Are You Also Just Part Of The Background?

you said it! and that's why the questions re: exit plan checklist. i want to be extra careful & very thorough ahead of time. b/c once in the heat of discussion with him.... logic & ration flies in the fray. so, better to be as best prepared as possible.

you are so right.

Much of what you have written suggests to me he is a control freak. If so, he will never be happy with any decision / choice / action that HE didn't instigate. So unless you are prepared to be a complete doormat AND like it (!!!), this ain't ever gonna work out, my friend. Sorry!

girl power

Yay! You are worth it! Xxx

ray: i think it's a case of he'll be isolated.

but...it's by his own choice.

he isolates himself...through his own choices & behaviour.

there must: yes, same with my H. i can repeat myself 8x. he doesn't hear. i have started sending e mails to hs office when it relates to school events/important stuff. so when he claims i didn't tell him? i have written "proof."

SO over this s--t.

i often believe te ignoring/failure to hear s deliberate & another punitive/controlling measure. but i ain't no phd.

so today @ work, more great reactions to the new 'do. fellow coworkers all like it. makes me look younger. stylish. sexy. cute. pretty.

it's funny, i thought i'd be more affected by his (non) reaction. but i'm not. & that's the best part of this.

thanks for your comments, all.

f4w: side note--he used to note, and comment (negatively) on every.friggin.aspect. of me, my appearance, my actions, etc, and yada. it's a relief to only federal with te hypercritical aspect of him on about 50% of what he used to dole out. it's still way too much to deal with. ;)

Yeah, I recognise this. My husband once told me that he liked having me around. In his eyes he was saying something nice to me. *rolls eyes* Made me feel like a knackered old chair that he liked having in the background. Not my idea of marriage. Not my idea of how to live my precious life. Good for you for doing nice things for you. Keep going. It starts to feel better and better. x

I put up with this behaviour for years. I'm a tax practitioner and ex wasn't. I was going to an out of town tax conference and was invited to a reception hosted by the law firm that services the major multinational corporation for which she worked. I was concerned that most of the time would be spent batting off advisors trying to suck work out of me and asked her if she knew anybody from the law firm in that city that could serve as a shield. Conversation went something like:
"Are you sure that they didn't intend to invite ME and invited YOU by mistake?"
Let's see here...a conference organized by a tax foundation to which you don't belong and the invitation was issued by one of the largest law firms in the country...pretty sure they didn't. But can't not have the last word:
"Well, to save yourself embarassment, you better call them and make sure."
Call who? The firm's Department of Mistakes?
It's almost easier to deal with people that speak with their fists instead of using words like daggers. Silence is the same as daggers. Please protect yourself against the harm that these people can inflict upon you with silence and it's wonderful that you've started living for yourself and the ef with him. It sounds like you don't have a partnership. It took several years for me to regain my self-esteem and it was mostly done by doing volunteeer work. I was shocked at how appreciative the people that I worked with were for the smallest kindnesses.

Defective piece of furnature. What a perfect turn of phrase! Defective is how my Dad made me feel and how my STBX made me feel. And I took that on as the truth, beating myself up beyond what they ever did. Thank God my son makes me feel otherwise. Your daughter sees you and sees what's going on. Throw off the defective label, stand up for yourself and you will thrive. Which will do your daughter good.

Live long and prosper!

WTG ...Doing things that make you feel good helps so much.I think it's a great step forward regardless of his indifference .

Changing the person who looks back from the mirror, was one of the first steps I took in reclaiming myself. Good for you, smithy! Typically, once these emblems of healthy individuality and propriety begin growing, a spouse begins to feel unsettled. It's a sign that you are leaving. Not necessarily physically, but that you are moving to a different place emotionally. Once enough of those happen, they find themselves alone, and need to make a choice. You have chosen you. Be confident in that choice.

What a timely title! H and I had an unusually useful conversation recently. In the course of chit-chat, he says: "Well, you talk to yourself so much <"so much" meaning "over the years">, how would I know you were talking to me?" My response: "I was under the impression that I've been talking to you all this time."

You could see the light bulb go off for him. Really? All these years he hasn't been answering my attempts at conversation because he thought I was talking to myself? How ridiculous!

yeah, background.

Oh. Another thing. I've had more than one man tell me that when a woman cuts her hair there are big changes coming.

Just sayin'.

smithy8015,

I know about just being part of the background. I've had a beard the entire 25-yrs my W and I have been together. About a year ago I decided to shave it off. I thought it made me look younger. All of my friends noticed right away and commented how nice I looked. Some 2-weeks after I shaved it off my wife said, "When did you shave your beard off?" Enough said?

I have grave doubts that you are the defective party in this dysfunctional marriage sister smithy. Your story of a couple of days ago read like this is not his first rodeo and that in all likelyhood his intimacy averse nature was what torpedoed his first marriage too.

The philosophy of starting "living for you" is a pretty sound principle to start from, but getting down to the nuts and bolts of what that is going to mean, the choices ahead of you, and how to best manage the process would be a more tangible area to start thinking about.

Tread your own path.