude. 

Choosing to stay with him seems to them, and to me, to be  choosing, if not outright abuse, at least dysfunctionality.  It will take a very long time and a lot of work to overcome his scars, and what will I have at the end of it?
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #52 - Mar 25th, 2008 at 7:44pm
 
In the meantime, I will have to give up my "family of origin" as the therapist put it.  He says I don't have to, but you can't refuse to see all of them, say hurtful things about them when they're mentioned, and expect that my relationship with them will stay close and warm.

Yes, he has some legitimate areas of criticism, but the truth is he is hostile to all families, including his own.  We can't watch movies about relationships; he can't tolerate them.  I got him to see "Good Will Hunting" and gripped his arm the whole time after I realized it was about an abused mathematician because I thought he would walk out.  And he nearly did. 

As the first therapist said, hostility causes you to look for slights and hurts where none may be intended.  This is what he did with my family.  In spades.  And of course he found them. 

My family says I have spent years excusing him.  He says they have spent years accusing him.  My therapist says my situation is intolerable.  "You can't walk out on 20 years of marriage.  You can't give up your family of origin.  None of this is fair to you." 

Amen, lady.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #53 - Mar 25th, 2008 at 9:17pm
 
I'm not sure what to say.  Wow, yikes and holy cow don't cut it, eh?

I have been dealing with my abusive childhood with a therapist who specializes in childhood abuse for about 4 years now.  I've had some very big breakthroughs recently and would like to recommend a book to you.  Funny, the title drew me to this book and of all the books I was reading at the time I got the least out of it.  However, I have been able to recommend it to others confidently since I read it.

"Emotional Blackmail" by Susan Forward, Ph.D.

May you know a moment of peace, every day of your life. 

Its one of the things I say at the end of every yoga class. 

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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #54 - Mar 26th, 2008 at 10:26am
 
(((((hugs))))  You gave it yout best shot.  No one deserves the crap you've been though.  After 20 years he's not going to change.  Leave him, do yourself the favor.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #55 - Mar 26th, 2008 at 2:49pm
 
OMG!  Emotional Blackmail is it.  When I read descriptions of emotional abuse, they didn't seem to quite fit my situation.  For my husband's father, though, emotional abuse was a perfect fit.  I mean, it was like looking at a checklist. 

Put-downs          check
Rejection          check
Inviting others and excluding you          check

There was hardly a behavior, except for sex, that the man didn't subject my husband to.

Including escalating to physical abuse.

But my husband doesn't show many of the abusive behaviors, less than half.

But emotional blackmail?

Another checklist. 

Wow. 

Thanks Sakina.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #56 - Mar 26th, 2008 at 4:38pm
 
(((((Tex)))))

Listen, honey. When it comes to abuse, there are 3 kinds of people: those who can deal with it and move on, those who can't, and those who won't. Your husband sounds like he may be one of the latter 2 types, which isn't good for anyone.
    Stop using his child abuse as an excuse for his behavior. All that does is give him a crutch that enables him to continue.

Plain and simple, your husband is neglecting his duties to you and your children and doesn't seem to want to change that situation badly enough to follow through. I'm sorry that you had to realize this so late in life. Where's that magical beam of insight when we need it, eh?

You already know how to resolve this situation. It's a waste of breath for anyone else to tell you. Everything you need is already there on the inside - use it. And good luck to you.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #57 - Mar 26th, 2008 at 6:34pm
 
You're welcome, Texian.Traveler.  Good luck to you.  Change is hard.
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #58 - Mar 29th, 2008 at 11:13pm
 
I didn't find the Emotional Blackmail book, but I did find another one.  I still want to find the EB book, because I think it will help me understand and combat it.  When my husband tried "discussing our relationship" I was able to view his comments through that lens.  It helped a lot, even with my limited and imperfect knowledge.  

