I'm not sure you can understand how funny this was in my head...I swear it was.

One of the things that was the biggest adjustment in moving to a town this small was the banking.
People write checks for everything and...(get this) you can walk into the bank, up to a teller, and say "hi I'm Jennye Ashcroft and I'd like to withdraw $100 from my account."
(Now mind you I had just moved here and these people really did not know me from Adam. I had never met them.)
They would just hand me the money, no questions asked, no id required...weirdest thing ever!!

So back when "his best friend" was actually my best friend she was here visiting us.
I was still adjusting to this banking phenomenon and as we walked into the bank one day I said "watch this!"
She too was shocked and we spent the rest of the visit laughing about it, how really she could just walk in, say my name and take all my money!

It just occurred to me today what happened after that visit. I think she thought everything in Grand Marais worked that way. It's a small town, midwesterners are friendly, we seem like we would be happy to share.

I think this time she got confused, walked into my house, said "Hi I'm Jennye Ashcroft, I'd like to withdraw one husband please."

Damn obliging midwesterners...she's walking away with more than just my money.

 See...I had to go and make it all sad...I couldn't just end with the funny.
That's the day I'm waiting for. The day I can look at this all and end with the funny.

A Grim Fairytale indeed

I feel like my brain won’t shut off lately. I’ve been doing so much thinking.

At bedtime, in the middle of the night, before I want to wake up in the morning, while driving, while working….I think you get the picture.

I just keep going over and over the same things. There are so many angles and, of course I keep finding new regrets, new ways to beat myself up.

Then I decide there’s no value in that, determine I can make peace with myself, that things aren’t going to get better until I just accept them and move on.

So, you know, I’m there, somewhere in the middle, trapped between, “it’s no big deal, marriages just end” and “what the fuck?”.

See me there? It’s not pretty so you might not want to look too closely.

The main thing I can’t get over is how I let things get this out of control. I’m not a passive person. I know how to stand up for myself, take care of myself, I am a successful businesswoman, part of which required holding people accountable, many people at all levels of organizations. 

I just never transferred this home. I so badly wanted my husband to be happy, wanted to have a happy marriage that I stopped holding him accountable for his actions. I told myself his happiness was more important than me. I decided it was easier to not have the tough conversations, to tell myself that things weren’t so bad, that it wasn’t what I thought, maybe if I just ignored it, it would even go away.

His lack of interest in any family activities, his inappropriate relationships, his need for 4 hours of alone time every day, his irrational anger when I made any decision he didn't agree with (coupled with his refusal to make decisions), his ability to drink every drop of liquor in the house.

I know better than all this, problems of this magnitude don't just go away. So I can’t figure out how I let it happen.

I expected marriage to be work, and I worked hard. I’m just disappointed with myself for letting some of the important things slip by. For not addressing them. For letting my anger at things build until I couldn’t address issues reasonably, all I could do was vent my anger.

I guess the only thing left is to walk away with a lesson (I have a three year old can you tell?)

So the moral for this marriage:

If you’re afraid to talk about it, there’s probably a reason. A reason that is not going to just go away by itself.

Bring it up, discuss it, be honest about your fears. All you've got to lose is everything and that will disappear anyway when the problems finally become so big you can't ignore them anymore.

(or as David Wilcox says, in a moral friendly length “Start with the ending, it’s the best way to begin.”)

Sharin' the Love

I've heard this song on the Pandora station at work lately and I've just been loving it.
Thought I'd try to end the week on a more positive note (no pun intended).

Don't mind the girl dancing...or do cause it's beautiful and all that. It's just the only link I could find to the song.

Here's Catherine Feeny singing Hush Now 

Enjoy! and have a great weekend!!

Like freeze tag but with a lot more punching

I'm not sure exactly how to describe the state I've been in over the past couple days.
I had a rough week last week although I couldn't really identify why I couldn't sleep and couldn't settle down. I had a really rough weekend...too much love in the air and family time (other families).
Had a total meltdown Sunday night I actually literally cannot remember what triggered it. Good thing I have this blog since I'm pretty sure I wrote about it.
Then Monday I started getting sick thanks to all that fun I'd been having last week. I really thought that was when the week would have to start getting better. Boy was I wrong!
It's only gotten worse. Worse and worse and yet still worse, until today. Today was great, I was a pacing, crying, panicky mess of nerves, and that was just the work part of the day.

I really, really hate feeling that way. I don't like feeling out of control, especially when it comes to emotions. I don't like feeling unsure of the proper response for a situation. I really don't like being forced into a situation where there is no proper response because the situation itself is so F#*^ed up.
More than anything though I don't like my husbands ability to take these situations and manipulate them so that I end up feeling guilty!
The one bright side in today's situation is that that part of his plan didn't work.

After all the drama yesterday over the realization that "his best friend" was coming to town for a week. After the increased drama when I was ridiculous enough to say that our daughter would not be spending the night in the same house as them, he never responded to let me know his plan for tonight.

You see Thursday is a Daddy night for Esme. My goal was not to take that away so, reasonable as I usually am, I let him know he could still have his night with Esme. "His best friend" would just have to stay somewhere else. And then I left it up to him to decide. "Decide what his priorities were" is the line I believe I used.
When I still hadn't heard by noon today what his priorities were I started to get nervous. I texted him to find out and that was when he informed me that his lost time with his daughter was "on my head".

see it? see the manipulation...I know it's so subtle...shocking that it took me 11 years to really lock onto it huh? If only we could play life in slo-mo and freeze those oh-so crucial scenes, invite some friends over to strategize the proper response. (maybe while peeing, thanks alyssa!)

But finally, Fi-Na-Ly I can say that I caught it before it caught me.
I do not feel a bit guilty.
He cannot have his cake and eat it too. (I feel sure there's a really bad new girlfriend joke in there somewhere but I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for that later).

