Not gonna be his cheerleader anymore

[Cat Familiar]

Being a cheerleader has been a lifelong pattern for me, starting when I was a small child and tried to cheer up my BPD mom, who was prone to depression. I've continued this pattern, a form of codependency, where I felt needed to assist and thought I could "help" my loved ones. Turns out that my husband doesn't really want this "help" and it's taken me three years on this board to finally get this through my thick skull.

No longer am I going to be so solicitous, asking how he's feeling, how did he sleep, is his hip feeling any better, etc. I'm done trying to refer him to great physical therapists, masseuses and doctors who have helped me in the past. If he wants to be a grumpoopie, I'm not gonna try and cheer him up.

Ironically, just going on my way and being in my own happy place has made him be more friendly and seek me out. I'll save my cheerleading enthusiasm for friends who appreciate positive feedback and inquiry and for my animal training. It certainly hasn't had the beneficial effect upon my husband that it does have on the four legged ones.

[Notwendy]

I think that's a good idea. What it seems you have stopped doing is being an emotional caretaker. People can experience that as intrusive. I get where you are coming from- I had a similar role with my BPD mother growing up and this is how she perceives me: someone whose job it is to make her feel better.

I think there is a time and place for cheerleading. If one of my kids is stressed about a test at school, I can encourage them. " "Just do your best honey!" but I can't take away their stress or how they feel about it. Their feelings are their motivation to study for it. I can't take it for them.

Emotional caretaking is different. It means assessing my H's mood before I ask him to do something or just not ask and do it myself to avoid him being angry about it. With my mother, it means if she was upset or stressed about having to do something, we kids would do it for her to make her feel better. This is the emotional equivalent of saying to my kids " oh you don't have to take the test - I will write a note that you are not feeling well and you can just stay home instead of letting them learn to manage their feelings and channel it into studying.

Yes, it is easier to make the distinction with four legged creatures, friends, and children than our intimate partners but what can come into play with this is our own feelings of vulnerability and fear. If we can see how emotional caretaking takes away their opportunity to manage their feelings, we can see that not doing it is in their better interest- and an act of love.

[Cat Familiar]

Emotional caretaking is different. It means assessing my H's mood before I ask him to do something or just not ask and do it myself to avoid him being angry about it.

Wow! Thank you, Notwendy for parsing this concept. I had it drilled into me (of course by my BPD mother) that I was selfish if I didn't "help", "think of others", basically assess the emotional temperature of my loved ones and try to do whatever possible to make them feel better when they were having a hard time.

And of course, with BPD, "having a hard time" happens with great regularity.

My husband has so few responsibilities around our property. He does take the garbage and recyclables to the dump about once a month, takes care of the pool and the hot tub, and mows the lawns. However, now that his hip is bothering him, I'm having the gardeners who come once a week mow the lawns. Previously they were doing things that only helped ease my landscaping burden, and I wonder if this will be a permanent change or only temporary--dependent upon how well my husband recovers from the stem cell treatment of his hip.

Because I've done so many different things on this property: building fences, construction of buildings involving framing, electrical, sheetrock, painting, finish work, etc., I've learned to have a lot of confidence in myself. I contrast that with my husband, who has done very little in the physical world. Sure, he was quite adept in his career as an attorney, but that confidence hasn't transferred over to the lifestyle we now live.

So I caught myself yesterday trying to "help" him. He must be feeling a bit better because he actually tried to do TWO things in one day: clean out the hot tub and do a dump run. Typically only ONE activity will happen and then he'll loudly complain about his back, his hip, whatever, for the rest of the evening.

I'm tired of responding to his complaints with sympathy, so I've started ignoring them. And to get back to "helping"--I did roundup all the trash in the house and bring it out to the truck as he was flattening cardboard boxes. I'm OK about doing that much, but the rest of it I left for him to do.

Then I saw him cleaning out the water in the filter area of the hot tub, one small cup at a time, and walking several feet to dump the water on the driveway, rather than on the lawn. I asked him if he wanted a bucket. He said that the bucket wouldn't fit into the small area near the filter. DUH! But here was yet another example of someone who has not done much physical labor in his life.

