Loving Anyway thank you
My own H has had a few too many occassions of seeking EXTERNAL happiness, he never saw himself as being responsible from within to feel happy, it was always objects (& still is to a point) & other people who he thought would make him feel good & happy about himself - possessions & others.
The hollowness left when all that is removed frightened him.
It frightened him to be responsible for himself.
To believe in himself as being lovable for who he is, not what he has or what others think of him.
This has been a turning point, when he could say clearly it had nothing to do with anyone else, they all could have been any person at the time, it was all about how he felt about himself & how he felt others thought of him. (ah ha).
On the anger my H was a captain of justification & entitlement, & that is precisely how he lived until he had to look inside himself for happiness.
btw, I was suspected of numerous encounters, without cause, though with ample opportunity. That was not about me, that was entirely about his own insecurities. His doubts that anyone would want to remain faithful to him.
H did not use anger as the reason for his mistakes, he used anger inappropriately to control an out of control situation. Laughable at the immaturity of some statements as if warranted "You told me to F off, so I did" can you see the 3year old waiting for a hug after throwing their cake away in a tantrum? That is about power, loss of self control & manipulation to shift responsiblity to the injured party. Another oh that's what you meant "It's not that I don't trust you Honey, it's the guys that you might meet, I know how men are around women like you" projection city's Mayor. Accussations of jealousy & controlling, even paranoia were projected <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> I reminded myself uhuh not me Babe, that'd be a label that could be applied to your forehead at any time during his delussional escape from himself.
To get back to your orig Q, omg what I have heard & witnessed over the years, would burn a hole in anyone's heart. Pure indulgent selfish B behaviour that knew was doing wrong & had to find a person to blame for his behaviour as blaming himself for his own actions would only deepen his sense of worthlessness & false pride.
I think it's all about ability to cope with ones own emotions & selfworth & self value as adults, it is something learned as children.
It is definitely worth investing in.
As adults when we encounter understanding we can choose to educate & perhaps enhance or redefine ourselves as persons we do believe in & value in entirety, knowing we are worthwhile individuals in our own right without any add ons such as possessions or popularity.
We do not need those things to feel good about ourselves, we inherently know we are good people & thus can enjoy ourselves, and the benefits of possessions & companionship without being reliant on them for our sense of worthiness.
Anger in my opinion is a healthy emotion that is often abused. I think Stillwed or PussyWillow told me to think of it as an "Honourable Sentry, guarding one's welfare, that reacted when it felt threatened".
To better love my own husband I choose a very difficult task though he was a nasty walking bludgeoner of my feelings at the time (& I of his at times too), by accepting anger as an end result of a belief for a need to guard ones self. I had to look very hard to understand the REAL cause of the anger within my husband.
I knew my anger stemmed from hurt & injustice of all that goes with being betrayed & neglected, deeper I feared abondonment (which I did not know I could & would survive), & the most basic root I was mometarily paralysed by the unregulated anxiety (due to being betrayed) that I was a faulty human, I know that is not true, at the time of my intense anger I did feel like a weakling battling a Giant, I momentarily felt & temperarily believed I was unlovable & unworthy (a very extreme shift from my normally motivated happy core), the damage of the words & actions that my husband chose wore me down to complete self doubt in nearly every facet of my life, I did not trust my own judgement.
Thus when I did wake up & recall that I am indeed worthy of love & in fact a very worthwhile & capable person I grieved, I cried for nearly 18months. From my perspective I felt our 20years was a lie. I accepted fully my reality, BUT I denied my husband his at the time. For the next 12 months it varied for me, from massive hurt, to simply uncomfortable to outright anger. We had deep loving connectness & absolute polar destruction during that period, I allowed the intensity of my emotions overwhelm me. I responded, reacted & made decisions at the time based entirely on feelings.
As I recognised my spiralling in clearer calm moments. I questioned why should my husband not be allowed the extremes I felt too, he surely must feel his own too. Yeah the direct answer is he did it to himself, blah, blah, blah.
The answers came out slowly because it is excrutiatingly painful to admit that due to your own selfishness, your lack of self worth that not only did you fk up your own life, but the lives of those you promised to care for, those you knew you loved & you knew at core though felt it couldn't be real because you did not love yourself that that person who you were most injurious to loved you freely for who you are, not for what you could or could not do for them.
My H did not love himself. Though arrogant & cocksure to the outside world, he was a crumbling, frightened man inside, afraid of rejection, afraid of being really loved, really known, yet all the time he was fully loved & accepted warts & all by me, he had not accepted himself. That is where his anger came from.
It was a friend's Husband who is overcoming an addiction that actually made the light bulbs in our house work!
He said "Ktulu you are not a b1tc4, Mr Ktulu is pushing you act like one so he can feel better about himself for what he is doing to you".
In more recent convo's without calm honesty H has said this over & over again in a myriad of ways. His root cause was that he himself did not believe in himself, did not believe he was worthy of real honest love. H adds he acted like a b4zturd purposefully to insite rejection the exact opposit of what he deeply craved. In doing what he did he was rejecting himself completely & very angry with himself, all the time.
Thank God for humanity, for growth & clarity.
Thank God for real love.
Hugs
Kt
Actions do NOT make the person.
Behaviour is seperate from the person.
We are not defined by what we do.
We are WHO we are, whole & complete, lovable individuals.
Something I say to our children:
I love you when your sad,
I love you when your happy,
I love you when your artistic,
I love you when your messy,
I love you when your clean,
I love you when your angry,
I love you when your calm,
I love you when your hurting,
I do not like you hurting others,
I love you anyway
I love you when your doing wrong
I love you when your doing good
I love you when you are creating
I love you when your smashing things
I do not like when you to smash things
I love you anyway
I love you when your scared,
I love you when your confident,
I love you when you when you fail,
I love you when you succeed,
Whereever you go or whatever you do, every second of your life You are loved & always will be, you are perfect for you.
