Triggers
Had an unexpected trigger yesterday. Well, I guess triggers are usually unexpected, or they wouldn't be triggers, now would they? lol.
I woke up yesterday and received some text from my W as is often the case. We usually make contact as she generally leaves before I wake up. Well, this morning she told me something I didn't expect.
You see, our youngest son just got his driver's license. I really didn't want him to be asking all the time for the car. As it currently is, I'm only working part time on software testing. Though I occasionally need to go into the office, most of the time I work from home, so many days I don't need or use the car.
But I do like to have the car available in case I need it, instead of sitting up at the high school. So the rule is I would still drive him to school when needed rather than giving him the car for the day, as I never know when I'll need it and don't want to feel stranded at home.
Well, what my W texted me yesterday morning is that she made an executive decision that my son could take the car that day, as she figured I wouldn't be needing it.
Well, for one thing, she didn't know for sure I wouldn't be needing it. And I thought she knew what I wanted to have happen, as we'd discussed the above. So that was one issue, unrelated to triggers.
And I made the mistake of discussing this via text messaging. I should have called her, because she interpreted my text much more harshly than I intended, as apparently I came across as angry. While I was angry to a degree, I wasn't yelling or hitting things angry. I wasn't gritting my teeth angry. I was just annoyed that she would do this to me when I thought we'd had an agreement on how to handle this, and without my knowledge.
But what made it worse for me is that last part. That's the trigger part. The affair happened to me without my knowledge, behind my back. So I think I'm sensitive to anything that is done without my knowledge. And when she told me that she told him to go ahead and take the car, and she would deal with me, the first thing that came to my mind was "this is like the affair."
Not that it is on the same level, but the same go against my will and desires behind my back. Not that she intended to keep it secret, mind you. But she knew I wouldn't like it. She just didn't realize how much. But she did it anyway, knowing I wouldn't like it.
So on top of the feeling of being disrespected, there was the triggery feeling to the whole things, echoing feelings I felt during the affair.
Well, she was devastated and said she felt the worst yesterday she'd felt since dday. I was affected by it, but not as bad as she had imagined. So yesterday was a bad day for us, but by the end of it I think things had settled down and smoothed out.
But I think if it weren't for the triggeriness of it, I would have done what I've done many times before. I would have mumbled under my breath and chalked it up as another incident that she didn't care about my feelings, and that the kids were more important to her than me. And I would have stuffed it down as I had before. Instead now, I just let it out.
I could tell she was crying when I talked to her, but I sort of felt at least she knows what I'm feeling and we're discussing it instead of just bottling it up for a big fire sale later on. My mistake in the past has been to do that instead of getting it out in the open to deal with it. I guess because in times past it never did any good, because I was wrong whenever it came to stuff like that, so I got to the place where I just didn't talk about it rather than be in continual conflict with her.
So, maybe in this instance, triggers are more healthy. Better a few tears now than to create the conditions I might fall into an affair in a weak moment too, and make this even worse than it is now. And it can help our marriage, as I know now she wants to make me the most important person in her life, and this was an abberation, not the norm as it used to be. And for that, I'm thankful.
I woke up yesterday and received some text from my W as is often the case. We usually make contact as she generally leaves before I wake up. Well, this morning she told me something I didn't expect.
You see, our youngest son just got his driver's license. I really didn't want him to be asking all the time for the car. As it currently is, I'm only working part time on software testing. Though I occasionally need to go into the office, most of the time I work from home, so many days I don't need or use the car.
But I do like to have the car available in case I need it, instead of sitting up at the high school. So the rule is I would still drive him to school when needed rather than giving him the car for the day, as I never know when I'll need it and don't want to feel stranded at home.
Well, what my W texted me yesterday morning is that she made an executive decision that my son could take the car that day, as she figured I wouldn't be needing it.
Well, for one thing, she didn't know for sure I wouldn't be needing it. And I thought she knew what I wanted to have happen, as we'd discussed the above. So that was one issue, unrelated to triggers.
And I made the mistake of discussing this via text messaging. I should have called her, because she interpreted my text much more harshly than I intended, as apparently I came across as angry. While I was angry to a degree, I wasn't yelling or hitting things angry. I wasn't gritting my teeth angry. I was just annoyed that she would do this to me when I thought we'd had an agreement on how to handle this, and without my knowledge.
But what made it worse for me is that last part. That's the trigger part. The affair happened to me without my knowledge, behind my back. So I think I'm sensitive to anything that is done without my knowledge. And when she told me that she told him to go ahead and take the car, and she would deal with me, the first thing that came to my mind was "this is like the affair."
Not that it is on the same level, but the same go against my will and desires behind my back. Not that she intended to keep it secret, mind you. But she knew I wouldn't like it. She just didn't realize how much. But she did it anyway, knowing I wouldn't like it.
So on top of the feeling of being disrespected, there was the triggery feeling to the whole things, echoing feelings I felt during the affair.
Well, she was devastated and said she felt the worst yesterday she'd felt since dday. I was affected by it, but not as bad as she had imagined. So yesterday was a bad day for us, but by the end of it I think things had settled down and smoothed out.
But I think if it weren't for the triggeriness of it, I would have done what I've done many times before. I would have mumbled under my breath and chalked it up as another incident that she didn't care about my feelings, and that the kids were more important to her than me. And I would have stuffed it down as I had before. Instead now, I just let it out.
