How did it feel to skip the joint counseling this week? Did you feel like you were missing something? Was it a relief? Something else? Your own feelings can tell you a lot…

Did the missed session have any noticeable effect on him?

How did the double date go? What about the party? Did that get figured out in an acceptable way? Odd-funny how that was suddenly an issue for him. But, yes, live your own life, hold your boundaries, and don't feel bad to have some expectations of him.

Has your birthday happened already? How was it? Happy birthday from over here! Hope it was a good one. Given how you generally treat birthdays, his actions do seem out of sync. If he were my H, my thought would be that he's being classically consistently inconsistent as a means of feeling some sense of involvement and possibly control- which is something he may not even do consciously.

That's great advice from your therapist. Those kinds of questions sound like a good way to redirect the issue back to him, but in a proactive and respectful way.

Your assessments of the reasons you think he does what he does, are insightful. Especially about how he fears making mistakes and how that relates back to the way his parents treated him. Thinking about it, it may apply to my H too. His mother can postmortem anything into what you did wrong, or what could have been better, even if everything went fine For people like DD and myself, we politely acknowledge it for nothing more than the sake of moving on, but it's potentially a significant issue in his development. Nothing was ever good enough.

What you shared about how he wants a quick fix or some form of starting fresh, resonates too. A few times, when H has been very depressed, he's said that he wants a "reset button", which sounds sort of similar. He's focusing on missed opportunities and past mistakes, but is unable to accept that there's no choice but to accept what's done and move forward. And he just can't seem to get there for whatever reason. Being stuck like that means he's continuing to waste time/life.

This week has been as weird as any. He's back to looking more spacey and rattled in recent days. Hard to explain… it was almost like he had decent focus for a week or two, but now it's dropped off again- not necessarily firing on all cylinders. This is part of the pattern that has become regular, and somewhat predictable over the past few years. DD's school had their homecoming party this past weekend, and she talked about it constantly all last week, did dry runs with her outfit and hair several times, with him seemingly interacting and acknowledging what she was doing. On Saturday night when she was getting ready to go, he was baffled about what was going on. When I explained it, he got a little agro and paranoid- like things were being hidden from him. For probably obvious reasons, we don't over-share with him, but it was hardly hidden either- he's just so self focused, he often seems to have no idea of what's going on around him. That part gets frustrating- him not being tuned in, and then getting upset when he doesn't know what's going on- and doing so in a way that suggests someone else is to blame. There are many times, like this one, that he reminds me of other family members when they were in early dementia. I can't let myself think about that too long. And I have to continue to leave the possibility of passive aggression and manipulation on the table for my own sake.

I hope that things are going well where you are and that you had a great birthday!