Perception vs. Reality: How were you perceived vs how you really are?

[vortex of confusion]

I have seen a couple of threads lately talking about things that ex's said or did that had us wondering if we are crazy, messed up, or something else.

I decided to do a bit of a mental exercise to compare how I was with ex versus reality. I am basing the "his perception" on his actions as well as his words.

His Perception:

I was too demanding and had unrealistic expectations.

Reality:

I ask for very little. I often times have people get upset with me because I am prone to figure stuff out for myself without asking for help. I have had people tell me that I didn't ask enough of him. I was letting him get off too easy. He is the one that would text and email me constantly. If I didn't respond, he would get freaky and want to know what I was doing. Heck, I was looking through old e-mails and saw where there would be a string of 60 or 70 messages exchanged between us during my 4 hour work shift. I accepted that as "normal" and would stop what I was doing to respond no matter what I was doing because I didn't want to deal with him questioning me about what I was doing. When I was at work, I was working. When I was with the kids, I was with the kids. Before things went south between us, my down time was spent on Facebook or on parenting forums. He was the one that was doing questionable stuff. If he wasn't messaging me all the time, he was playing games or messaging other women.

His Perception:

When he was chasing women, he would tell them that I stopped saying "I love you."

Reality:

I cut back on how often I told him "I love you" because I wasn't feeling very loving towards him. Saying "I love you" to him had become an automatic habit because he needed so much constant reassurance. The number of times that he wanted/needed to hear it was NOT reasonable in my opinion. The reality is that I am a very loving person. I like to say "I love you" because I genuinely mean it. Whenever I talk to my best female friend, my siblings, my parents, and anybody else that is super close to me, I end things with "I love you."

His perception:

He would tell the women that he was chasing and who knows who else that I was nice around the kids but was a raging b***h when the kids weren't around.

Reality:

Yes, I have lost it on him a time or two. The times that I have lost it were usually those times when I think any normal person would have reacted. I have been going back in my memory bank to look at the times when I felt like I lost it and overreacted. One of those times was when I discovered that he was messaging some woman and telling her horrible things about me. The two of them were making plans of sending each other inappropriate videos and he was taking pictures of his stuff in the bathroom at work so he could send those pictures to her. Yes, I was livid. Yes, I flipped my lid and overreacted. I don't know of any person that could discover something like that and NOT get really hurt and really upset.

Yes, I have exploded. One thing that I know about myself is that I only explode when I am pushed too far. Most people would have exploded or walked away a lot sooner. My biggest problem is staying around too long. I have boundaries and I try to enforce them. When somebody continually tramples on them and treats me horribly, I will overreact in an attempt to enforce my boundaries and protect myself. I don't go straight to freak out. My default is to try to communicate and figure things out peacefully. If I am repeatedly ignored and pushed, then, yes, I will overreact.

His perception:

He repeatedly tells the kids, ":)on't do <fill in the blank> or mom will get mad." He will tell the kids that I am hard to please and all sorts of stuff.

Reality:

The kids think he is ridiculous. When he lived here and I used to try to sneak in a nap, he would tell the kids to leave me alone so I didn't get mad and yell at them. The kids saw that as a challenge and would use that as an invitation to prove him wrong. I don't know how many times they would wake me up to make sure that he was wrong.

When he took the kids Christmas shopping, the kids got frustrated because he kept nitpicking their ideas and telling them that I would not like this or that or that I might take offense. One of the kids wanted to look at health and fitness stuff because she and I have been working on losing weight and getting healthier. He told her that I might be offended by anything health and fitness related. The kids thought it was all ridiculous. The only reason they had a difficult time shopping for me was because dad shot down all of their ideas. When they shared the ideas that dad shot down, I was irritated because their ideas were amazing and I would have loved any of them. 

His perception:

I am scary.

Reality:

I have to laugh at this one because it is so far from reality. I sometimes have a difficult time getting the kids to listen to me when I am trying to be serious because they think I am so funny when I am mad. My "road rage" is more like a comedy routine than anything else. Several people have told me that.

On the flip side, he could be really justified in being scared of me. I am a very logical and reasonable person and he probably knows on some level that the logical and reasonable thing to do is kick him to the curb and take legal action against him. It is just a matter of time before I divorce him.

His perception:

I don't do anything. I didn't keep the house clean enough.

Reality:

This has been an undertone for a lot of years. He worked while I stayed home with the kids. He seems to have forgotten that in our 18 years together, there was only 1 year or less when I didn't work. I kept up with the kids, the finances, the house, etc. For the last three years, I have worked two part time jobs in addition to all of that. He has devalued my contributions to this family for years. He would puff out his chest and brag about being the primary bread winner, blah, blah, blah.

Nope, the house wasn't and isn't as clean as I would like it to be. With  4 young kids, that is to be expected. I would rather focus on my kids than making a fuss about whether or not the house is clean enough for his standards. Besides, if the house isn't clean enough for him, he could have gotten off his butt and cleaned it. Oh no, he couldn't do that.

