Re: Where should she start from?

hey Autumn,

Great to see you again. "Taking better care of myself" is better, although not how I'd like it to be. Baby is not sleeping so even if I sleep in a separate room, I still hear the crying (during night my wife is taking care of the baby). Baby's pretty good with sleeping, she sleeps long stretches, but it takes forever for her to fall asleep in the first place - usually it is not before 2am or even 4am...

I had a few long talks with my wife recently. I actually told her that I consulted some well meaning people (telling her that was a BIG risk!) and they all agreed that something was wrong with her. Fortunately it had an effect. For the first time she seemed trully humbled. It probably helped that most of the people who responded were women, so there is no male chauvinism going on. I didn't let her read it, I only mentioned some of the comments, probably the most interesting one from the woman who said "I was the same" and who gave a wonderful point of view. Yours and her advice was most helpful.

It was also interesting for me to see how some of these troubles "work". Some of the things she told me I heard for the first time in my life. For instance she would feel angry that we don't have sex. I explained to her that we don't have it because she is not into it, not because I don't want to have it. Just that for me sex is either real, or it's not sex, while for her, it doesn't really matter, sex is more of a proof that she's OK and the quality of it doesn't matter. So she listened, and understood, and then I ask her how she felt. Get this: she said that for the first time she'd be honest with me and admit that while we are talking, it all makes sense, but at the end, just as she needs to "absorb it" she says she just feels like "No, that's not true actually" and goes right back to the begining. So I compared some of her feelings to her childhood feelings, and she agreed, and said that she can refer to that in those moments when she actively concentrates on her childhood, but as soon as she's out of it, again she figures "no, he's full of crap".

Two good things about that: first an interesting lesson in psychology, I never though that was possible; second: this was the first time she was honest about that problem.

Today she told me that she is trying to think of those childhood experiences whenever she feels something is not right (she easily gets angered). And in those moments when she finds the true source of those negative feelings, they go away. My guess is that this is good. But she is usually not persistent, so we'll see...

And just as things seemed to be turning for the better, today we went out with the baby to a shopping mall, and I had to go back to our car to leave something there, and we just agree to meet in front of a food store, and I come back and she's not there. I go back to where we separated, and she's not there either. (Neither is our baby who was with her.) So I look inside that store (which is HUGE) and nothing. Then I go allover that mall, spend 15 min looking for her and still nothing. Just as I was ready to go to the info desk to try to page her, I notice her in that food store. All this wouldn't be so bad hadn't it been for the fact that she did that to me many times before ("we'll meet here in 5 min" or "wait right here" and she's not there), and almost always in a foreign country, and I really freaked out a few times. I told her that if she really gets in trouble, I won't be able to know if she really was in trouble or if she was just being irresponsible again. To make things worse, she didn't have her Cell Phone on her - I think because the battery is bad.

She promised not to do this ever again a few months ago, but here, the first chance she gets, she does it. She has that special nack for screwing up good moments. As if she hates being happy. What puzzles me is that I really don't see anything coming before she does it; she was actually quite happy and in a good mood, and only when I saw her from distance did she make a face like "oh-oh" - probably when she saw expression on my face which was more like "what's going on here?". So after promising and understanding how important it is not to ruin one's day with just dissappearing like that, she does it anyway. So I got really mad, and just said that I wasn't in the mood for anything any more and drove us all home. I felt like an idiot looking for her all over the place in that mall for 15 minutes, and she is not a moron not to know how to stand in one place and wait some 2 minutes (I parked right next to that entrance and was back in about 90 seconds).

So that's how things are going. BTW, she did appologize, I told her not to, as her appologies mean shit really, they only add insult to injury, like "I'll do it again even though I promise otherwise". She left a nice message on my computer and was really nice after that, which all means zilch, but one thing that did strike me was that she was sad when she said that she realized after today's episode that every time things are going well, she does something really really stupid. Well, I didn't say that, she did, without my help. That's a first...

Somehow I am still optimistic. A few new things have happened: first it did hit her that some other people think that she's screwing up big time; then she did manage to honestly admit that she has a hard time not taking out her negativities on someone else, even after she realizes that those negative emotions come from her parents; and lastly for the first time she recognized that she "needs" to ruin a good day.

XOXO