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This round of marital progress between my beloved and I began, with recognizing our, "Tit for Tat." When I looked up "Tit for tat" in an old world paper dictionary, the illustration of "Tit for tat" was a handshake. I offer you my hand (tit) and you reciprocate with your hand (tat). Done well, tit for tat is the basis of all social interaction. Done badly, it is how people who love one another end up kicking one another's hearts up and down the playing field, more viciously than world league professionals in the World Cup Series. The most meaningful work on this between my beloved and I began (as always in Arf World) with simple awareness. When we caught ourselves at it, we would simply state, "Tit for Tat." It reduced the emotional bloodshed of our marital disputes immeasurably. We are several years into the process and seldom have to call, "Tit for Tat" any more. The results are still too new for adequate description, but this morning I might describe the results as, "We have learned how to share without co-opting or tangling each other's threads." Perhaps. Still developing...
Once again, I sit alone on the FIL's investment property, reviewing the echoes of a great social exchange. I have had several great social exchanges out here, despite the queasiness of feeling like a squatter and the angst of waiting for a rich man's goon squad to come roaring down the driveway waving the retributions only money can buy in my face. My feeling of the weekend has been simple closure. The expected has happened. I can move on to whatever is next now.
I move now into turf that is not mine to cut. These are my husband's issues, not mine. The divisions and pretenses of his family habits are sufficient that I do not even feel like a family member. I have no direct business (bonds) with ANY of his family tree. Sometimes I idealize that I SHOULD, but... Life seldom meets my personal ideals.
The pending contract is decidedly more complex for my beloved. He calls the rich man, "Daddy." He feels he has been betrayed and that the betrayal will be the death blow of his family tree. This farm was bought with the proceeds of selling his grandfather's dairy farm. The one that is now a strip mall in a Dallas suburb. The root of my beloved's passion for bees...
Still sorting... Feeling greatly inhibited by the fact that I officially across the line and discussing someone else's issues. The "Invalidation Reflex" has to do with the way my husband reflexively wraps his pain in pretty paper and showy bows.
Once again, I sit alone on the FIL's investment property, reviewing the echoes of a great social exchange. I have had several great social exchanges out here, despite the queasiness of feeling like a squatter and the angst of waiting for a rich man's goon squad to come roaring down the driveway waving the retributions only money can buy in my face. My feeling of the weekend has been simple closure. The expected has happened. I can move on to whatever is next now.
I move now into turf that is not mine to cut. These are my husband's issues, not mine. The divisions and pretenses of his family habits are sufficient that I do not even feel like a family member. I have no direct business (bonds) with ANY of his family tree. Sometimes I idealize that I SHOULD, but... Life seldom meets my personal ideals.
The pending contract is decidedly more complex for my beloved. He calls the rich man, "Daddy." He feels he has been betrayed and that the betrayal will be the death blow of his family tree. This farm was bought with the proceeds of selling his grandfather's dairy farm. The one that is now a strip mall in a Dallas suburb. The root of my beloved's passion for bees...
Still sorting... Feeling greatly inhibited by the fact that I officially across the line and discussing someone else's issues. The "Invalidation Reflex" has to do with the way my husband reflexively wraps his pain in pretty paper and showy bows.
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I did the dumbest thing today. I charged my earbuds, unplugged the block and put the block in my little bag instead of the earbuds. I wasn't happy about that when I got to the gym. What a dummy!
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Ever since I stopped doing therapy because of insurance, I've been feeling that old tense and irritable sense of anxiety and stress. I hate that. I was making so many strides and changes during therapy, my therapist would acknowledge all of my progress and accomplishments, and I miss that reassurance. Today I thought about it, and I made those changes! She would always tell me that I chose to...
Still, you wrote "feeling of the weekend has been simple closure," and I'm glad for that much. The other shoe has dropped, as they say, so I'm glad the uncertainty is over with.
I feel for your husband. The idea of selling the family tree... They built cheap condos for wanna-be yuppies where my family had land since 1746. Where I played as a child, and first became fascinated by geology. Where my ancestors returned home from many wars, to be buried or to be comforted. That loss is deep in me, and was a key part of the process that led me to cease contact with that side of my family. Where once great blackberry thickets fed us and some very laidback black bears?.... To me, they may as well have pissed on our dead. 250 years and gone. Torn away for what? A quick buck.... So it touches me deeply to hear that your beloved is distressed. I've lived similar distresses. They are griefs as deep as any other.
