I'm tired of cooking/preparing 3 meals a day. It's just the two of us but boy oh boy can that woman eat!! She stays slimish, I get fattish. It's bad enough I do everything here much less start making her one thing and me the other. At times I feel guilty when I buy her fast food cuz of the nutritional value....not to mention I eat it too.
I have had my fill of head games for one lifetime.If it can't just be straightforward and honest then they can just rotate on a wire brush for all I care.
I so often feel like I've done something wrong when all along I think it's they that have the problem. It only took me 57 years to figure this all out. Better late than
never I guess.
I even read an article tonight that stated toxic people seek out the more reasonable. So maybe I should just keep to myself and thwart any attempts at friendship from people. I'm so weary of being nice all the time and having it twisted and turned into something it's not.
As I said CM, it would take pages to give you examples. Suffice it to say, that some of these people are relatives and some of them are people I've somehow drawn to me. I may have to get the invisible TREAT ME LIKE CRAP sign off of my forehead, back, where ever it might be lasered off.
There, that was a vague rant anyhow.
Ross Rosenberg has written a helpful book called The Human Magnet Syndrome. It will help you understand why you attract folks who are more self-focused, and learn what to do about it.
I don't know how many copies of DH's death certificate I have sent out many more than once.
Many many years ago my good friend and I were having a good b*tch (as only really comfortable friends can) about our equally good friend V. We loved her very much, we agreed, but oh! - not another of her New Year's Eve parties! Never again!
We further agreed that what was wrong with these parties was the people who went to them. The hopeless puppy dog single fathers, the runaway battered wives, the intense political wonks, the macrobiotic eating pilates teachers and the terrifying, often slightly nuts, international waifs and strays.
"Why are all her friends so *weird*?" we asked.
Then we looked at each other, and burst out laughing. All her friends? - not us, obviously!
Now I've read back what I just wrote and it sounds like I'm the one with the problem but that's the problem. I know I'm not. I just attract mean spirited people. I always have. I went through a period where I had three back to back emotionally abusive boyfriends. I think that time period just broke my spirit. The only wonderful boyfriend I ever had was when I was eighteen. He was a gem. He was "The One" and he was killed. Maybe, who knows, that was what set me off on this path of destructive relationships.
Anyhow, sorry for the speech. I've probably revealed too much about myself. But I just don't want to be anyone's whipping girl anymore. So it's either learn how to live alone or learn why this keeps happening and nip it in the bud.
Good for you! I wish you the best in your journey. Yes, there is such a thing as being too nice. You can be too nice for your own good. You are right, you are not the problem. The problem sounds like it is a lack of strong boundaries that you were likely never encouraged to have as a child.
I've ordered a book for my own issues, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. When I got almost into my 30ties, my mom told me that she knew that she did not meet my emotional needs as a child, but claimed she would do better with future grandchilren which she did not. She said this to me at a time when I was in a lot of pain and I found myself shocked at why she said. The next statement was even more shocking. She said that she knew the way she raised me was going to cause me a lot of pain in life, but that she could not help it. Well, I shut down at that point and she did not elaborate and never brought it up again. She said this when she was 56 and died 5 years ago. She told my wife and I after we got married that it took her two weeks to get me back to how she wanted me to be after I visited my dad. That's abuse.
I need to read that magnet book also for I've been an easy target for self-absorbed people in my life down through the years.
I probably didn't have good emotional boundaries growing up. My Mom was a single Mother and did the best she could with seven children but I was basically a latch-key kid growing up. I'm sure you've heard the expression but if not it just means that I'd come home from school most days and there would be nobody home. You'd think with seven kids there would be but everyone was off doing their own things most days.
I would never point a finger at my Mom. She did the best she could, but with no husband and a schizophrenic son, needless to say it wasn't easy for her.
Anywho, I've already said too much. ..............:)
If only the clever were good,
The world would be better than ever
We possibly thought it could."
I think that's by Christina Rossetti but I'm not sure and I can't be arsed to look it up.
The thing is, when you are, say, a belligerent and prickly teenager, you read that and it dawns on you that perhaps being good is just as important as being clever.
It isn't until you are older, and perhaps have a better grasp of what feminism means, when it isn't just a campaigning slogan for example, that you come to appreciate that being good is in fact, in itself, clever. As in, productive, beneficial to oneself and one's neighbours, conducive to a just and a prosperous society. That kind of thing. It is those who take advantage of others' kindness and abuse it who are being not only not good but also not clever.
