Couch 179: Even-numbered days in a year

Do you think the therapist can tell you that specifically?

There's just all kinds of kinky housework going on....

I don’t know if every time you want to make someone else happy is considered dependent, is it? For example...if you have a young child..and that child wants to go on an outing that you don’t want to go on..but you take the child to make them happy..then I don’t see that as being dependent. I see co dependent as constantly striving to make someone else happy despite what you want. It’s like a constant pull in their direction. Like say if someone is stuck in a loveless marriage and doesn’t leave because they are just used to having that person around all the time-is a form of co dependency. I think your happiness should always come before anyone else’s happiness. I don’t know what I’m talking about ArtieSwimsOn. I am just trying to respond to what you’ve written without knowing much history so I don’t know if any of what I said makes much sense. I wish you peace.

I very much doubt there is a hard and fast line. It will vary from person to person and relationship to relationship. You have to figure it out for yourself.

I also don’t understand why you’re so frustrated with Lulabelle over this? Isn’t this the kind of thing she should be pointing out to you?

You don’t know the half of it.

Yeah, I mean if you guys are into housework of any kind- I have a running TO DO list up for grabs. Bring the kink or leave it- your choice.

I should go to bed. It’s close to 11pm in my part of the world..and well.. there’s that thing called work in the AM.

i was talking with h about all of this over the weekend. we do have some good talks in the car on road trips. he said that sometimes i have offended people when i think i'm saying or doing the right thing. he said i always try to overvalue other people and undervalue myself.

ColorOutside, thats a different story, at least nowadays? Its not a mystery or a secret where babies come from (like it was in my day!), so if you have kids, you have some earned responsibility towards them, IMHO.

There was succh a good story in the nytimes about loooooove today:

How to Know if You Should Spend Forever Together - The New York Times

Well I guess not. H told me I have to draw my own line. But my response to that is still, even if I do know my own line, somebody else can misinterpret what I mean anyway so what's the damn point.

oh i miss ALL the fun!!!!

But when you think that way you are still trying to make other people happy.

To me the damn point is that you can't control how other people react or what they do. But knowing one's own lines makes it so you are not at the mercy of guessing (both when you are right and when you are wrong) about what to do to control other people and to help give up trying to do so.

I will read that article after some sleep. Thanks for sharing it here.

I think the whole point is you hold your own line.

Others are responsible for holding theirs, and can take a flying leap. Well, maybe not the flying leap part, but you can't hold your line AND everyone else's. It's impossible.

(Ahem. I realize may be walking a thin line here with the preaching-practicing thing....)

I have ironing AND baseboards to do if you're looking for a little action.

Well, like cooking. I dont wanna cook for someone who says, "well i didnt ask you to cook. I woulda been happy with mcdonalds for dinner every night." Here you think you are contributing, AND it makes you happy to do what youre doing - or did i just marry an ahole?
Eta - never mind, after 40 yrs of t, i can answer that myself now!

Hey hey - this is not an x-rated site. One or the other will do. AND pushes the envelope - it is a slippery slope.

To me - this sort of depends - I like cooking but if I am expecting the other person to be overly grateful for me doing the thing I say I like doing, then that may be a bridge too far. I like cooking but if the other person feels like me cooking at them is too much pressure - they are free to go get mcdonald's if they want.

this makes sense. the only problem is that i wasn't ever aware that i was trying to control other people. i swear i wasn't. that's what makes this so hard.


oh and i wasn't cursing at you, i'm sorry. i'm just frustrated.

now this makes me ask. i feel like it is the courteous thing to do, to apologize for sounding like i was cursing at you. to me this seems like the right thing to do and polite. But this is a perfect example - am i apologizing because i want to control whether or not you are mad at me?? or is it my line, so to speak, that recognizes i shouldn't have said "what's the damn point" because it sounded like i was cursing at you and i owed you an apology?

Yeah i just dont need them to be a butt to me. Thats what i learned in t. How to tell when someone was being a butt or lying.

(((Artie))) when i was in my CODA days, my gf told me i was passive aggressive and very manipulative, and i have to say she was more right than wrong - since then i have have overcorrected and become TOO assertive? Too direct? But before, it was kind of a result of a) thinking there was only one right way so the other person MUST be thinking the same thing and b) i couldnt HANDLE the truth - i was just too embarrassed to say stuff - like my gf used to hug me so tight i couldnt breathe, but i couldnt tell her that straight out!

that just hurt so much to hear t ask me if i think she can't take care of herself and other stuff that's not even in the same universe as how i was consciously thinking. i wonder if i really unconsciously think that, like do i really think that about people? do i really think that everyone else out there is a f'd up as i am? and what does that say about me?! t said something last week that really hurt. something about me making people rescue me or something. do i do that?

i have given myself a headache. g'night folks.

Thats interesting. It sounds like your t is getting into bad introject or bad object stuff? Im not really clear on this, but it reminds me of when my t and i both use to yell at each other, "you are acting just like lunas mother!" Which would mean - now that i read what your t said - we were diminishing the other person in the same way as my mother would. And yes that gets into countertransference etc but i believe we can situate the source of that attitude in the mother - not the t or the client - we just borrow it; we imitate it; we slip into it unconsciously; its how we were formed.