Writing Therapy

We had some inclement weather overnight so roads aren’t great, but are OK. We have family therapy this morning, but soon to be ex, who still lives here,  can’t go because he’s working this morning. So I said I would just take his Jeep because that is how it always worked in the past.

He didn’t like that idea.  He said that it is his vehicle. I just paid off my car, but I think the Jeep is still in both of our names.  A day it’s not like I would just stick him with the bill if I had an accident.

But the worst part of it is how I feel like he questioned my judgement instead of just saying he’d rather I not take the Jeep.

I hate feeling stupid.

I Will Survive!

In response to Use It or Lose It Daily Prompt.

There have been many times in my life, in anyone’s life for that matter because I’m not unique, where I’ve thought “I thought we’d I’d never come back from survive that one.”  But so far, I’ve always survived and maybe thrived.  I believe that most of the time I’ve come back as a new & improved version of me – even if the outcome was not quite what I wanted or anticipated.

Some examples:

• In my teen years I was desperate for male attention and it was a miracle that I wasn’t a teen mommy.  I managed to make it to age 32 before having my first. Although I was faithful to my soon to be ex, I believe that I would have continued to make poor decisions in matters of love if I hadn’t have married him.  And this would have been true up until a couple of years ago, when I finally worked through some of my self esteem issues.
• I never thought I’d make it through summer of 2012, when I learned about my husband’s affairs.  When he accepted an invitation from a female sex addict, became addicted to her, got depressed because she went back to her husband (she ran out of money), and then he enrolled in online dating to see if he could transfer his feelings to another woman.  And he did, but deceived her right along with me.  All this while married to me and agreeing that we could go to therapy to work on our relationship.  And that is where I started to find out about all of that, at our first therapy session.Ouch – that hurt!
• I never thought that two years later, after a good deal of what felt like successful reconciliation to me, I would find out that he still wanted a divorce. But by this time (Nov 2014) I was a much stronger person than I had been in the summer of 2012.  Even though I’m not coming through it as a married woman, I am coming back strong.

Anti-Therapy is Alive – Unfortunately

I’ve heard that there are people out there who are anti-therapy, but have never encountered any.  I’ve met people who have concerns with therapy but are not truly anti-therapy.

Last week I came across this site and have been thinking about it since.  Particularly #5 and #6.  I was shocked.

Mistake 5. Going to a mental health therapist or psychologist.

She says “Don’t have — and don’t make claims of having — any kind of emotional disability, disorder, anxiety, depression, inability to cope, or other dysfunction, if you can possibly avoid doing so.”  A little later in the paragraph she says “If you absolutely, positively must vent [do so] … only if you’re truly dangerously dysfunctional — then do not tell anyone you are going, pay cash, don’t get or fill prescriptions where any record of that can be discovered…”

I call that bottling up the negative feelings, burying them, and building resentments – which to me is dysfunctional.  That leads to this type of therapy session.

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If anyone believes I’ve made a poor choice in going to therapy, so be it.  I’m certain it will not be held against me during my divorce.  We have “family therapy” every other Saturday and it has helped us tremendously as a “family.”  Just not as a “couple.”

Mistake 6. Taking the children to a therapist.

That brings me to #6.  Here she says “Fix the situation; don’t try to train children to cope with it. If children are having problems, then it’s far more likely than not that it’s the adults around them who are doing something wrong.”

Anti-coping?  Don’t learn to cope with crappy situations?  Really?

I guess I have it all wrong.  My youngest son has Asperger’s and has been seeing a therapist for 5 years.  We currently have his therapy set up as “family” therapy and have had great success. He also has a school based social worker and has participated in school based social skills therapy groups.

My oldest son has a lot of stress related issues because of his brother and his own perfectionism and periodically sees a therapist.  His therapist helped him in accepting adult authority, even though he didn’t agree with the adult (perfectionism).  She also helped him with accepting things that he cannot control and working towards changing things that he can control.  He just started seeing her again so that he could talk about his feelings about our divorce (or whatever else he decides to discuss).

Bla, bla, bla

I’m in a funk.  No motivation.  Some anger.  Some frustration.  Some fear.  All on top of a bad night of sleep.