I could tell she was crying when I talked to her, but I sort of felt at least she knows what I'm feeling and we're discussing it instead of just bottling it up for a big fire sale later on. My mistake in the past has been to do that instead of getting it out in the open to deal with it. I guess because in times past it never did any good, because I was wrong whenever it came to stuff like that, so I got to the place where I just didn't talk about it rather than be in continual conflict with her.
So, maybe in this instance, triggers are more healthy. Better a few tears now than to create the conditions I might fall into an affair in a weak moment too, and make this even worse than it is now. And it can help our marriage, as I know now she wants to make me the most important person in her life, and this was an abberation, not the norm as it used to be. And for that, I'm thankful.
Replies
I can definitely see why you were/are upset. She assumes you would be ok with it. But if she is anything like me, she didn\'t realize t was a big deal until after the fact. Sometimes, unfortunately, we feel a sense of normalcy and we don\'t always think things through before acting in haste. It is a good lesson learned..but I\'m sure a difficult one for you both. I\'m hoping growth can come of it for you guys. You are in my prayers....
As a Mom, I think it\'s easier for us to give to the kids naturally. Not excusing the fact that you were left stranded but there are so many Mom things that go on inside of us that are hard to understand. We want to take care of everyone in our family. The hardest part in my Christian life is putting my H, before my kids. It just does not feel natural to me but I know it is Gods plan and that is what I am working toward. I am sorry this was a trigger...triggers are the worst! Someone gave me the advice of listing all my triggers and show them to my H., but I don\'t know all of my triggers. And for that fact I guess my H doesn\'t know either. It\'s way too late before either party realizes that I have fell in a rabbit hole. One thing is for sure! I bet my H won\'t cause the same trigger twice! Sometimes when I am yelling all the mean, awful things I feel like I need to say to him I start feeling very sorry for him. It must be hard having things thrown back in your face. It\'s at that moment I try my best to remember that his sin was against God and God alone. Hope today is better!
Thanks, Sherrie and Restless.
To give some history, there have been many instances of me feeling like I came low down on the list in relation to the kids. And I\'m not talking just in relation to the kid\'s needs. Yes, I understand you have to take care of them and I\'m part of that team. Or at least, should be.
And that was part of it. I wasn\'t part of the team. Early on my W didn\'t agree with me on disciple. And she had the habit of challenging me on it in front of the kids. Being that I wasn\'t with the kids near as much as she was, I realized it was a lose-lose situation. So to avoid conflict and confusing the kids by having her discuss discipline differences in front of them (as I was always wrong), I just backed off and tried to stay out of raising the kids as much as possible.
It is also where the habit came of when I wanted the kids to do something different, etc., I would run it through her instead of deal with the kids directly. That way I avoided the \"You\'re doing it wrong\" in front of them.
Then it was communicated in other ways. The two that stick out in my mind often was if I was talking to my W, and one of the kids came up to her and wanted to tell her something, she would interrupt our conversation, sometimes while I was in the middle of a sentence, deal with the kid\'s problem, and sometimes run off to help them, leaving me standing there. As I grew up, if I tried to interrupt my mother, I would get a stern look and scolded that I shouldn\'t interrupt her when she was speaking to someone else. I had to wait until she was done, then she would address my concerns.
And there were times, in recent years, that the kids were allowed to be rude to me and she defended them. Like when I was watching thing on the computer, and one of the kids came into the room and turned on the TV. Then I would complain and they would say I could go to another room. But that wasn\'t the point. The point was it was rude to come in and disrupt what someone else was doing. And when I said that, my W would come out and defend the kids\' right to watch TV, and I should go somewhere else. But the point that I was treated as important by both the kids, and then her, didn\'t register.
Throughout the kids growing up, I was made to feel as if it was her and the kids against me. And I was the one who was the cause of the family problems because I stayed aloof from the family and didn\'t get involved as much as she wanted me to. But these kinds of things happened all the time. There were actions that balanced it out the other way too, so I don\'t want to give the impression it was always like that, but frequently I was made to feel a second-class citizen of the family. I didn\'t feel that respected by her or the kids, even if I knew in my head that she loved me and the kids loved me. There was still that disrespect there.
If I\'d had the smarts, I would have sought help to fix those things in our marriage. But I think we both just figured, you know, all marriages have issues. You learn to deal with them, put up with them, and move on. So those walls grew over the years. Knowing what I know now, I would change some things, I would get help, I wouldn\'t settle for being excluded from the family. Not that I didn\'t try for a while, but I felt it was a losing battle. Best to fly the flag of surrender, admit this is the way it is, and move forward.
Years later, I now realize how many years we wasted living that way, when if I or her had the strength to see and follow through on it, we could have solved those problems back then. Not wait for an A to come along and give us the motivation to fix these things.
But that\'s where that feeling of \"putting the kids first\" comes from. This wasn\'t a bad example of it. My son wanted to take the car because it would make it easier for him to do some extra back and forth at the school, music practice, selling tickets for fund raiser, and back to play in the school drama pit.
It wasn\'t so much that he wanted or needed to use the car. I would likely have said yes if I\'d been asked. But it was the fact that I wasn\'t asked, that I was disrespected in an effort to take care of the kid\'s need that was bad on the face of it. Then that it was also a trigger feeling because it went behind my back and against my will to do it, only added to that.
But I think we\'re both fine now. It was a blurb on the road. She knows not to do that again. Like you said, hard to predict what will be a trigger until you run across it. But they will happen. We just have to learn to deal with them.