Wishful133

I am so confused about how to do this correctly.

I am going back to work tomorrow after a year-long maternity leave. I am scared and nervous about leaving DS in daycare, I am nervous about going back to work and remembering my job!

I asked RAH for a stress-free evening so I can relax and enjoy my last "free" night. At 4:30 he decides to tell me he's quitting his job tomorrow without another job to go to when we can barely make our mortgage as it is! But I shouldn't worry, he's got "lots of interviews" lined up.

I got really angry. Basically now he says he won't quit and I "got my way" while he sulks. And now I'm wondering if I had the right to get angry. He would be putting us in further financial difficulty and he just had the whole month of Dec off, which of course he drank away.

I am so new to this detachment thing and he has only been sober since May 1.

Have I overstepped things? I am so confused. And if I have overstepped, what do I do with all this anger?

transformyself

These are such great questions. I hope someone smarter than me shows up soon. I just wanted to welcome you and say that the more I detach, the better I am at managing my anger.

I don't think you're over stepping; I think you're stating boundaries and trying to partner with someone. If you believe it to be inappropriate for the bread winner to quit his job without another job lined up, but your partner doesn't, I'd say that's a wee little problem.

I do want to say that your RAH sounds like he threw a giant king baby fit. You got "your way?" Those are red flags for me. My AH has done the same crap. It's impossible for me to parent or partner with someone who plays games and assigns me ridiculous power. It's just so he can blame me. My marriage is over because I don't want to be a mommy or be blamed, or be constantly freaked out about what my AH is doing with the money. All of that.

But that's me. Hopefully others who are working on their marriages will come along with better advice than get a divorce attorney

Also, it's hard for me to not become angry if my boundaries are consistently not respected.

Wishful133

Thank you, transformyself. I decided that you were right, it was an issue of boundaries and allowing myself to be walked on.

I calmly went downstairs, and told him I was upset. I told him that before I would have said my feelings didn't matter but they do and that I felt hurt and disappointed. He apologized, one of the few times he has, and while I accepted it I told him I will need some time to move past this. I told him our family cannot be without his income and he needs to put our family first.

It felt good to stick up for myself calmly and rationally after everything that happened today. I have allowed myself to be walked on for too long. Tonight was supposed to be for me, and we need his income. Period.

Thank you transformyself.

rry1177

I'm glad you told him that.

I am still new to detaching, but I don't think it doesn't mean you can't get angry. Anger is a natural emotion like any other. How you react makes the difference. Good luck at work. If you work in an office like mine, I will say extra prayers for you

CarryOn

Hi Wishful. Good luck returning to work tomorrow! I encountered something similar from my RAH recently that drove me crazy! We're living separately at the moment, and I am paying the bills (he still works and contributes but spends A LOT)...I reminded him to watch his spending and his solution was to just take some money against our home equity line and we can pay if off later. Really??? Build up some more debt rather than watching where our money is going??? My point is, I think in early recovery their feelings are all over the place, and they can get overly optimistic and feel like they can do anything at points. No worry about the bills - I'm doing great right now and will catch up without a problem. No worry about a new job - I'm doing great in my recovery and everyone will want me to work for them. There's also a lot of selfishness in early recovery. Joy.

And to your actual question...detachment with love isn't always possible, sometimes it starts with anger. You did not overstep, IMO. I believe in a marriage that major decisions affecting the household should be discussed before action is taken (of course, that works in a normie household, not usually in an A household). I was catching up on my daily readers today, and one of them talked about detachment in a simple way - you own your stuff and allow them to own their stuff. I think the "with love" part comes over time. Hope that helps.

ForeverOptimist

I read somewhere in my recovery literature that anger is a sign that one of our boundaries has been crossed. If we don't get angry, we have no boundaries. I think you dealt with it very well -- probably better than I would have!

Good luck with going back to work. I recently returned to work after being home with my children. Remember to be kind to yourself and take one day at a time!

BlueSkies1

Is it even a question of detachment? Or is it a question of learning how to talk to each other with respect and come to agreements?
I don't think you can logically detach from your family's finances.

