She broke her toe, I told her I didn't love her.

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

In a show of extreme dissociation and lack of sympathy I told my dBPDgf that I didn't love her because she was mad I didn't come home from work when she broke her toe.

She hit it off of our sons high chair and texted me about it.  I didn't take it as that much of a big deal, I knew that there wasn't much you could do, so since our finances are horrid, I stayed at work.  an hour before I left work, she called and told me that she wouldn't be talking to me or her sons the rest of the night because she was mad at all of us.  She said she came downstairs to her sons "trying to kill each other" over a board game and flipped out on them for not caring about her toe, using the "f" word once, which she later regretted and apologized for.  And she was mad that I didn't take a lunch and come home, or leave work.  I immediately shut her off when I got her "I'm not talking to you" response.  At one point, my boss came and started talking to me in the middle of her rant, and I just put the phone to my chest and listened to him, without telling her to hold on.

It was silence when I got home, and I felt like I'd walked into a war zone, but maybe that was just me.  I made the boys dinner, and her as well and got them ready for the rest of the night while she sat in her room and wrote. 

When all was said and done, we argued for 5 hours, until 2:30 in the morning.  At the start I was completely flippant and told her if I wasn't meeting her needs to find someone else who would, and at one point she asked if I loved her, because my first reaction wasn't to run home and make sure she was ok.  I told her I used to, and that I still had a lot of feelings for her.  She asked if I had any emotions, and told me shes never seen emotions from me.  I told her what she's put me through in this relationship has made me shut down my emotions.  I couldn't articulate it, and also bit my tongue about a lot, even in the middle of the fight, so all I could come up with was that she criticized the way I looked in a couple shirts, which led to me being to thin skinned and how she has to watch everything she says around me.  I ended up apologizing and telling her that I did love her and her sons, whom at one point I referred to as "her kids", which completely threw her for a loop, because that statement meant I didn't see us as a family.

Thats not 5 hours worth of content, but its the gist. it's just so intense and real in the middle of these things, and I say things I regret and AM in the wrong, and I just don't know what to do.  And then I recap it in my head and I go, well, this perspective isn't wrong, and I shouldn't have apologized for that, but she reacts like I'm pouring salted lemon juice in a sunburned flesh wound.  And yes, the terrible statements I made we bad, and I was REALLY unsympathetic.  These are the worst of the fights, the ones where she's just going off are the same intensity.  She says she wants me to come to her and tell me things that are upsetting me before they build up.  But I honestly feel like I will be criticizing her as much as she criticizes me.  More so, even.  Every time she insults her kids, or me, or freaks out about something small, or stomps off.  I mean, I feel like if I called her on everything, it would be like trying to wrangle her 7 year old, who constantly throughs tantrums and fights our authority.  I really feel like I would have to re-rear her to correct the behavior.  Even down to her parenting methods, which she has said is how she thinks she should be parenting, I would have constantly be rebuking her.  And some of it IS my thin skin, but I can't see a lot of this NOT being detrimental to her kids, and me, and eventually my son.

When I told her to leave, and left it there, she started taking her things down from the walls.  I went into the kitchen to do dishes and my mind raced with everything.  Fear, happiness, anticipation, concern, etc.  I thought about it actually happening, her actually leaving, where would she go? Would I get custody of our son, or would I have only the weekends?  Is she going to raise him alone and I have a minor affect on him?  What about the next guy she rips into his life?  Will her sons cope?  Is she going to rip them out of school again?  How is all of this going to affect them, when they're already dealing with so much?  And almost everything else.  But I really don't remember being upset over losing her.  I remember thinking that I would probably collapse in a mess of sadness eventually after they'd left, but it was if I'd lost my son.  I don't know that I thought about mourning her very much.

I could go on and on, but I just needed to share that, yet again, I've really lost my sympathy and empathy, it seems.

[Winglessfallen]

In a show of extreme dissociation and lack of sympathy I told my dBPDgf that I didn't love her because she was mad I didn't come home from work when she broke her toe.

She hit it off of our sons high chair and texted me about it.  I didn't take it as that much of a big deal, I knew that there wasn't much you could do, so since our finances are horrid, I stayed at work.  an hour before I left work, she called and told me that she wouldn't be talking to me or her sons the rest of the night because she was mad at all of us.  She said she came downstairs to her sons "trying to kill each other" over a board game and flipped out on them for not caring about her toe, using the "f" word once, which she later regretted and apologized for.  And she was mad that I didn't take a lunch and come home, or leave work.  I immediately shut her off when I got her "I'm not talking to you" response.  At one point, my boss came and started talking to me in the middle of her rant, and I just put the phone to my chest and listened to him, without telling her to hold on.

It was silence when I got home, and I felt like I'd walked into a war zone, but maybe that was just me.  I made the boys dinner, and her as well and got them ready for the rest of the night while she sat in her room and wrote. 

When all was said and done, we argued for 5 hours, until 2:30 in the morning.  At the start I was completely flippant and told her if I wasn't meeting her needs to find someone else who would, and at one point she asked if I loved her, because my first reaction wasn't to run home and make sure she was ok.  I told her I used to, and that I still had a lot of feelings for her.  She asked if I had any emotions, and told me shes never seen emotions from me.  I told her what she's put me through in this relationship has made me shut down my emotions.  I couldn't articulate it, and also bit my tongue about a lot, even in the middle of the fight, so all I could come up with was that she criticized the way I looked in a couple shirts, which led to me being to thin skinned and how she has to watch everything she says around me.  I ended up apologizing and telling her that I did love her and her sons, whom at one point I referred to as "her kids", which completely threw her for a loop, because that statement meant I didn't see us as a family.

Thats not 5 hours worth of content, but its the gist. it's just so intense and real in the middle of these things, and I say things I regret and AM in the wrong, and I just don't know what to do.  And then I recap it in my head and I go, well, this perspective isn't wrong, and I shouldn't have apologized for that, but she reacts like I'm pouring salted lemon juice in a sunburned flesh wound.  And yes, the terrible statements I made we bad, and I was REALLY unsympathetic.  These are the worst of the fights, the ones where she's just going off are the same intensity.  She says she wants me to come to her and tell me things that are upsetting me before they build up.  But I honestly feel like I will be criticizing her as much as she criticizes me.  More so, even.  Every time she insults her kids, or me, or freaks out about something small, or stomps off.  I mean, I feel like if I called her on everything, it would be like trying to wrangle her 7 year old, who constantly throughs tantrums and fights our authority.  I really feel like I would have to re-rear her to correct the behavior.  Even down to her parenting methods, which she has said is how she thinks she should be parenting, I would have constantly be rebuking her.  And some of it IS my thin skin, but I can't see a lot of this NOT being detrimental to her kids, and me, and eventually my son.

When I told her to leave, and left it there, she started taking her things down from the walls.  I went into the kitchen to do dishes and my mind raced with everything.  Fear, happiness, anticipation, concern, etc.  I thought about it actually happening, her actually leaving, where would she go? Would I get custody of our son, or would I have only the weekends?  Is she going to raise him alone and I have a minor affect on him?  What about the next guy she rips into his life?  Will her sons cope?  Is she going to rip them out of school again?  How is all of this going to affect them, when they're already dealing with so much?  And almost everything else.  But I really don't remember being upset over losing her.  I remember thinking that I would probably collapse in a mess of sadness eventually after they'd left, but it was if I'd lost my son.  I don't know that I thought about mourning her very much.

I could go on and on, but I just needed to share that, yet again, I've really lost my sympathy and empathy, it seems.