I find that a lot of my friends are still angry with my ex. Well, yeah I get that, but more angry than I am. But the reality is, I'm over it. It's old to be so angry. OK, well sometimes he pisses me off, but the amount of time that I really deal with him, it's hardly worth the energy.
Take this birthday party I'm having. I told one of my friends, "R is going to be there", she said, "WHY? How does he know about the party? You told him?" I knew this would be her reaction, and I'd rather she have it now than at the party. So to make it easier for me, I'd rather she know up front because I don't want to deal with drama at a 7 year old's birthday party. Last year when I had my younger son's birthday party he said "is dad gonna come?" How could I not invite him after that? Why would I deny my son his dad? This year, neither of my sons asked, but my ex asked if I was doing anything, so I told him. I wasn't gonna lie, and you know why? Because my son is so excited for his party I didn't want my ex to find out by way of the kids and put them in that position. Like they are supposed to hide things from dad. That's not teaching them anything positive. So yeah, I told him and said he was welcome to come. I can deal with it for a few hours in my day. And his sisters are going to be there and they just love the kids. Actually they don't even talk to their brother, my ex. They would rather visit the kids at my house. They never ask him if they can visit the kids on his weekends. So I have buffers.
I wonder though if my friends think I'm too submissive. The fact is, you get what you give. If I'm clam, he's calm. If I react, he reacts. I found during the divorce process that it's easy to remain quite and calm. Ummm, ok it was hard, but became easier with time. I'm an emotional person and can react to things quickly, so my new demeanor was a new thing to him. It caught him off guard and in most cases I found that this passive aggressive person he had become talked a lot. The less I said, the more he talked. The once quick to respond person I was didn't give into that anymore. So the arguing and bickering over the settlement stopped. And it made life easier. This is something I learned about in therapy. When my therapist told me that I needed to stop arguing back and just take the time to process before reacting by saying things like, "ok, I'll think about it" or "ok, I'll get back to you on that" I didn't want to because then I would be submissive and I didn't want to be submissive. She said "honey, you're already submissive." It was true. How did I not realize that? I had held back a lot because I let hurtful word get the best of me and it just broke my confidence and spirit. But now dealing with each other is much easier, even though we don't always agree or see eye to eye. Now why couldn't we do this and stay married? Because I think therapy helped me a lot and together maybe we could have, but he refused therapy. Just because we are civil to each other now doesn't mean we can co-exist. I have to deal with this guy for the rest of my life, so I'll do what I need to do to make it go smoothly for me and the boys.
I think we're all submissive to a degree. And who cares. Just make sure you use it the right way.
No comments:
Post a Comment