Is it bad to have expectations?
2/26/06
Once again I’m feeling absolutely squeezed and aware of a feeling that this situation with Gary is intolerable. Part of the feeling of it being intolerable is my incredulity that his passivity knows no bounds. He made a half-hearted suggestion that we have a “summit” last night, via e-mail. Said nothing about it during the day (It’s like the other day when Scott needed something and Gary asked me if I wanted him to take care of it. SHIT!!!! Don’t ask me to make you do the right thing—JUST FUCKING DO IT!), nothing about it at night. He waited for me to take the initiative to make it happen. And the intuition that I have is that as long as the situation isn’t urgent enough for HIM to make it happen—that as long as I make it happen instead, that it’s dead-end. HE’s got to want it enough to engage it. I can’t make him engage it, and he won’t do it.
Even though he can see how detrimental this is for our sons, he does nothing.
This feels intolerable inside of me. It feels so wrong. It causes me to wonder if this is the mother of all passive aggressive expressions of anger and punishment: to do nothing when he can see how much it matters to us that he do nothing.
E-mail today:
There’s a saying I’ve heard in ads about AIDS: “apathy is lethal”
Your apathy, your passivity, and your passive aggressive expression of anger is killing us. And it’s taking the boys with it.
In the face of that fact you continue on this path you/we are on. Think of where this is going–you can see where it is going. My efforts to change direction are not enough. And you don’t seem to have the will to make an effort to change direction, and pull back from this brink.
You continue to make choices by refusing to make choices. If healing this relationship had any priority to you, you would not be consistently letting the things that need to be done slide. You would not have made having a “summit” with me last night be something that’s just up to me.
I’m waiting for YOU to show some commitment, some urgency, some desire to engage this–can you really say you’ve been stepping up to the plate?
Whatever it is I’m doing that’s making you so angry, at least I’m not guilty of withholding myself. All of this has been a measure of my commitment to this relationship, that I’m at least willing to fight for it. You are making it mine to leave.
It shocks me that you’re willing to watch how this is detrimental to our sons, and to do nothing. If you don’t care at all about me, what about your sons?
Look at where we’re going. LOOK AT IT! I’ve done what I can to change direction. THIS NEEDS YOU.
And from the other day:
I think we need to re-visit what it means to each of us that I’m the parent who is at home with the boys. I mean in terms of what you expect from me as an at-home parent. You have said and done some things lately that give me the impression that you think that being an at-home mother means I have total responsibility for the house, cooking, and kids, and anything relating to them–even when you are home. That your bringing home the paycheck that supports us effectively cancels any obligations you’d have regarding chores at home. Your demands for a 50’s style dinner table (complete with a demand that you be “served”), and your remarks that it’s “not my job” when I remind you of your chore of vacuuming tell me something. They tell me that you see me as a kind of servant.
This morning you acted very put-upon when I asked you to wipe Scott since I was loading the car with the recyclables. If I’d been doing a job I could have been doing simultaneously while wiping Scott, I probably would have done it myself. But I was trying to get Scott out the door for preschool, and wiping Scott and loading the car (a job that you were benefiting from, by the way, since you now wouldn’t have to do it.) are both things I can’t do at the same time–it would have to be back to back which would mean it would take longer. I was asking you to do ONE job–while your manner said I should have just done TWO jobs without bothering you about it. Your manner said that the fact that you “didn’t feel like it” was justification enough for being unpleasant about doing something you were asked to do. As if YOUR “don’t-feel-like-it” trumps MY “don’t feel like it”. It betrays an assumption that your comfort is more important than mine. You acted so ENTITLED to feeling put-upon.
That says something to me about the way you view me. It says you are dismissive and disrespectful of my efforts.
I was thinking about the trip last weekend and I remembered how you sat there eating your breakfast as mine got cold as I was up cleaning the big apple juice spill Scott had done. It took 3 trips to clean it up completely while you sat in comfort. You withheld your help. I felt very hurt by that, and kind of blown away, too.
As I thought about that it occurred to me that it felt hostile to me. Certainly, people don’t treat each other that way unless they’re very angry. I’ve said this before; that I think you are angry with me and not dealing with it straight with me, choosing instead to release it in these painful ways.
I think your failure, or refusal, or whatever it is to deal with this anger at me is making any relationship between us at all impossible. It’s not possible to have a good relationship that nurtures our kids when you are acting out your anger instead of dealing with it, and creating answering anger in me. Raising our boys in this is like fish growing in a stream that’s being poisoned by waste. I’m beginning to think it would do them more good for us to live separately, and the idea about the apartment seemed like that would cause the least amount of upset possible in their lives.
Gary, your refusal to engage this is putting us all through hell. It is like that playwright Neil LeButte said–about how cruel it can be to only do what you need to do to get by. By refusing to engage this you are withholding yourself and your boys are suffering. I’m suffering too.