Gershun, you are not the one with the problem. Please don't change yourself. Add boundaries by all means, but don't start thinking that sympathy and openness aren't virtues.
Why should it be, I'm just musing here, that you remember how uncomfortable you were about having lost it with that unreasonable, bullying woman instead of remembering what a bitch she was? You weren't in the wrong. She was. Didn't your boss reassure you of that?
She probably thought herself clever. H'm. Did she get better service than your more agreeable clients?
cmag - both those books sound worth reading. Thank you. I can identify with the childhood emotional neglect.
cm - nice quote and by Elizabeth Wordsworth, I looked it up as it didn't sound like C Rossetti to me.
Not in a bad, self-absorbed way, but just recognizing that we have needs too. It's taken me years to learn to set proper boundaries, and it's still very much a work in progress. For example, I used to have "friends" who would impose on my time often, wanting money, favors, etc. and I thought that to have and be a friend, it required me to say yes all the time or else I just wasn't holding up my end of the agreement. Until I realized that some of these "friendships" were one sided (me doing all the work). I've also had those like Gershun mentioned that only want to be there when I'm miserable. Shoot, my own family is like that. They thrive on drama, but when my life is peaceful and happy, they can't stand to hear about it. I guess as they say, misery loves company.
Another thing I've had to work on is not worrying so much about what other people think or about making them angry with me. I find it hard to make new friends sometimes because of the fear of being judged, not to mention my trust issues.
I think it's all just unlearning some of the dysfunctional responses that we learned as children or young adults.
I guess we could read it at the same time and send each other private messages back and forth?
Golden, I agree with all you stated. I also think that in my case, growing up without a father figure probably had me searching for that approval from the wrong type of men. I've heard that girls who grow up without fathers tend to look in the wrong places for that self-esteem that their father may have instilled in them.
It hit me hard for a few minutes, that I'll never have a bio child. That's ok. I'm trying to convince myself that it's A-OK, and adoption is a wonderful way to have a family.
I'm sad. But I'll be ok.
I finally gave in and started hormone replacement about four mths. ago. It has helped tremendously. I know the risks but I couldn't go on the way I was.
You don't even look 30 on your avatar!
You kinda look like a cat!
Remember, menopause is not a disease.
It is A-OK.
But you are looking kinda pumkiny still on your avatar.
(punky?)
I bet you did not even have time to vote, or see the horses run over the weekend.
Was it the Breeders Cup?
you're right, I saw none of breeders cup and barely saw mom on the weekend, just too tired to move
I did make it to the polls by 7:50 pm and marked my ballot
Get some rest, there are more horse races coming up.
On the way home from work tonight, I had hubs collect lawn signs with the names of potential city council members. It was fun at the fime, but I just don't know what to do with them now, lol.
It's the quality of debate that's so intriguing to an outsider. Or, even more, the wildly disparate qualities of debate.
Over here (and I'm sure in your Houses too) we have rules about Parliamentary language. You are, for example, not allowed to call a fellow Member of Parliament "a liar". It didn't take MPs long to reflect that there was nothing to stop them saying, though, that their opponents' pants were on fire - I'd have to go to Hansard to find out if that loophole got officially closed up, and I haven't time. I think it was John Nott who coined the phrase "economical with the truth," as an apology for his own department at the time actually, but it has since become a simple ironic euphemism.
The late Tam Dalyell of blessed memory - Baronet, Old Etonian, unabashed communist - won my heart in spite of his politics when he attacked Mrs Thatcher with "the honourable lady is a cad... a bounder..." Only a far left member of parliament could get away with sounding like Bertie Wooster.
But Disraeli was the nonpareil: "The honourable gentleman disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head."
Occasionally and almost as if by stealth, we hear from Members of Congress and Senators and Governors of all stripes on late night discussion programmes and they are often *so* impressive: articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, constructive. Much better than our lot! I hardly know how to put the question, but... do you lock them all away in a cellar or something come nominations time?
You're not going to turn into Dorker. Tell yourself that, right now, very firmly.
Rather than a nice apartment or assisted living in principle, I should try to nail it down to somewhere specific. Find "The One"; so that when you get round to an ultimatum you're asking her to accept something that's really very nice instead of a vaguely threatening idea.
Thank you for voting! Harder to do if one is a caregiver.
CM,
In Southern California, no cellars, just bomb shelters. However, we do have intelligent and articulate speech writers.
At one City Council meeting, a member said: "There is a special place in hell reserved for [predatory landlords]."
Katie,
That's right, you are not Dorker. First off, you don't post enough!