Gentle support to you both.
Muji, I still don't feel Texas as my home, still not real connected to the entire concept of "home," but after 34 years in this boom economy, watching farms and prairies turn into strip malls has long since felt like watching re-runs on TV. My tree-hugger friends and I have joked about starting a TV series called, "Little Mall on the Prairie." Tune in next week for more shopping adventures.
I like that "Little Mall on the Prairie" LOL.... I confess, the 2008 market crash was wonderful for us tree-huggers here, it meant the only way this one Evil Developer could save his behind was to donate the proposed Sprawl Splat to the state---as a park! Bwahahaha! He got his tax cut, and we didn't get another big splurt of McAmericana. *happydance*
Gentlest support....
I speculate that "family estrangement" might be the first true US cultural tradition. Only speculating. Each generation seems to have its own body of slang justification and slang is the toughest language I have ever tried to translate... On that point, translators around the world seem to agree.
Invalidation Reflex.
Not challenging, but asking honestly, b/c this is a problem for a lot of us, I expect....
Is it across a line to discuss how another person's issues affect you? Your reactions to their issues If it's not meant as judgment or negation of the other person--- e.g., "I wouldn't do it that way, how dare they do it that way" (welcome to my dad's fam) --- I find it useful to mull over other people's issues, because my reactions to them tell me a ot about *my* issues. Which I *can* do something about. Selfish as that sounds...
Gentle hugs, and sort away.... I wish my brain was a supercomputer but it often feels like one of the old punch-card numbers.... Someone understands what that pattern of punched-out holes means, but it's not me!
The strongest reason I feel so alienated from my husband's family is not the fact that they have human flaws. Human perfection is not a notion I have ever been able to believe in. Daily bowel movements are an essential part of the human experience. It is the fact that my husband has consistently invalidated my experiences with his family, mostly on that tit for tat playing field. We have come a long way on that score.
My wandering wonders on "Reflexive Invalidation" came to me this weekend as I listened to my beloved sort through his feelings of betrayal, his angst over the loss of family, etc., etc. For me, this is simple closure concerning people I have no emotional bonds with. Just proud sponsors of "The Little Mall on the Prairie." Nothing unique in this environmental activist's view. It is far from simple for him. He was continually invalidating his own feelings by wrapping them in verbatim quotes of family idealizations I have heard endlessly as the entire family worked to not notice symptoms of Huntington's Disease, schizophrenic outbursts, etc., etc. Just plant a Christmas tree on the elephant's back and wrap it's gifts in pretty packages.
So far, the greatest sense I have gained from my husband's family is one of the FIL's most repeated classics, "You can't possibly understand." It is nice that we can agree on something... I quit trying in 1989.
All of which is long-winded and not meant to hijack, but... sharing my experience with in-law issues as they affect me (I still feel distant from most of mine) and as family dynamics from their side affects my marriage. The Dance of the Dysfunctions, we call it. Toes will be stepped upon, but as long as there's no shin-kicking....!
You should have seen the holes in the sheet rock from THAT phase of our work on his invalidation habits. All put there by my dainty little combat trained self. Still kinda proud that I didn't hit anything more vulnerable than sheet rock during that phase. I became a sheet rock patch artist before it was done.
I still don't tolerate invalidation well, but I am studying more diplomatic ways of handling it. At times I even achieve serenity and compassion in the handling. It is a common trait in "civilized behavior." Even I am housebroken enough to do it on ocassion.
We must've read and reread Marriage for Dummies about ten times in those first five years together. Still have it too.
I am a work in progress on reacting neutrally until I figure out if Hubby or whoever *intends* invalidation or if they're just a babbling idiot or are reacting out of something else and I'm just Nearest Available Target...
My in-laws were on track to pooh-pooh my PTSD. But my FIL stopped it all cold in its tracks by saying simply, "I wonder what it would do to me, if I remembered X incident from when I was such-and-such age." (He was an infant.) And suddenly Screeeeeeching Halt on the "Oh it can't be that bad Pollyanna only likes Happy Crackers" routine that characterizes my MIL's side of things.
It's horrible to feel invalidated.
Big hugs as you sort. Sorry to ramble. Just a long day with a lot of physical pain so me and Mr. Laptop are friends today.
I may or may not have mentioned my PTSD in passing to them, but... Not the sort of folks I expect understanding or meaningful compassion from... Pretty wrappings are their specialty.