You often say that after you read my messages that I talk sense–that I say things clearly. But then nothing changes. Your anger resurfaces, as does your acting it out, and then we’re in that poisonous atmosphere again. I used to think that if I could just reason with you that you’d understand and change your behavior. I realize now that that’s not going to happen. There is nothing I can say to you to make things different between us.
That’s a bitter pill.
It’s hard for me to swallow, but I have to, and I have to think about what the best course of action is toward the boys. Since you won’t engage the situation I have to do what I can to get us out of it. Because this really is unsustainable, going on like this.
So again I’ll think about MY choices, since he obviously isn’t going to make any. Truly, the relationship is mine to leave.
1) I can continue in this marriage as it is, indefinitely.
There are a number of sub-options to that. I can continue in it and have affairs to compensate for being in a miserable marriage. I can continue in it and go to al-anon to help me keep my sanity in such a perplexing situation. I can do both.
Later. I’m alone because Gary took Scott somewhere and Connor went to a movie with friends. But I’m expecting Connor any minute. I need to answer for myself though a nagging feeling that somehow I have something to feel guilty about in having this alone time.
I know that from Gary’s point of view I probably seem to be spoiled. He sees me as “having all this free time” and then “begrudging me a half hour to read the paper”. He gave me a meaningful look as he went out the door with Scott—and when I said to have fun, he said you TOO with a certain emphasis. So I’ve been feeing uneasy—not so much about having this time, but wondering at how much of his point of view has merit—I know how it looks to him—that he is ‘giving’ me some time by taking on the ‘chore’ of an outing with Scott.
I think that’s one assumption that can be examined—the idea that he is doing me a favor by going on an outing with his son. That somehow I’m taking something from him or have some advantage because I have an hour or so alone on a Sunday as a result of him doing this. I supposed I’m biased in thinking that this doesn’t even rise to the level of he and Steve taking a ski trip on the morning that we were supposed to leave Eastern Oregon—leaving Monica and me with the 4 kids and no vehicle to take them anywhere, and to pack things up to leave. THAT was an imposition—it cost us for them to do that.
To him because of school I have more free time than he does. And then the audacity to complain about the demands of taking care of children. I love my kids very much. But there is a level of demand that I don’t think anyone can get unless they’re caring for children 24/7 and have been doing it for years. There is an added dimension to being with children that I think raises the bar a little as far as looking at the equivalency of our jobs. At least he’s working with adults, which means he’s likely not getting yelled at and not dealing with naked and raw emotion, not getting his lip split when a kid in the lap takes a hair to throw his head back suddenly…not running downstairs to get some clothes to bring up and getting back up and realizing you’ve forgotten something downstairs, not dealing with complete irrationality or people who make requests in these little bitty voices that you can’t hear and then screaming at you if you ask them to speak up.
I got this e-mail from one of the e-mail list I was invited to join a few months ago. It’s something that makes me think; I feel I need to think about it, because it’s a worst-case scenario that I fear about myself: that I’m demanding that other people fit my expectations and resenting that their wants get in the way. In other words that I expect everyone to give me “my own way” all the time. And since this is similar to a way that Gary perceives me I need to examine it:
Janet:
From “conversations” that we’ve had, I wouldn’t say that I think you’re a perfectionist, but I do think you have expectations of how things should be and may have trouble when what someone else wants doesn’t fit.
I do feel stung by that, and suspicious of feeling stung—does it mean that this is an accurate characterization?
So here is what I expect from people:
That they keep their agreements; that they address me respectfully, that they don’t unduly impose on me, that they respect boundaries, that they ask for what they want from me respectfully. That they are straight with me. That they admit it when they’ve made an error. Those are the basics, I think, although the admitting it one may belong more in the “advanced” category. The advanced, which I realize most people aren’t prepared to give, is that they respectfully tell me if I’ve let them down so there is a chance to heal any rifts it may have caused. And that they can hear me tell them when they’ve let me down.
These seem like reasonable expectations. They seem like expectations that humanity has, since they’re kind of at the core of most belief systems’ codes of ethics.
I suppose the next thing I’m suspicious of is that it matters to me that Janet thinks this of me; that she’s seeing me in that frame/mold. On one hand I want to address this; on the other I think it’s an expenditure of energy, to “defend” myself, and for what real purpose. To try to change the mind of someone who I’ve never even met? And it sort of puts me in a “my dear thou dost protest too much” predicament, to answer this remark.
But what I CAN do is watch my interactions with various people and see what my expectations are, and see if I’m demanding my own way.
I just read through some of her e-mails where we’ve talked about this sort of thing before, where she’ll write something that indicates she has a perception of me that I feel stung by and afraid of really being, as well as feeling it’s inaccurate, but suspicious of that feeling.
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