Hey Homer, MC this week was quite interesting. Yet another facet of WH came out. After 3 days of blackout, I wasn't even sure he'd show up. He did but was extremely defensive, snarly and sour. Yes, there was a tantrum or 2.
The fog is deep. He's feeling like everybody is against him. As in everybody who knows about the situation. And why, oh why did I have to tell all those people; it's none of their business! Even said that during the weekend he had thoughts of moving away. How's that for avoidance behavior? He's mad at our oldest son's anger and for not listening to WH's story. But admitted he didn't have much to add to the truth except about OW. WH doesn't have a good explanation for how his weekend was spent. Says he blew off his "date" with our daughter because he forgot and why didn't we call him? Says he spent most of the weekend watching football. Likely but watching it on his small, inadequate, no-cable TV? This really doesn't sound like the WH who loves his big screen, HD, color TV with 100 channels. Said he spent a lot of time thinking but was unable go to beyond "starting to write" in our joint journal.
The session started badly and got worse. We followed our predictable roles. He stonewalls, I probe, our counselor tries to keep things on track. She asked about his fighting style, conflict avoidance and defensiveness. WH blames it on his religion and detailed a story, much of which I had never heard before. When he was 7 or 8, he got in trouble in school, was punished and had a note to his parents pinned to his shirt. On the advice of the class "bad boy", WH was told to destroy the note because the school would never call. He did and the school never followed through. I told him that to me that meant that he learned at a young age that if he was evasive and kept quiet, he would never be held accountable for his behavior. That lying, silence and avoiding works. That really continues to be his way to operate as an adult.
The session deteriorated until our counselor asked us to write down 5 things that we liked about the other person. She was impressed that we could do it fairly quickly. I think that was the first time she's had any hope for our relationship. Then she had us alternate reading them one by one to each other. Then we had to repeat as many as we could remember back from memory in one go. It was interesting how selective listening and memory are.
When we did this, we began to remember what is was we liked about each other. The session began to progress in a more positive way. We left planning a date night to talk, with a worksheet for fair fighting techniques and a reminder to WH to write back to me in our common notebook. As we hugged at the end, the counselor whispered to me to try to be gentle with him. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />
So, things ended on a good note. WH called last night. That was superficial but pleasant. I've got guarded optimism. He needs to follow through on things this week. And most importantly, he's got to make that break from OW and have no contact. Unfortunately, our counselor doesn't emphasis this. Probably because when we do talk about it, we can't seem to get past it but when we skip over it, we do make some progress. It's certainly a matter I make my views known about.
So, it's an up day. His actions will speak louder than anything. We'll see....
<small>[ January 05, 2005, 07:32 PM: Message edited by: grapegirl ]</small>