Some divorce prep accomplishments (that aren’t bringing me out of my funk):

• I used my brand spankin’ new “All My Own” credit card to pay for my lunch today.
• I set up my new checking and savings account and got my own new version of Quicken.
• I requested a small loan against my 401K to pay off my car so that it is easier to transfer solely to me.
• I steam cleaned the living room and moved some boxes to the attic to prep the house for sale.

Some things that are bothering me:

• It is very bizarre at home.  When people are divorcing you’d expect tension, hurt feelings, arguing or SOMEthing.  But if an outsider were to look in on us they would likely think we were a regular / average family – not one that is getting ready to pull the plug.
• Nothing seems to get done if I don’t do it.  There are 2 ceiling fans that need to be replaced.  There are 3 or 4 old broken monitors that need to be gotten rid of.  There’s an extra television that needs to go to the attic.  There’s several large items that need to be scheduled for a special trash pick up.  There’s a BUNCH of husband specific hobby things cluttering the formal living room.  But nothing gets done with that stuff unless I do it.
• My husband hates longish hair on boys and my 14 yr old son wants longish hair.  I’ve never really agreed with husband about it, but can’t say that because then he feels like he’s the “bad guy.”  It is bothering me right now because I went for a walk in the halls at work and noticed several men with longish hair and a few with outright LONG hair.  All employed in professional positions at my company.  There are no factory workers or low skilled people in my building – so I KNOW they are in a professional job category.
• I saw the tracfone in my drawer while looking for my headphones to go on my walk.  The phone he used to communicate with his affair partners a couple of years ago.  I was thinking of giving it back to him in case he needs it once our divorce is final.

Normally I would avoid writing a blog entry in this sort of mood.  But if I do that, it might be a few weeks before I really feel energized for it again.  So, here ya go – my emotional dumping!!!

Sharing the Inconsequential Moments

One of the hardest things about going through this divorce is the process of withdrawing from sharing my daily miniscule happenings with my soon to be ex.

I want to text him and tell him about the damn ladybug that landed in my drink. I want to send him a link to the video that made me think about him. I want to tell him about one of the silly things the dog did. And a variety of other small things.

But I don’t, because that is not where our relationship is heading. So who do I share those thoughts with?

Work It Out

I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot lately – “work it out.”  No one wants to give up.  No one wants to fail.

How does that relate to special relationships, like marriage?

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Here’s some of my thoughts on how that affects love relationships:

• We stay in broken relationships too long because we think we can fix things.
• We stay miserable because we believe we can just try harder to be more compatible with our mate.
• We stay stressed and tense because we’re trying to be something that we’re not, so that we can “work it out” with our mate.
• If we’re not miserable, we know that we are not really “well” because we’re not exactly true to ourselves, in the name of “working it out.”

Popular belief tells us that we can work it out.  The married couple who made it through some difficult times only to be so much better than before tell us that we can.  Our parents who remained married, even though they don’t get along, tell us that we can.  Our spouses who don’t want us to leave (this was me) tell us that we can.

I don’t know anymore.  I think that it is great if couples CAN work it out, and maybe some give up too easily.  But I know that I did everything I possibly could to work it out.  Now I’m feeling relieved that I no longer need to work on something that is causing me some deep down stress and anxiety.

Awkward

Anyone who has gone through a break up has had a moment like this. And I’m sure most have many of them.

I went to the eye doctor today and he asked if I have a good vacation planned, or had a good one recently. My last few “real” vacations have been on a motorcycle with my soon to be ex, so I said we went to the Smoky Mountains last fall.

I thought he’d say, “Oh, that sounds fun.” And move on to the next subject.

Nope.

He’s apparently a motorcycle wannabe. So I politely talked about how I have my own motorcycle (which hubby will keep). And I politely said, “No, I don’t know what I want for my next bike.” And the conversation lasted for the WHOLE check up.

Then as I was leaving he joked about why I didn’t ride my bike today (25 F out right now).

Handshake?

Had an OK date last night. Not very exciting, but not bad. As we were parting ways in front of the restaurant, he shook my hand. It was like I was a business partner. Very odd.

Effort

Sometimes I feel like screaming due to the amount of effort it takes to make a connection on dating sites.