So it's been a "hell" of a week for me.... but the trigger wasn't my spouse, its my mother and my unfortunate knowledge of how much of a co-dependant I've become and this has transferred to my marriage. Essentially my mother left me a 26 min voicemail that unsettled me so much Im now realising it affected EVERYTHING this week. And now my husband has disappointed me today (again. This is a daily occurance) and I find myself in a victim spiral that I now know is part of what is feeding my "need to be needed" co-dependancy traits.... and I want out of the spiral and not sure how to get myself out of it.
How do yall ride this wave? When you're triggered by something that you're trying to work on/doing thr work and BAM it just spills to everything and you've started picking at everyone around you and being frustrated by every. Single. Thing.
I cant fix my marriage at this exact point, I can't leave right now, I'm trying to pull myself into the moment bc I'm missing out on good things and life bc im so clouded with bitterness and anger towards a woman that is definitely a narcissist and undiagnosed mental illness...all while being in a house wirh a husband and marriage that is teetering on a cliff and about to go smashing to the ground.
I just don't know what to do and how to unravel some of the cyclone that is happening in my own brain - basically do things that are in my control. Anyone feel this way and what did u do to get our of this spiral???
Support from family
Submitted by Swedish coast on
I don't know what your mother said in the voicemail, but I know how it is to have a very difficult situation with a spouse while extended family expects you to take every initiative with them too.
I've had serious disruption in my family of origin parallel to the decline of my ADD husband's mental health and the marriage. I wish I'd known the following:
1) No, family doesn't grasp the misery of your marriage. No they aren't very interested in learning about it. No they don't see you need support. No they don't feel you are worthy of protection or intervention. No they don't take your side.
2) Family still expects things of you, irrespective of how much compensatory work you do for your nuclear family, or of how otherwise difficult your marriage makes it for you to meet their expectations.
3) Family doesn't reciprocate socially. It's perhaps because they think it's bourgeois, or they don't feel like it, or they've never been taught it's what people do.
4) Family drifts apart if you don't gather everyone. There is no gathering initiative except your own.
5) Not until you've gone through divorce and can function as an independent individual, will family relations improve.
All this was too much, I couldn't believe or accept it.
If I have any advice from having lived this, it's to not get into conflict with everybody/your mother. Try to keep calm, explain in few words that your family situation is so strained you cannot solve anything else at the moment.
If trying to attribute good intentions to your mother, I could speculate she's (reasonably) worried about you, or about something she perceives about you, and it comes across as all about her. I've had a relative take out her anxiety about our nuclear family on me, saying I was a terrible parent and my family of origin were bad people with immoral values. I think she was just shaken by something she perceived (which in hindsight was probably my husband's severe, undiagnosed ADD and my desperate overcompensation for it).
Off the roller, it sounds like you're at a breaking point and everything is breaking around you. I'm so sorry. But there might still be a good future. Try to preserve relations, or just gently pause relations, even with those around you who don't understand your ADHD marriage and therefore right now make everything worse.
Dear friend, I hope for the best for you.
Why heck yes!
Submitted by c ur self on
It's control, and the refusal to accept the reality of others (No matter how screwed up those realities are)....Much of my suffering (as is your's at this point in time) has been my demand to make it better! Until you (as I had to) STOP attempting to fix or worry about things out of your control, you will never take a calm hold on your own life....Never feel like you must respond or address things that aren't respectful or fruitful...When adults demand to live out things we would never mimic or touch...We better not!.....Or there goes our life and peace.....
Bless you....I know you need a big hug.....((((((<3))))))
c