I think anger is a normal knee-jerk reaction to a lot of things. I am very good at anger, yikes.
So I have had to learn other choices besides anger.
Where does the anger stem from?
From the lack of logic in quitting a job before another job is fully secured.
It was his lack of rational thinking that you reacted to with anger.
So...if you step back and pursue this convo from that angle, perhaps you can work together on this and other similar issues.
Other possibilities--Hon, I am so glad you are pursuing another job if you are unhappy/unfulfilled in this one.
Let's just secure another job first and fully before we go quitting the ones we have, ok?
This is asking for him to agree to rational bank balance security, agree with you, instead of a battle. Working together.
Try not to bring other things into it.
I understand completely why you felt the way you did. Most people would. Financial insecurity for even a day with a growing family is a serious matter.
But since he chose to approach it from an irrational angle, the best you can do is try to pull him back to rational thinking, and do so willingly, in agreement with you.

p.s. I'm glad you "got your way"! ha!

ShootingStar1

Way to go, Wishful133!

People here say about alcoholism:

You didn't cause it
You can't control it
You can't cure it

And I would add: You don't have to own it.

If you look at the situation from a different perspective, here is what you see.

You are shouldering a financial obligation for your family and going back to work. You have some real genuine trepidation. You are suffering from separation anxiety with your 1 year old son. You are going back into a work environment after a long absence, and you have some anxiety about getting back in the swing of your job.

What would you like your RAH to do? You would like him to give you a very peaceful stress-free evening to relax, enjoy the last evening of your maternity leave, and get emotionally prepared for all that comes the next day.

What does he do? He throws a massive, as transformyself calls it, "king-baby tantrum". He diverts all the attention to himself. He threatens to quit his job and put all the pressure to support the family on you.

He creates such a nasty scene and projects such a difficult future for you all when he quits his job that you are drawn into his self-made drama and engage intensely with him to get him to return to reality and responsibility.

And when he's succeeded in upsetting you and focusing you on him, he says he'll keep his job. But now HE is the aggrieved party, and he blames you for his pain at having to keep his job. So he gets to sulk.

What's not to be angry about this?

I think you'd have to be numb to not get angry at his manipulative destructive self-aggrandizing behavior. Especially when you told him that you needed one night of peace.

If the situation had been reversed, just think about the quiet lovely evening you would have given him, just because you love him and want to meet his needs. Then look at what he gave you. As the cop in an old TV show used to say, "Just the facts, ma'am."

You did not overstep anything. He is in power and control mode and he engineered the evening so that he was the center of his own manufactured unnecessary drama. Those are the facts. You just wanted a legitimate space in the emotional landscape of your marriage. He did not give it to you.

Your quiet deliberate communication of your boundaries this morning got quite a different response. The good news in this is that your RAH actually heard you and apologized. So he does have some capacity for self-reflection, and he does have some understanding of his responsibilities as father and husband.

He needs to grow in this. That is his job, his accountability. You get to decide how YOU want to live, and it does not have to include putting up with such manipulative underhanded bullying of you. Set your boundaries, and stick to them. Your son isn't 2 yet, but you will soon see that a tantrum needs an audience to be really fulfilling to the tantrum-ee. I once read a child behavior book that suggested that you put your child's out-of-line behavior " on-extinction", kind of like the dinosaur, by not feeding it. In other words, don't re-enforce it by giving it attention.

If it were me, I'd think through what I really wanted in a marriage and state it simply and quietly to my husband. I'd use "I" statements - - I want to live with X, Y or Z. I will not live with Q, R or S. Period. Those are MY boundaries. And follow through.

SoberRecovery is a good place to come. Your time will be tight with going back to your job, and I am sure you'd want to be with your DS as much as possible. Come here, and you'll get lots of support from people who have walked this path.

If you can go to Alanon meetings, they would be very helpful. Melody Beattie's book Co-Dependent No More was a great place for me to start understanding how I was part of the problem, and how I could change my behavior and be much happier, no matter what my AH did.

ShootingStar1