A little Self-Reflection

Regarding all my relationships, I need to take a more proactive approach.  Less worrying about “what are they thinking about me” or “I need to defend myself” and more focus on “how can I be a friend to this person”  and “what can I give/offer”.  I can’t control what other people do, only what I do.   I’m trying to focus on positive things in the world, in my life, and even in me.  There are positives.  Perhaps those things help me get through the issues I’m facing?    One thing I’m realizing is:  I *am* empowered to make decisions about what I allow in my life.  Things may encroach in my life, but will it determine who I am/what I do?  Not necessarily…   Along those lines, I think I’ve allowed fear to hem me in.  I won’t attempt certain conversations or certain ideas because I’m afraid of the backlash/emotional consequences.  And so the ideas are lost.  I leave myself with one less avenue to go down.  But should this be?     An example is our finances.  Right now (and since I was laid off from my 1st job 15 yrs ago), our finances are a mess.  I didn’t realize I’d be marrying a spend-aholic.  DH didn’t file for unemployment after the recent layoff (probably due to some irrational principle of “not taking from the government”, although unemployment is not actually government money), so we just have my $.  But he’s spending as if we’re both working.  ($500 on a mattress we didn’t need, and $433 on blank DVDs to copy movies on.)  That put a big hole in the wallet & put us in the negatives (fortunately, some pending checks kept it from being an actual negative).  I’m trying to pay off our debts, but can’t do that with this kind of spending.   Whenever I’ve tried talking about it finances, it used to be “well, it’s my money”  or “I deserve it”.  But we need to pay our bills.  Anyhow, I’m trying to devise a back-up plan that I will communicate (because I’ve decided that no matter what, I don’t want to keep secrets).  I want to have an account in my name only from which the bills will be paid & perhaps I’ll transfer some money to the joint account for free-spending.  But this will leave the joint account showing what his actual deposits & withdrawals are.  And if the $ is gone, it’s gone.  But our bills will be paid.  Anyway, this is just one thing that fear has, in the past, kept me from doing.  What I need to do now is, instead of talking myself out of doing what is right, address the fear head-on & come up with a game plan for dealing with it.  That’s taking the bull by the horns!