If he won't do the responsible thing for our daughter I sure as hell will. I even picked her up from daycare early just to preempt any attempt on his part to avoid a confrontation.
He still managed to avoid the confrontation of course. But boy did my little act of determination feel good!

I heard through the grapevine that the family we're staying with had a little meeting today and decided I need Anger Acquisition Therapy. I thought that was hilarious! Anyone know a good program for that?

What is the value of a proportional response?

My goal is to be happy. I want my husband to find happiness. I want us both to be able to create healthy environments where we raise our daughter.
This is truly and honestly, deep down, what I want. In reality I know it's going to take a little time to get there.
What I did not expect was being forced to confront his version of happiness without me before we've even discussed divorce.
There are many things I've found surprising as we've gone through this separation process.
I think it's important to share that my husband's parents divorced in our first year of marriage. His Dad left his mom and a year later married one of her best friends. That was a very formative experience for my husband. He didn't speak to his dad for almost two years because of his anger that his dad refused to go to counseling or even attempt (in my husband's eyes) to save his marriage.
The first response my husband had to the whole situation was to say to me "We will never let that happen to us. We have to make sure we always communicate so that we never end up where they are."

Well...flash forward to 8 years later. Here we are and boy are the parallels astounding. My husband was the one who decided he didn't have the energy for counseling, didn't have the energy for our marriage. Not a shocking decision given that he had checked out of the family at least a year earlier. I still think back over the last few years often...they were rough (and I think that may even be an understatement) but there were good times. And often even in the midst of bad times my husband was always the first one to remind me that he loved me. I wish it didn't but that makes everything so hard.
I know I haven't stopped loving him. I can't even imagine how you just stop loving someone. But how can he so easily act like he has no feelings left, like our marriage, our family didn't even matter?

So, why do I think he's acting like none of it mattered? "His best friend" the one I mentioned here, is flying in today to spend a week with him.
He was shocked over the realization that I was not going to let our daughter spend the night in the same house with him and "his best friend".
I feel a bit shocked over the depth of hurt and betrayal I feel by the two of them.

I tend to react to most things very rationally and continually search for the proportional response.
This feels to me like an instance where there is no proportional response, an instance where you find yourself saying what does that even mean?
Have you ever watched that West Wing episode where Martin Sheen wants to blow the bad guys to Kingdom come? Wants a disproportional response? I feel that way every other minute...
Like this is an instance where I learn yet again my husband's ability to take advantage of my even-tempered handling of past situations. Like I need to blow up already!

(I'm just realizing how bad this is. Whenever I'm hurt my immediate reaction is to say I never want someone to feel this. How can I talk to them about this but insure they don't feel as bad I feel right now?
This feels different. I do want them to feel as bad as I feel right now.
well, maybe....it just even feels horrible to type that. I want them to feel it, but just for a minute and then I want them to go on and be happy, and let me be happy, and can't we all just get along?)

Ohhhh this is going to be a long and painful process!

If she were truly my friend at all she would have told me about this visit. If this visit were innocent he would have told me about it before he was absolutely forced to.

Even if it is innocent, we are still married, my husband has chosen to spend a week with another woman, I am devastated.

I will not be Undone

"If you want to destroy my sweater...
Pull this thread as I walk away"

A work friend was trying to remember the lyrics to this song today and it just felt so appropriate!
Plus way too catchy and I've been singing it ever since.

Hold tight to your family

Today I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing.
I have had lots of zen days about this whole thing but over the last two days I've really hit a downward spiral.
I can't quite put my finger on where it started but there are a few things that have all contributed.

A big part of my concern stems from spending the last month reading this great blog. I started at the beginning (2001) and I've been reading all the way through. She makes me laugh out loud, has a dog that looks a lot like Francis, and a little girl (well two now). She also does a lot of talking about her struggle with depression, her honesty has opened my eyes in a lot of  ways to what I think my husband has been dealing with throughout our marriage. I feel like I've been pretty understanding and concerned and supportive at the right points. But really I have to be honest and say I'm not sure I have been enough.
I know that I put up with a lot in our marriage, took care of a lot, was a very patient spouse. But lately I wonder. I'm sure that we never talked about my husband's depression as much as we should have. Mostly that's because he didn't want to. That's what leads to my concern. Should I have ensured we had those conversations. Did I really do enough to support him where mental illness is concerned?
I've struggled with that question a lot, over the years and especially over the last few weeks. I thought I had come to a good conclusion:
I did everything I was able to do on my own. The difference between my husband and Heather (the woman from the blog) is that she was willing to ask for help. She knew she didn't want to feel the way she did, she knew her family was the most important thing to her and she actively sought out the help she needed. My husband, for the most part did not make these decisions. I could not force him into help, could not force him to choose his family or make healthy decisions.
I was feeling pretty good with that rationale until Friday night when I read a blog posting by Heather's husband. This post just left me sad. It left me convinced I didn't do enough. Didn't find out enough about the medication he was taking, exactly why he was taking it, what he needed from me.
Up until now I've been convinced that I truly did everything I could have to save my marriage. Now I'm not so sure.
I don't want to go back to where we were. I refuse to go back to where we were. I also can't walk away with all this on my mind and heart.

I've dealt with a lot of change in my life and there is always a moment of concern, fear, confusion in the midst of any change. The only way I've ever found to successfully move through those moments is to address them head on. In this case I think that means sitting down and having a conversation. I'm not sure I can continue to move on, to feel good about the decision I'm making until I at least address this.
I was just looking back over Dooce's blog to see if I could find a posting that would help you understand why she has had me thinking so much about this.
Here is the one that almost does me in every time.