Quote:
Originally Posted by BNLsMOM
I can't tell if he is being manipulative. If he is, I don't think he is consciously doing it. It could be that his world feels so out of control that he is trying to control things like sex and love. I don't know...
He said that when I have episodes that I turn into a ***** and that it is hard to live with "that kind of person."
I just don't know what he wants, and I won't change myself anymore to try to please him. All that does is lead to depression and resentment. I have work to do on myself and I am doing it. He has work to do on himself and he has to want to do it. I can't make him. It is possible that we would have to be separated in order to do the work. I think we are going to sleep in separate rooms. I have a guest room/art room that has become a junk room, but I can clean it out and make it my own space.
|
Sleeping in separate rooms is a big step, because it will be visible to the children.
When I was little, my parents slept in separate rooms. It is not that they did not have sex - they did (as I learned later from both of them), but my dad would come to my mom's room for it. He smoked in the bedroom - actually, in bed - and she could not tolerate it so they made separate sleeping arrangements. I felt really bad because all my peers whose apartments I visited regularly had a master bedroom in the apartment shared by the two parents, and I was the only kid whose parents had separate bedrooms. I remember to this day how sad it made me feel. But, trying to be analytical about this memory, I think that I probably sensed the lack of warmth in my parents' relationship (they ultimately went through an ugly divorce) and that made me feel sad and incomplete and inferior to my peers. The separate sleeping arrangement was just a manifestation of the problem rather than the problem itself, so I am not trying to deter you from cleaning the junk room.