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Old 12-25-2014, 09:24 AM
  # 8 (permalink)  
Todzilla
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: NC
Posts: 39
Y'all (sorry, I'm from the South) are asking really insightful questions and offering great perspectives.

I believe my wife has very little self awareness into her behavior. She can only view things through her own lens of (for lack of a more charitable term) emotional narcissism. If I bring up my feelings, she immediately redirects to her feelings, either by explaining how my disclosure of my feelings hurts her or trumping my pain with her greater pain. It doesn't seem to matter how carefully I couch my feelings so as not to accuse. I know it's unhealthy to keep score, but my regrettable behavior pales in comparison to hers. Doesn't excuse mine and I'm making amends for it. She made amends to me a while back, as part of her recovery, but they were perfunctory and fleeting.

I am trying to seek to understand more than to be understood, but there's a point at which I feel I'm feeding an insatiable beast. Not finding a positive way to disclose my feelings and have them be heard, rather than act as a springboard for her trumping diatribe seems to be dooming our relationship.

I can look at life without her as not the end of the world, and in fact, a mixed blessing, so I'm thankful that I don't have a high level of desperation. That said, I've been through this before (hence my need to work through these issues through Al Anon and Buddhism rather than repeating them forever) and bailing on this long standing marriage with a kid and a lifetime of shared assets will be a rather lengthy and painful process.
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