Congrats on your daughter graduating, that is definitely no small accomplishment! I bet that feels really great as a parent to watch your daughter have such a major achievement. I am sure, as always, with big events that there is an opportunity for things to be made harder so I hope everything went as smoothly as possible.


I like the way you dealt with the "I can't remember" card and I am going to employ that myself when it comes up again. You are totally right, it doesn't really matter whether they remember, because we do, and we are left remembering even if we wish we could forget so they must still be responsible for their words and actions.


I do feel my H is very good at blame shifting or with him it seems like he only sees the world from his perspective. We went on a family vacation at the beginning of the month in a situation where we were sharing a large house with members of my family. H and my mom don't get along very well which at this point is more because of my mom than him. He and my mother were having some conflict and when I was talking to him about how uncomfortable and upset it made me he said something to me like "thank you for reminding me to remember to think of your feelings in all of this." Which, on the one hand, is sort of upsetting because I feel like he should be considering my feelings when we are with my family but on the other hand, I felt like at least he acknowledged he forgot to think of how I was feeling, and he did manage to adjust his behavior somewhat.


My H just has all of this anger so his reactions to everything are out of proportion. While I will say he has been better lately about being less disconnected, i.e. more connected to our kids and me as well, he just cannot manage situations very well. If I were comparing it to what my 8 year old's therapist about my 8 year old, which is also true for my H, is that H has no frustration tolerance. It is like he is living in a constant state of being pushed over the edge. So one little thing makes him explode.

I had talked with my therapist recently about how crazy it is that it has been about a year since my H proclaimed to me that "he had to move out or he was going to die" and "only another woman could fix him" and essentially all of the things he said were things that he had no intent on following through on. At the time, I never would have predicted that we would still be living together and married. I have learned so much in the past year, such as not to believe anything he says and to just focus on his actions. We had a conversation recently about something involving us spending time together and I called him on what he was saying and said you said you had no interest in being married to me, has something changed. I am sure you can guess he denied saying anything like that, but said he wanted to spend time together again. My therapist always challenges me on how do I feel about that, am I taking him seriously, do I trust him? And I think those are all valid points. I told her I am not putting any stake in anything he says, judging him only by his actions and remembering nothing is permanent. I think that is the best way to deal with these "changes of heart."


I wanted to ask you if that is what you do when things are better/your H is better? What is your best strategy for not letting yourself get caught up in the pendulum swings?

I hope all is well with you and things are going smoothly!