[SummerStorm]

Yes, their perception can be way, way off. 

My BPD friend used to always call me clingy and needy, but she was the one who would text me at 3 AM in the morning and would keep texting, even though I was clearly sound asleep and not getting her texts.  She was the one who would e-mail me at work (we worked together) and bug me about sitting together at assemblies and standing together during fire drills.  After devaluation set in, I admit that I did start texting her a lot more and wanting to talk to her more, but I was searching for answers to explain why someone who called me her best friend would all of the sudden just stop replying to my texts and would stop wanting to spend time with me.  It made no sense. 

She once told me she was "scared" of me because I lost it on her (in a text message, and I quickly apologized), but she had sent me a very hurtful text, and I was incredibly upset.  I'm not a violent person at all.  And other than when I'm at work (I am a high school teacher), I very rarely raise my voice.  She's the one who can get physically abusive. 

She also had this weird perception of me being this total inept person who couldn't do anything, despite the fact that I earned two college degrees, paid off my car, paid off my student loans, and bought a house--all before the age of 31.  Her meter of success for herself and others revolves around relationships, and I guess because I've never been in one, I was a failure in her eyes.  Meanwhile, she's the one who has a college degree and a teaching certificate but spends her days making sandwiches at a convenience store, lives in a crappy one bedroom apartment, and keeps getting overdraft notices.

[once removed]

is the question "what did my ex accuse me of and what are they guilty of?" this is how many of our relationships looked.

its an emotionally taxing exercise, examining the charges leveled at us, vs reality. not only are these charges raw, triggering, and painful for us, but we have inherent biases: our hurt, our perspective, the fact that our exes have been diagnosed with a personality disorder (or we have diagnosed them) and the knowledge that they are prone to distorted perceptions.

[talks to angels]

The perception was in away reality for me. I was always calling him out in the end on his lies, but that is not who I was before him. Feel like I was fighting for my sanity with him. Yet you can ask any family and friends I am almost too easy going and avoid conflict at all cost, he just would push and push to get a reaction it seemed

[bus boy]

I was perceived by my Xw to be a terrible person in every way possible. The reality of who I am was completely distorted. A friend of mine praised a good quality of mine to Xw, when we were married, she said nothing, had a cold uninterested, distant look on her face. One year later mental disaster from her relentless emotional abuse and she couldn't wait to twist those words of praise my friend had said to her a year earlier, back on me in a negative way.

[vortex of confusion]

its an emotionally taxing exercise, examining the charges leveled at us, vs reality. not only are these charges raw, triggering, and painful for us, but we have inherent biases: our hurt, our perspective, the fact that our exes have been diagnosed with a personality disorder (or we have diagnosed them) and the knowledge that they are prone to distorted perceptions.

It is a very emotionally taxing exercise. I feel like I had been doing okay. Over the holiday season (from Thanksgiving to Christmas), he spent more time with the kids, and I interacted with him more. And one of the kid's birthdays was this past week so we included him on that.

The more I deal with him, the crazier I feel. Sometimes, it does help me to do this exercise because it reminds me not to get sucked into whatever it is that he is trying to do. He took the kids out shopping and texted me while I was trying to get some me time, "You sure are hard to shop for. LOL." He meant it as a joke. He was trying to be funny. It wasn't funny to me because he has made such a big deal of how difficult I am to please. I think it might be easier to deal with if he wasn't trying to convince the kids that I am some kind of horrible person. The kids know he is full of bull yet it still bugs the crap out of me that our kids are the ones getting hurt the most in all of this.

Another factor that has dredged this stuff up is the fact that the kids have started opening up to me more. One of our daughters has said that it wouldn't hurt her feelings if she didn't have to deal with dad ever again. When we were making up analogies, I asked "It is as cold as what?" One of the kids piped up, "It is as cold as dad's heart." I really don't like hearing a kid say that about a parent even if it is true.

I have to remind myself of this stuff no matter how emotionally draining it is. I feel like I have to stay angry and pi**ed off at him so that I can gather the courage to divorce him, cut him off, and be done completely. I know my weakness for needing to be nice. I know that I might back down if I don't keep this stuff fresh in my mind. I don't know if that is the right way to go about doing it. I tried to NOT think about it and distract myself and  be positive and happy but that didn't seem to help. I felt like I was dismissing myself and pretending that everything was okay and that it was a matter of two people growing apart. I was kind of denying my own pain and hurt.

One of the other things that he accused me of doing that I actually did do was to continually bring up the same topic over and over even if it was "ancient history". I can think of two specific instances that happened early in our marriage that I brought up repeatedly over the years. I kept bringing them up because the issues were never really addressed. I was never really allowed to be upset by those things because his feelings trumped mine. A lot of times, those things were brought up in the context of him asking me, "Why don't you trust me?" He never really changed anything or did anything that different. I was supposed to trust him and completely forget anything that he had said or done that might violate my trust.