But I LOVE the book I got.  It is called "Too Good to Leave/Too Bad to Stay" and it is about relationship ambivalence, which is also exactly what I have been going through.  It takes the view that you must either "stay in your relationship, recommitting to it free of doubt, free of holding back, free at last to pour your love and energy into the relationship and get back everything there is to get from it" or "leave your relationship, finally liberating yourself from it, free of confusion, free of pain, free at last to get on with a new and better life."  The worst thing, according to the book, is to stay in the relationship but not be fully committed and always thinking about leaving.  

It has 35 questions you are to ask yourself.  I won't go through all 35, just the first four, and I'll kind of paraphrase.

#1.     When things were at their best, were they really good?  The implication here is that if the relationship wasn't all that good to begin with, you can't hope for much improvement.  My answer was yes, they were really good.

#2.     Has there been more than one incident of physical abuse or agression?  Interestingly, it says that many couples have one incident of grabbing, striking, or other physical aggression.  Either the man is horrified and never does it again, or the woman makes it clear that if it happens again she is gone.  In my case, both were true, and my answer was no.  

#3.     Have you already made a concrete committment to leave?  The book distinguishes fantasizing (checking out apartments on the internet) from action (actually renting one.)  Again, no, not concrete.

#4.      If God said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?    
Yes!


The analogy the book uses here is of the mother chimpanzee who cannot put down her dead baby.  I found that idea very freeing.  This baby is dead!  I don't have to worry about why it isn't growing, why it isn't responding to treatment, why nothing seems to work.  It's dead!  The stuff that happened this summer was an explosion of putrescence from a rotting corpse.  You don't revive dead babies.  You bury them.

And then of course, you figure out why the baby died and what your share was in killing it.  

Oddly enough, before I got the book, a close friend said that the only way she saw of my husband and I functioning was to forget the past.  She said we both needed to just draw a line and say "We aren't rehashing the past and we aren't using it against one another anymore."  We should draw a line in the sand and say "Here is where we begin, and anything that came before this is off-limits."  She didn't think my husband was someone who could do that.  I said I wasn't sure I was someone who could do that.  

But it kind of relates to the dead baby analogy.  It would be burying one baby and creating another one together.  That I might could do.  Maybe.  I don't know.  If his therapy worked and he was a different man...

There were other questions, and some made it clear to me how dead the baby is.  

#12    Do you feel willing to give your partner more than you're giving already, and are you williing to do this the way things are between you now, without any expectation of being paid back?  Uh, no.

#13    Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?    I remember this summer learning how to sleep on the very edge of the bed (you can bend your leg and hang one knee over without too much problem) so I wouldn't have to touch him, wearing earplugs so I wouldn't have to hear him, and with a pillow positioned so I couldn't see him or smell his breath.  When we got our own place, we got seperate beds in the same room.  He moved to the living room a few months ago.  

In the section on forgiveness, the question (not a numbered guideline) was asked, "Was your crime really so objectively terrible that anyone would have difficulty forgiving and forgetting (which is what he is saying) or are you just an ordinary fallible human being who screwed up only to discover that your partner has some sick need to hold on to grievances (what I am saying.)  My crime?  Having the objective, while he and my stepfather were screaming at one another, of getting them to stop.  My first thought was not that my stepfather was wrong, not that my husband needed defending, not even that my children didn't need to witness the scene.  My thought was that my mother had just had a heart attack and this couldn't be good for her.  So instead of yelling myself, telling my stepfather off, and leaving the house I tried to get them to knock it off.  Then instead of going to my husband I went back to the woman who had had a quadruple bypass less than a week before, who was one day out of the hospital, and tried to calm her down.  
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Re: Texian's Travels
Reply #59 - Mar 29th, 2008 at 11:42pm
 
Relationships are sooo complex.  I'm glad you found a book to start with and hope you'll be able to get the EB book soon.

I want to say hang in there, and what I mean is keep working through the process.  No matter what eventually happens, you will need to go through your process to be better once this is completed.
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