Relationship "flakiness"

[joeylittle]

How much flakiness should a spouses tolerate?

First off, the things you are putting under the heading 'flakiness' are three different things.

• symptoms
• avoidances
• habits

You need a way to talk to each other that lets you communicate more specifically.

Symptoms - like waking up and feeling afraid - happen. They happen. Same as a person with chronic migraines sometimes getting a migraine. You can work hard to manage your symptoms, but they are still going to show up sometimes.

I would expect my spouse to accept that I have symptoms, and I can't just decide to not have them. I would expect myself to get treatment so I can diminish the number of times I become symptomatic to the best of my ability.

Avoidance - it could be called a symptom, but I think it's really it's own category - because this is what I think you mean by 'flakiness'. Avoidance is actually something we can confront within ourselves pretty directly, so long as we are not highly symptomatic at the same time. I don't like parties. I flake out on parties. Which means, I avoid them. When I'm having symptoms (active startle response, hypervigilance, reactive emotions), it is necessary for my self-care to stay home from the party....the same as if you had the flu, you'd be better off staying home from the party. Your body needs rest. And no-one really needs to be subjected to your illness. It's just better all around. But when I'm actually OK, and am only having manageable anxiety about how parties are sometimes hard for me, and I'm afraid I'll feel worse after, not better? Well, I should challenge myself to go to the party.

I would expect my spouse to accept that I know my limits. And I would expect myself to challenge my limits.

Habits - some people crack their knuckles when they are feeling stress. Some people get quiet when they are feeling angry. Some people get chatty when they are nervous. Some people say 'god bless you' or 'bless you' after someone sneezes, even if they are an atheist. These are habits. They stop being habits when they tie into symptoms - your husband is afraid of losing his family. That has turned into behavior about germs. It's not a habit. It's the result of a symptom. On the other hand, your husband likes to see his friends when he is feeling good and doesn't think about the connection between that and him not going out with you. Thoughts, patterns of thought - these can also be habits.

I expect my spouse to talk to me about how my habits affect them, and I want to do the same - talk about how their habits affect me. If there's something not going well, either I put effort into changing my habit, or they accept it. Personal example: I do not turn out lights when I leave a room. Just don't. There used to be a symptom reason, but truly, now it's just habit. It drove my ex crazy that I left lights on. Instead of telling me, he waited a few years and then exploded at me about it. I was resentful and I think that caused me to never really break the habit. That was not healthy relationship behavior. My ex had a habit of never keeping alcohol in the house; it always had to be in the trunk of his car...not in the house. We weren't big drinkers, but did have a drink in the evening occasionally. We drank different things. He also insisted that my alcohol be not in the house. Now, he had a strong fear of alcoholism because of his father. So he had this habit of leaving his beer in the trunk of his car. I decided to tolerate the habit, because it was not a huge deal, and because I knew there was an unresolved fear still driving his habit.

Finally: I don't believe healthy marriage is a 'lets keep track' sort of thing. So when we were breaking up, and it was very important to me to tell him that I had tolerated the beer in the trunk thing for years but he still screamed at me about lights in rooms, and why couldn't he let me have my lights in exchange for me putting up with the beer? Well, that was really immature of me, because I actually had just decided the beer was not a big deal. But when it was convenient for me, I threw it back in his face.

Those are my thoughts.

 

[Changing4Best]

The US government finds flakiness unacceptable in the job arena by offering support to those of us that are flaky. I am on what is called Social Security Disability which is from our Social Security Administration and is my only income. I was and am deemed unemployable by them and so they support me with this fund and other forms of welfare (or what is called "benefits" by those of us that receive them). Some of my flaky activities were: being homeless, inability to stay employed, due to unacceptable activities at my places of work like getting mixed up in office politics to a marked degree, inability to memorize what I needed to do in order to perform various work duties, confusion and frequent absences due to ill health and also just being too upset or depressed to work. I also refused to do any work which I felt was not part of my job description. In fact, I refused to even try to do such work. I was a very unwilling employee.

 

[ihateusernames]

Umm, well, it's kind of hard to answer your question because my definition of flaky seems considerably different from yours. I'll just give a descriptive response and you can take from it what you're looking for. I think that will work.

My husband does not like crowds or social situations with a lot of people. Neither do I. We will both walk out of overly crowded stores and will both nearly always turn down an invite to a social function.

He does really poorly at family functions. I understand this. He is a wreck around his family, as well as mine. I don't take it personally. I expect him to make an appearance for the major things like Christmas and our son's birthday, but respect that he is not able to much more often than that. Similarly, if I have friends or family over he will hide in the bedroom and pretend to be asleep. So I don't have people over when he's home.

I'm wondering now if the dirt thing is some kind of male response. My husband doesn't have combat ptsd. His problems stem from childhood neglect, abandonment, homelessness, domestic violence and attempted murder, etc. But he does have some cleanliness issues that I find bizarre. If he sees paper on the floor he freaks out. We cannot stay in a restaurant where napkins are left on the floor. I'm not "allowed" to ever leave a tissue laying somewhere outside of a trashcan. Things like that. I am compliant because it's easy for me to be. I don't want trash laying around, either. It just doesn't send me in to a frenzy. On the other hand, he has a lot of stuff and no place to put it so we have a lot of clutter. But the moment I start a project and have stuff out or fail to find a place for something of mine right away he starts bitching. I am not at all accepting of that and I point out that it's absurd immediately. Admittedly often rudely. Doesn't necessarily stop it from coming up the next time, but it stops him in his tracks in the moment.

These are the things that I think are related to your husband's behavior. Things that I consider flaky are constantly making and breaking commitments, getting wrapped up in something and forgetting that we had plans, being ridiculously late with no check in or good reason, things like that. I am tolerant of those things to a point with friends. Actually, my friends tend to be flakes (and honestly, sometimes so do I). For instance one is always late, always, always. Well, someone else would say that I am always late because I'm usually late, by a few minutes. This girl is always late by 30 minutes- 2 hours, and you're left thinking she's on the side of the road dead or something.

That stuff I don't tolerate in my husband at all. I feel like he has a higher obligation to me (and I to him) than they do and that things like breaking dates and failing to check in after a reasonable amount of time are not acceptable.

 

[Lem]

If he's promised something then I will call him out in it. Other times though I have always known he's terrible at plans and time keeping and anything organizational. And sometimes when he doesn't wanna be around people its best he doesn't go out because he'll at best be a complete ass to everybody.