05-26-2013, 01:52 AM
Hey Carla and friends,
I have been thinking long about your comments about how my situation with arguments with my wife has similarities to Carla's experience watching her father and mother argue.
And I've come to the understanding that I think Carla's initial impression may be right. That I'm not recognizing that I'm not really being loving by doing this (staying calm and detached, and, by being the rational, thinking one, staying in control of the situation).
I am sort of looking down on my partner by not sharing all the information I have with her, whether I believe she'll be capable of understanding or not. It is my responsibility to try to bring her up to the point where she is able to understand, whether this is going to happen or not. The point is, I have to try.
I've been doing some journaling and I've come to recognize these tendencies as a strategy I adopted for self-preservation in the house I grew up in, which was somewhat mentally unhealthy. I tried for years, even as young as eleven or twelve, to get my parents, my mother in particular (who I am beginning to realize had, and still has, Borderline Personality Disorder), to see how their own actions were making and keeping them miserable.
I even remember the moment when I consciously decided to switch tactics - I had been talking to my mother, was forced by her to move out of pleasant polite talk into honesty, which never ended well in that house, and for expressing my sincere belief that she was going about things in the wrong way and pushing my brother away from her - and she responded by kicking me out of the house.
I knew I could rely on her to eventually "reset" and that this edict was sufficiently unpleasant that it would be moved into the box in her mind labeled "Things That Did Not Happen" by the end of the night (and indeed it was, as I quietly returned after midnight and it was never mentioned again), but I also knew that this escalation represented a threat to my survival as I was not yet old enough to support myself and I could not risk her someday deciding to keep such a decree in effect. I would never be able to pay for college and without college, my life would have been irreversibly retarded, to the point where suicide may have become too seductive an option and the incarnation would become a net loss (yes, a fan of Cayce since ten, I framed issues within this mindset even then).
So, I decided that she was no longer to be trusted with the truth in any matter - the risks were too great - and I concentrated on telling her whatever palliative fictions soothed her instead. I reframed my love for her from "being honest and open" to "being kind." I still do this, though I've moved successfully into independence, because I know that borderlines are a higher-than-usual risk group for suicide, especially when reality starts to show through any cracks in the reassuring illusion they erect around themselves that exists to tell them that everything is OK, and that any problems come from OTHER PEOPLE, not the self.
I'm sorry - I'm really going on about this. Anyway, I wanted to let you know, Carla, that your relating my issue to your own family really helped me look at the situation from an outside perspective. I can really understand how your father must have felt. Now I need to make an effort to understand how your mother - and in the process, my wife - felt about the situation from her point of view. Thank you!
I have been thinking long about your comments about how my situation with arguments with my wife has similarities to Carla's experience watching her father and mother argue.
And I've come to the understanding that I think Carla's initial impression may be right. That I'm not recognizing that I'm not really being loving by doing this (staying calm and detached, and, by being the rational, thinking one, staying in control of the situation).
I am sort of looking down on my partner by not sharing all the information I have with her, whether I believe she'll be capable of understanding or not. It is my responsibility to try to bring her up to the point where she is able to understand, whether this is going to happen or not. The point is, I have to try.
I've been doing some journaling and I've come to recognize these tendencies as a strategy I adopted for self-preservation in the house I grew up in, which was somewhat mentally unhealthy. I tried for years, even as young as eleven or twelve, to get my parents, my mother in particular (who I am beginning to realize had, and still has, Borderline Personality Disorder), to see how their own actions were making and keeping them miserable.
I even remember the moment when I consciously decided to switch tactics - I had been talking to my mother, was forced by her to move out of pleasant polite talk into honesty, which never ended well in that house, and for expressing my sincere belief that she was going about things in the wrong way and pushing my brother away from her - and she responded by kicking me out of the house.
I knew I could rely on her to eventually "reset" and that this edict was sufficiently unpleasant that it would be moved into the box in her mind labeled "Things That Did Not Happen" by the end of the night (and indeed it was, as I quietly returned after midnight and it was never mentioned again), but I also knew that this escalation represented a threat to my survival as I was not yet old enough to support myself and I could not risk her someday deciding to keep such a decree in effect. I would never be able to pay for college and without college, my life would have been irreversibly retarded, to the point where suicide may have become too seductive an option and the incarnation would become a net loss (yes, a fan of Cayce since ten, I framed issues within this mindset even then).
So, I decided that she was no longer to be trusted with the truth in any matter - the risks were too great - and I concentrated on telling her whatever palliative fictions soothed her instead. I reframed my love for her from "being honest and open" to "being kind." I still do this, though I've moved successfully into independence, because I know that borderlines are a higher-than-usual risk group for suicide, especially when reality starts to show through any cracks in the reassuring illusion they erect around themselves that exists to tell them that everything is OK, and that any problems come from OTHER PEOPLE, not the self.
I'm sorry - I'm really going on about this. Anyway, I wanted to let you know, Carla, that your relating my issue to your own family really helped me look at the situation from an outside perspective. I can really understand how your father must have felt. Now I need to make an effort to understand how your mother - and in the process, my wife - felt about the situation from her point of view. Thank you!