BPDFamily.com

... that we seem to live in two different realities.  In his reality, I am lazy and selfish and don't care about his feelings and put everyone else's above his.  In his reality, he does some housework, cooks, and I just sit on the couch, napping.  I nap all the time it seems (he is confusing me with his mom who literally lives in a loveseat, does not move, sleeps there, struggles to even get up to head to the bathroom.  She has a bed, it's just not by the front door, so she wants to sleep in front of the door so she doesn't have to walk an extra 20 feet from the bed).  In his reality, he works full time, and I do something in an office 40+ hours a week that takes energy away from him.  In his reality, I run off all the time leaving him alone at home with no food and don't take care of any responsibilities.  He works 40 hours a week, so it's his right to plop down and play video games till he's good and ready for dinner, nothing else should need doing.  Anything he finds embarrassing, even if it's not related to him but a friend doing it must be stopped.  And I'm a bad wife if I don't stop them.  In his reality diabetes is a punishment for being a bad person, so he might as well be a bad person.  He fears to get his legs chopped off from diabetes but insists on eating donuts.  He rants about others not exercising, but won't do it himself.  To him, exercise is something you do for 1 week before an event, and then rant about how it just doesn't work.  It's not a lifestyle you maintain.  

My reality:  I work 40+ hours a week as a mid-level manager of a tiny but overloaded department on a college campus.  If I screw up, people can lose funding, so there's a level of stress involved in what I do.

I am to put in grocery orders or go by myself - he will do neither.  If I get too busy and miss the window for pick orders for groceries or I am too sick to do it, we have a few days when it's evident, but I really try. I do ALL dishes, by hand since we have no machine, all laundry (got tired of him keeping me up till 2 am ranting about his needing to be done when he had all day to do it.  Saves soap and water anyway).  I sweep, mop, clear things away, take out the trash 95% of the time.  He takes out the trash less than once a month.  And leaves large things sitting on the floor by the can, so what was the point?  I cook most of the time.  And I am the one to go run all errands - take out food?  I go get it.  Groceries, drop off donations of clothes to clean house?  I do it.  Pet care, I do it.  Once in a blue moon, he will see that the pet water is out and needs filling, or that I'm behind in litter clean up.  He may fill the water, he will not touch the litter.  Meet with repairmen?  I am the one who takes off days from work to meet with them, or to take cars in for work... he is embarrassed to have another man see he can't do it himself.

I have been increasingly exhausted for the last few years.  Turns out I have an immune disorder with ridiculously wide-ranging symptoms.  It's making me forgetful, causes migraines, mild aphasia, makes you feel like you've got the flu, makes you so tired, crying tired, makes your skin hurt, body ache has given me asthma as an adult, can cause random anaphylaxis to any trigger and in spite of this, I have done my best to keep up with all of the above.  I am just 4 months into treatment, I'm getting better, but even a small cold will set me back, and I need to watch triggers now to keep myself as well as possible.  And I cannot get him to understand I am not invalid, but I am not well.  He gets diabetes, I read everything I can about them.  He gets kidney stones, I read more and learn how to stop them (his low calcium was causing one type, we'd cut milk because it's high in glucose).  I tell him what's wrong with me, he gets embarrassed/upset I carry and EPI around in my purse now.  I don't feel I can talk to him about this, he can't handle it.  Won't.  

I love them him he can be when he is better regulated.  He has the same cold/bug I do, but where I just wanted sleep yesterday, he wanted to vent his spleen all damn day and tried to find things to pick fights over, even making up things to perpetuate one.  I've not caught that before, but it hit me last night that he flat out lied to make me the bad guy, all while accusing me of lying.  I'd asked if he wanted to order out - I was not feeling up to cooking, he rarely cooks, especially not if he's sick.  He mentioned chicken soup, I'm thinking a can, and relieved, then he states he wants chicken and dumplings and tells me not to cook it wrong this time.  I use a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store when possible, and whatever other chicken we have when not.  The store chicken tastes bests, I can throw in the skin, can has no skin.  He insists I can mimic the skin taste if I just don't cut corners and get lazy while cooking.  I made the mistake of stating that rotisseries chicken will always taste better.  He blows up.  Screams at me for "anticipating" what he wants?  (WTH?  How does that even figure?)  

Later, he insisted he was planning to go cook it until I ruined things, he invented the recipe (nope, I got it from your mom, and I've tinkered over the years, in my admitted messed up memory, I've never seen him cook this dish, alone, on his own).  

And now I see how his reality is skewed.  In some part of his brain he actually believes this, that he does chores (when? why am I so tired, then?) that he cooks regularly (again, when? 10 years ago?) that I am just a lazy piggish slob (he is embarrassed that I have my immune and hormonal issues that GASP cause perspiration on my forehead and such, and that lint rolling is not a task I remember most mornings and he hogs the bathroom where the lint roller is, anyway.  This makes me a pig.  Even though I am the one who keeps the house at a decent level of clean, I change sheets, I bathe every damn day.  He can go from Thursday night to Monday without a shower and I'm the pig.  And in spite of this, when he's in toxic shame mode, he admits all the things he damn well knows he doens't do.  Ugh.

Frustrating... I think it's fair to want equality and want shared reality with your spouse ... But yeah how he views things and what he admits to is his domain. I remember a book that calls this "owning reality"... He doesn't own it... Just don't lose energy trying to get him to admit it; you already know what you see and live whether or not he validates it. In my case I vascillate between getting angry about all my unmet needs and then just deciding to try to live with it but it's not really sustainable...

I rarely challenge his reality unless it’s very very important.  How chicken and dumplings is cooked does not fall into this category.  I just was slow in my reaction times to stop the start of invalidation and he pounced.

And he seems to have vented his spleen and gotten past his fever, his mood is almost baseline right now.  So meh.  Crappy day is over, see how long before the next one.  Gonna see his doc Monday, know his sugars are going to come back high, he treats it like a trip to the principal’s office, or a disapproval from his mom.  I can tell there’s some issue there, seeing some female authorities as mom by proxy.  In a way he feels he needs to make doctors ‘proud’? And feels he failed if he can’t?  I’m not even sure how much of this is poor diet and how might just be his diabetes is just worse and this current meds aren’t enough.  Sigh.  As hard as life is with him, I don’t want his predictions of dying by 50 or 60 to be true :(