“Basically, we’re a failure as a couple…”
05/30/06
I just thought of it this way; that there is a way in a given moment where two people in a transaction meet. What I sense is a NOT-meeting from his side. On an almost microscopic level, if the brief contact in a moment could be seen as a sort of cell. Even at that very basic level there is frequently a feeling of having just missed each other, or I’ve extended and he’s withheld. It’s on such a subtle level, that it doesn’t seem likely that he’s doing it purposefully, though I often experience it as withholding, maybe willfully. It just seems odd when the basic social expectations and cues of a moment aren’t met, or offered.
Gosh, this day’s gone so fast. I spent some of it on my project of trying to make my e-mails accessible to each other in the different computers. I feel like I’m floundering around, but I think I have an idea of what steps I need to take next to find out what I need.
My thoughts wandered to what’s needed in our situation. Basically, we’re a failure as a couple, unable to generate the good things that couples are supposed to. So…do we just accept that as given and find a way to live separately, but peacefully together? And what would I need for that? What would he need? What I would need is keeping his agreements, and really just basic courtesies. Responding to me when I’m talking to him…hiding his annoyances with me unless he wants to discuss it honestly…being helpful when he sees that I am working very hard and he’s sitting and reading the paper, and doing it voluntarily. Those things would go a long way. That, and asking for what he wants rather than expecting me to know…though that might be a tall order. So I wonder what he needs from me.
5/31/06
I’m trying to not think about June. Wondering how I’ll muddle through.
Just reading the above when I viewed this, it’s true that I am asking for more help from Gary in a purely practical sense, that when he sees that I am running around doing several things at once that he not just let me do it, but actually get up and lighten the load. At the very least not be resentful when I ask for help, but what would be optimal is that he do it voluntarily because he can see that I’m getting overwhelmed. Again, when we are in his mother’s house, and she’s trying to organize to fix something, he doesn’t sit down and read the paper while she’s taking care of everything: he finds ways to help and does it.
Gary doesn’t do that with me.
He hasn’t answered some important questions I asked him via e-mail yesterday. Just the basic: where do we end up if we keep going the way that we are.
I should follow this up by acknowledging “my quirk”, my need to see things completed, and resolved, and how it impacts the way I move around the planet: where I can see that some of it could make things difficult for the people around me. It does manifest in many ways and in the things I expect from people, especially those close to me. Denying that need can lead to stress: irritation, or at the very least inner conflict. Therefore stress as I deal with the inner conflict while I’m also trying to cope with outer demands. In communication with Gary this means that I really need to complete a circle with him. If I say something to him and he responds as if I’m being aggressive, and I protest that I wasn’t being aggressive and don’t like being treated as if I was, I need acknowledgment of that. Usually Gary will dismiss or minimize my feelings about how he treated me, and will try to resist giving me an acknowledgment. Yeah, a lot of the follow-up stuff happens when I’m dealing with the fallout of THAT (the secondary conflict), and insisting that he deal with it too. It’s often at this point that he will express impatience with me for continuing to want to talk about it—and I’m still driven by the need to complete it. By then, we are several layers into this, often with a tertiary conflict, or more and I feel the need to wade back through them all and clean each one up.
The basic thing is that I’m reacting to his way of treating me, which I strongly feel he shouldn’t do. And the crux of that is that when he doesn’t give some acknowledgment, it’s like his initial action stands. So if, for example, I say something to him or ask him a question that he doesn’t respond to, and I say, “I don’t like not being responded to when I ask you a question”—we’re in combat from right there. Part of it is that he’s offended because I said I didn’t like it—he feels criticized, I suppose. So we’re already in a secondary conflict at that point. I really do try to say in a neutral or nice way that I don’t like it when he doesn’t respond to me, but he hears it as aggression. And our whole history sort of gets compressed into that moment because it’s associated with our other similar conflicts.
The way it looks to me is that he really is unable to differentiate a request for some difference in his ACTIONS from a criticism of his very worth as a human being. And instead of saying something about it, or asking for information to see if I really WAS being critical or not, he resists me, first by minimizing or dismissing my objection, or feelings, or response—and he also adds to his store of resentment that then surfaces in other areas, in other contexts. And it often surfaces as not offering to help, or in some sort of covert dig that hurts. I think he has a well of resentment toward me that goes back years that guides his behavior toward me, including not extending himself in a moment—a communication between him and me—and in being ready to believe I’m being aggressive toward him when I’m seeking information. And when I object to not being treated with courtesy. I think he sees some of the things I follow up on as nit-picky and that I should just let them go without having to deal with it with him. Only deal with the big things. But I’m saying it’s just a matter of degree, whether it’s a big disrespect or a little one, both are wrong. A little disrespect is not ok, just because it’s little. And when a little one comes up between him and me, and I object and he wants to blow it off, I am hanging in there because of the consonant dissonance that letting it stand brings to me: it’s as if it’s ok for him to disrespect me. So no, it wasn’t huge when he brought Scott in saying, “It’s dangerous for him to be out here” in a tone of voice that accused me, even though he’d been the one who took Scott out there, it was still unfair and unjust and I felt a need to say that. Because it IS unjust, and I can’t just let it slide without his acknowledgment of that. Because otherwise then, it IS ok to do things like that to other people, and I just can’t tolerate that. This is the part of me that I’ve wondered if it’s incumbent on me to change, but that seems to be about tolerating that kind of behavior without comment.
And the thing is, these disrespects do happen in little ways, and lots of them. There’re not many days that go by without some conflict that’s resulted from one of these things, one of these situations, that then gets bigger because I keep at it. And most of them are started by little things just like this, that start in a moment between us where I feel a hit of something caustic. It’s little, but it’s still caustic.
Or, if I complain because he’s left something out in my way, or hasn’t done something he says he’s going to do—it offends my basic sense that people should keep their agreements, even in little everyday ways. And when he hasn’t kept his agreements and I say something to him about it and he resists or is resentful, it opens for me the basic question: “is it ok to NOT keep agreements?” That’s often a catalyst for one of these conflicts that can last far longer than the original cause would suggest: he’s not kept an agreement, or has done something that inconveniences me, and is resentful when I say something about it.
I just feel strongly that these sort of interactions just have to stop. And I feel if they do stop, then my sense of liking him will reassert itself.
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