monkeystyle
Member
Hey Carma,
From way over here (and I could be wrong, but whatever), it seems like both of you are holding onto baggage about your histories with one another. Lots of transgressions that have never been put to rest don't help a couple, even one thinking about splitting up.
Your husband doesn't sound like an evil guy, doesn't even sound like a bad one. He does seem like a man who has been struggling to express himself and doesn't know how to do it. Perhaps like a person who isn't good at describing their inner thoughts. And instead of communicating authentically, has played a pretty lousy game of avoidance - which in the recent past hasn't helped you one bit. I don't think this is a 'failure' in him, but just how he's responding to his level of understanding. He simply may not be built like you in his ability to process love, sharing and other feelings, by the look of it.
While I'm talking about it, I think words themselves are terribly overrated in terms of evaluating a person's character, or judging their state of mind, or gauging real feelings.
I have a wife (whom I love dearly), that for whatever reason can't deeply express herself through verbalizing feelings. For her, everything comes back to what she is DOING with me. Asking her to get down deep and talk about core feelings is a struggle (really almost impossible). Doing that just isn't part of her makeup.
In our early poly days when there was friction or problems, I often found myself thinking she was evading me, not telling the truth about what she thought, or completely covering up her real feelings. It got to a point where I can honestly say I pushed her beyond her limit to cope with me, because I was constantly in search of 'what she was really thinking'. I incorrectly assumed that she was eventually going to relate to me on my plane, and vice versa.
Anyway, we had a situation nearly identical to yours, with me in your role. Poly marriage, children, lives that we'd taken years to put together all dangling on a string. Every act of trying to come together seemed to push us farther apart. I was mentally on a ledge, seemingly without end.
What eventually led to common ground was that I stopped talking, and forced myself to start living again. I let the anger boil over (much to my chagrin, because I'm the type of person who MUST resolve things in my own way - or think I need to). And I just let things be for a while. Just lived my life with her, not waiting for the other shoe to drop, or evaluating her intentions anymore. I realized I wasn't joined at the hip to her, but I actually DID love her more than her wrongs amounted to. She was worth trouble, in spite of the trouble dealing with her was causing me.
And let me tell you Carma, it felt like a LOT of trouble. I wanted to be done, because I was convinced there was no way to fix it. It didn't help that I was positively certifiable while trying to work through the problems. It was almost like that through trying to fix the problems, find a way out or end things WAS the thing driving me insane - not the actual wrongs my wife had done. Stopping the fixing and communicating (at least in the way that I was trying to) was part of the solution to fixing it. I had to change my world view, and generally stop using the word 'should' altogether in thoughts about her. Damned hard. Damned hard.
I look back at that, and I think that like you, I had the wrong image of her abilities to be what I wanted her to be. But I loved her, and she wasn't doing anything harmful in the sense that I felt abused or neglected - other than what I'd done to make her avoid me. And when pushed outside of her box of coping with me, she did eventually resort to lying. But I had a hand in it. In hindsight, it was understandable given the pressures, and what I now know about her.
This post is getting long. There's a lot more to this tale, but it's your blog and not mine.
I'll close in saying that I can see a lot of myself in your writing about you, and definitely a lot of my wife in your husband. I believe you DO love him very much, and it sounds like he feels the same. Regardless of how things end (and no one knows how it will until it happens), try to keep your chin up. You're a good person (I think), and I believe your intentions are genuinely to do right by everyone. Sometimes though, things get lost in translation between people - and we have to re-invent ourselves to bridge the gap.
From way over here (and I could be wrong, but whatever), it seems like both of you are holding onto baggage about your histories with one another. Lots of transgressions that have never been put to rest don't help a couple, even one thinking about splitting up.
Your husband doesn't sound like an evil guy, doesn't even sound like a bad one. He does seem like a man who has been struggling to express himself and doesn't know how to do it. Perhaps like a person who isn't good at describing their inner thoughts. And instead of communicating authentically, has played a pretty lousy game of avoidance - which in the recent past hasn't helped you one bit. I don't think this is a 'failure' in him, but just how he's responding to his level of understanding. He simply may not be built like you in his ability to process love, sharing and other feelings, by the look of it.
While I'm talking about it, I think words themselves are terribly overrated in terms of evaluating a person's character, or judging their state of mind, or gauging real feelings.
I have a wife (whom I love dearly), that for whatever reason can't deeply express herself through verbalizing feelings. For her, everything comes back to what she is DOING with me. Asking her to get down deep and talk about core feelings is a struggle (really almost impossible). Doing that just isn't part of her makeup.
In our early poly days when there was friction or problems, I often found myself thinking she was evading me, not telling the truth about what she thought, or completely covering up her real feelings. It got to a point where I can honestly say I pushed her beyond her limit to cope with me, because I was constantly in search of 'what she was really thinking'. I incorrectly assumed that she was eventually going to relate to me on my plane, and vice versa.
Anyway, we had a situation nearly identical to yours, with me in your role. Poly marriage, children, lives that we'd taken years to put together all dangling on a string. Every act of trying to come together seemed to push us farther apart. I was mentally on a ledge, seemingly without end.
What eventually led to common ground was that I stopped talking, and forced myself to start living again. I let the anger boil over (much to my chagrin, because I'm the type of person who MUST resolve things in my own way - or think I need to). And I just let things be for a while. Just lived my life with her, not waiting for the other shoe to drop, or evaluating her intentions anymore. I realized I wasn't joined at the hip to her, but I actually DID love her more than her wrongs amounted to. She was worth trouble, in spite of the trouble dealing with her was causing me.
And let me tell you Carma, it felt like a LOT of trouble. I wanted to be done, because I was convinced there was no way to fix it. It didn't help that I was positively certifiable while trying to work through the problems. It was almost like that through trying to fix the problems, find a way out or end things WAS the thing driving me insane - not the actual wrongs my wife had done. Stopping the fixing and communicating (at least in the way that I was trying to) was part of the solution to fixing it. I had to change my world view, and generally stop using the word 'should' altogether in thoughts about her. Damned hard. Damned hard.
I look back at that, and I think that like you, I had the wrong image of her abilities to be what I wanted her to be. But I loved her, and she wasn't doing anything harmful in the sense that I felt abused or neglected - other than what I'd done to make her avoid me. And when pushed outside of her box of coping with me, she did eventually resort to lying. But I had a hand in it. In hindsight, it was understandable given the pressures, and what I now know about her.
This post is getting long. There's a lot more to this tale, but it's your blog and not mine.
I'll close in saying that I can see a lot of myself in your writing about you, and definitely a lot of my wife in your husband. I believe you DO love him very much, and it sounds like he feels the same. Regardless of how things end (and no one knows how it will until it happens), try to keep your chin up. You're a good person (I think), and I believe your intentions are genuinely to do right by everyone. Sometimes though, things get lost in translation between people - and we have to re-invent ourselves to bridge the gap.