Well after another week & a half of anger on my sufferers part & misery on both of our sides (spoken about in my post yesterday), we had kind of made up. I wasn’t 100% happy but I hadn’t accepted anything I wasn’t comfortable with & she was at least calmer & more receptive & we were trying to move forward I guess.
Within just a few hours it’s began to fall apart again. Afterwards I visited a friend yesterday & whilst there ended up helping her out while she bathed her toddler & 4 month old baby, keeping the one occupied while she washed the other! Her husband works away so she was grateful for the tiny amount of help I was offering I guess, she has her hands full!
When I got home & spoke to my sufferer about this she said how she loved bath times when her two children were young enough for that. I made the off the cuff, lighthearted reply about how I bet it’s easier to remember it fondly & forget just how tough it was juggling a baby & a toddler!
Well, that was a mistake.
She became immediately defensive & clearly had her back up. She never saw bathing her children as a “chore” & she NEVER felt tired doing it. This is somewhat curious to me as her standard position is to constantly tell me how hard & exhausting parenting is & how as someone without my own children I have zero idea. (As much as of course I can’t fully appreciate the demands of parenting, I’m not an idiot & I find it rather insulting to be regularly told this. As well as the fact that I would potentially become her children’s stepfather so I don’t think it’s good that she constantly shoots down everything I say simply because I don’t have my own.) She was so defensive about what she saw as me making a negative comment about parenting, that she boxed herself into a corner where she couldn’t even admit to occasionally feeling tired when they were little. Am I wrong to find this a rather odd stance??
As I have mentioned in previous posts, my sufferer is hyper sensitive about her parenting. She is so desperate for them not to suffer in the way she did as a child, that it effects everything & she puts too much pressure on herself & too much reliance on them for their enduring love I fear.
I explained that my comment was nothing more than a joke about how I bet parenting is exhausting at times & as time passes & they get older, it’s easy to forget just how tiring it is. She would not accept that this is what I was saying.
So, this is where I’m trying to learn the lessons people are teaching me here. I tried to reason with her for a short while but she increasingly became more tense & agitated & has now jumped straight to the “I can’t do this relationship anymore” all over again. And of course telling me all the things I supposedly am in the process again!
I have now told her that she has been given the opportunity to re-evaluate what I said & make sense of what I meant, & that she still has that opportunity. That I’ve explained that I was not being negative about parenting (or her parenting!) & that if she chooses not to see that then it’s up to her. But I won’t be engaging in the conversation anymore & I have removed myself from it. She’s trying to drag me into another fight but I’ve explained why I’m not doing that (which is “patronising” her apparently) & I’ve left it in her hands to either fix it or not.
It’s tough to not follow your instinct to defend yourself! But I’m listening to the advice so many of you have kindly offered me!
Within just a few hours it’s began to fall apart again. Afterwards I visited a friend yesterday & whilst there ended up helping her out while she bathed her toddler & 4 month old baby, keeping the one occupied while she washed the other! Her husband works away so she was grateful for the tiny amount of help I was offering I guess, she has her hands full!
When I got home & spoke to my sufferer about this she said how she loved bath times when her two children were young enough for that. I made the off the cuff, lighthearted reply about how I bet it’s easier to remember it fondly & forget just how tough it was juggling a baby & a toddler!
Well, that was a mistake.
She became immediately defensive & clearly had her back up. She never saw bathing her children as a “chore” & she NEVER felt tired doing it. This is somewhat curious to me as her standard position is to constantly tell me how hard & exhausting parenting is & how as someone without my own children I have zero idea. (As much as of course I can’t fully appreciate the demands of parenting, I’m not an idiot & I find it rather insulting to be regularly told this. As well as the fact that I would potentially become her children’s stepfather so I don’t think it’s good that she constantly shoots down everything I say simply because I don’t have my own.) She was so defensive about what she saw as me making a negative comment about parenting, that she boxed herself into a corner where she couldn’t even admit to occasionally feeling tired when they were little. Am I wrong to find this a rather odd stance??
As I have mentioned in previous posts, my sufferer is hyper sensitive about her parenting. She is so desperate for them not to suffer in the way she did as a child, that it effects everything & she puts too much pressure on herself & too much reliance on them for their enduring love I fear.
I explained that my comment was nothing more than a joke about how I bet parenting is exhausting at times & as time passes & they get older, it’s easy to forget just how tiring it is. She would not accept that this is what I was saying.
So, this is where I’m trying to learn the lessons people are teaching me here. I tried to reason with her for a short while but she increasingly became more tense & agitated & has now jumped straight to the “I can’t do this relationship anymore” all over again. And of course telling me all the things I supposedly am in the process again!
I have now told her that she has been given the opportunity to re-evaluate what I said & make sense of what I meant, & that she still has that opportunity. That I’ve explained that I was not being negative about parenting (or her parenting!) & that if she chooses not to see that then it’s up to her. But I won’t be engaging in the conversation anymore & I have removed myself from it. She’s trying to drag me into another fight but I’ve explained why I’m not doing that (which is “patronising” her apparently) & I’ve left it in her hands to either fix it or not.
It’s tough to not follow your instinct to defend yourself! But I’m listening to the advice so many of you have kindly offered me!
