Turkish
BOARD ADMINISTRATOR

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Gender: 
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Other
Relationship status: "Divorced"/abandoned by SO in Feb 2014; Mother with BPD, PTSD, Depression and Anxiety: RIP in 2021.
Posts: 12183
Dad to my wolf pack
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« on: December 19, 2013, 03:12:28 PM » |
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The conversation came out about her mom having a tough time watching the kids sometimes 10 hours a day before either of us picked them up. I suggested that if it was so stressful on her mom, then we should look for alternative childcare. She shot that down, but then reiterated that her mom commented on how tiring it was. Here, I didn't say much, since she has her own co-dependent FOG going on with her family... .a lot of which my X chooses to take on herself (to feel valued, I guess, but hard to break a decades long cycle).
She said her mom watches them a lot. i said, sure, but we pay her (less than outside childcare, but still almost a grand/mo. for both kids), and that that was why I felt we needed to watch the kids ourselves on weekends instead of pawning them off on her mom like we used to do now and then. She said that was "to work on our r/s!" I replied that we chose to have not one, but two children, and that our prime responsibility was to our kids, not to ourselves. We were adults and parents, and spending time with our children was our #1 priority. She didn't respond.
I then said that I didn't think it was right for her to go start volunteer work on the weekend with a new project if it meant taking time away from the kids. She kind of got me after that when she said, "I told you it was a paid job. I just volunteered that one day to see if I would like it, and it would bring in extra income. You didn't listen to what I said!" I did offer a weak apology... .I may have thrown something in about not abandoning our kids to fill our own selfish needs on our own as well. A verbal jab at her going out, of course. No response. In reality, I realize that an issue like this could be worked out in a mostly healthy r/s, but it was already downhill by then. Her cheating/abandonment script was already into the prologue.
Oops, maybe so... .or maybe she didn't explain it, because she used to gaslight me like this, so I became hyper aware of things she said, and I caught her pulling this before. I let it slide, not having recorded proof that she actually explained it in so much detail. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. All in all, I started paying attention to things SHE would forget that I told her, but I never threw those things back in her face, because I realized that we have busy lives and we can't be expected to record every conversation verbatim in our heads.
The quality of mercy... .something I figured out about three years ago (finally) that she
utterly lacked.
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