I brought him a bucket so he could dump multiple cupfuls into the bucket and then make fewer trips to dump the water in the bucket on the driveway. It was one of those times that surprises me about how someone so intelligent could have such little common sense, but I guess if you've never had to work doing physical labor, then you don't think about how you could do something more efficiently.

Even though he was tired and complaining about how hard he worked, I think he was proud that he had accomplished these tasks and he certainly enjoyed soaking in the hot tub later. Me too!

[Notwendy]

I think a lot of people get their self esteem from their jobs- things they are good at.

My H resisted most requests to help with house or kids. He is the main wage earner, so my intent was not 50-50. I just didn't expect it to be 100% me doing all of it all of the time. But he fought me over any request to help so I finally just gave up asking. Over the years though, I realized there are a lot of things he can't do. He can't cook- went from his mother's cooking to a few fast food/heat up things to me. He'd go out to get something before he would figure out how to cook. He can do minor repairs, but he chooses not to. He would accuse me of bossing him around if I asked him to help. I think all of us prefer to do what we are good at, but I had to also learn child care and housework. My mother did not do these things.

My mother also called me selfish. I was raised to be co-dependent. I brought all that stuff into my marriage.

Once we see "helping" as robbing someone of the sense of accomplishment, we don't see it as being nice. If a child is struggling with homework, we can help a little if we can but we should not do it for them. Kids should have chores, but we also have to allow them to not do them perfectly or like we would. They need to learn the skill and we have to help them learn.

I let my H's moods and frustrations get to me and so "rob" him of learning to do things, but I don't know if he would have done them or just flat out refused. Kids needed to be taken care of, fed, taken to school. I just did them. Whenever I saw a husband involved with his kids at school, it looked like something foreign to me. Just like having an involved mother does. I just do things myself having learned long ago that I could not rely on her.

My father basically took care of everything my mother needed. As a result, she has no sense of accomplishment. I observed something similar to what you saw with your H. One day my mother was visiting and the kids were acting up and hungry. I said "Mom- can you please make some sandwiches?".  We learned to just make our own growing up. For a moment there, she dropped the drama. She seemed really pleased to have contributed. When my father relieved her of any household duties by hiring help or doing it himself so as not to stress her, he took this opportunity away from her.

I don't expect my H to take up cooking or housework. He is thankfully good at his job and has plenty of hobbies for when he retires. That is his source of self esteem.  

[toomanydogs]

Being a cheerleader has been a lifelong pattern for me, starting when I was a small child and tried to cheer up my BPD mom, who was prone to depression. I've continued this pattern, a form of codependency, where I felt needed to assist and thought I could "help" my loved ones. Turns out that my husband doesn't really want this "help" and it's taken me three years on this board to finally get this through my thick skull.

No longer am I going to be so solicitous, asking how he's feeling, how did he sleep, is his hip feeling any better, etc. I'm done trying to refer him to great physical therapists, masseuses and doctors who have helped me in the past. If he wants to be a grumpoopie, I'm not gonna try and cheer him up.

Ironically, just going on my way and being in my own happy place has made him be more friendly and seek me out. I'll save my cheerleading enthusiasm for friends who appreciate positive feedback and inquiry and for my animal training. It certainly hasn't had the beneficial effect upon my husband that it does have on the four legged ones.

This made me smile. A favorite song of mine these days is "Cheerleader." I like the song, but mostly I like the title.

TMD

[Cat Familiar]

I realized another component of "helping" my husband is preventing him from screwing things up. He found me in the garden yesterday and asked me about the exercise bike "moving around".

Usually I would have stopped doing what I was doing and followed him into the house to "fix" whatever problem he was having. This time I told him to just turn the knob on the seat to tighten it.

Then later he asked me where the compost bin was. I'm thinking "You've been living here 11 years and you don't know where the compost bin is?" Instead, I told him, instead of grabbing the bucket and dumping it myself.

It's no wonder that he's like a child. I've been treating him like one!