Gremlins

John was unhappy last night that he'd thrown me into such despair.  He had a problem fathoming my response - "John, you didn't make me distraught;  I did."

Which was true.  And fascinating to experience - taking responsibility for reacting so deeply & massively unproductively.  Feeling heartbroken didn't move either of us or our marriage an inch forward in healthy relationship.  

Am trying to get my head around a constructive way to respond to John's trait of missing what's being said, of often processing it into it's polar opposite.  The common thread seems to be that whatever happens ultimately ends up being something that makes him more comfortable.  

Gremlins.  Yesterday was the Clash of the Gremlins.  I'd tamed my Stress Gremlin - or so I thought - and didn't go off track on discovering John was stressing out based on past experiences of pre-Craft Sale Friday.  Didn't go off the first time I felt it, but boy did I go off the rails later.  Can see his gremlin & mine high fiving it as my blood raced faster, my voice got more brittle, my nerves frayed.  

It's true, that I have no idea how to help John out of his dilemma.  He lacks a basic curiosity about what makes himself tick that's sort of necessary for doing any deep inner "dump diving."  But our marriage is definitely suffering because of it.  It's a fine marriage, but having to continue dealing with what comes across as learned helplessness to eternity would be hellish.

My response last night only served our gremlins.  How to channel it into something constructive - that's a ponder worth having.

Sentenced to frustration

By jove, I think I've got it!  The reason that John does not change is because of one simple declarative sentence - "That's me."  One contraction & a pronoun that doom his life to resisting constructive change.

And  he expects a project to be difficult.  If it's not, he makes it difficult because that's where he's strangely comfortable.

A few minutes ago, I asked him to cut out some paper to use as note card background.  The instructions were to take a set of 4.25 x 5.5" note cards - one per color in each set - and cut from each two 3" x 4" pieces of paper. 

First off, he was going to go through the sets I'd put together & cut out each COLOR rather than going through & doing as a set of all the colors.  His mind hadn't processed my request.

Then, he was going to cut one piece of paper from the front of the card, then the 2nd, in a separate operation.  Not measuring & cutting both at the same time.  He not only hadn't heard me show that procedure, he naturally went to the more difficult, time-consuming, illogical way.

And then, when he was ready to measure & cut the two sides at the same time, he was doing the cut at the fold.  Forget that I'd demonstrated making the cuts at the cut edges, doing it the easiest & natural way never occurred to him.

He could not - could not - give a straight answer when I asked, "Why would you make the cuts at the fold if you were following the instructions?"  Every time, he said, "Well, only if..."  He couldn't answer the question, which was why would he do that way, given the instructions.  He always gave a situation where the cut made sense.  He could not - could not - bring himself to say, "You wouldn't."

The kicker - and the #1 reason John doesn't change - was when he said, "That's me."

 

That's why John doesn't change.  It's not that he won't; he CAN'T.  His brain never signals him that anything needs changing.  Something goes wrong, something gets messed up?  His brain processes, "That's just John - no need to pay attention, just keep moving."  

There's absolutely no sense in my stressing out when there's absolutely nothing zip zap-patta I can do, because his brain will just reprocess whatever is said to fit its perception.

Have gotten to the point where I'm fascinated, rather than distressed.  John is literally sentenced by a subject & a predicate - "It's me" - to staying right where he is.  

Good to know that I'm passed even getting "arrrrrggggghhhhed" over it.  At a place where I can see it as an intriguing dynamic.  Doesn't keep me from feeling sad, but at least I'm past succumbing to anquish.    

 

 
addendum 11:36 p.m.:  Okay, so it's not as simple as one sentence.  It feels like John's brain highjacks him.  Driving to the craft sale, he could NOT process what I was talking about, referring to his leaving animal cards at home, NOT business cards.  He went everywhere in the known or any other universe, even asking about GREETING cards, something that came totally out of left field.  This afternoon with the cutting out the background pieces was cut from the same cloth.  The directions could not have been simpler but he couldn't process them, was still in kerfluffle about them when I got home.  

As we drove into the parking lot, he mentioned going back.  I asked him not to, that we'd just add them to our offerings tomorrow.  After we settled in, I looked around - and no John.  He was gone, baby, gone when the craft sale opened, was absent for a good (actually, very bad) 20 minutes after the sale had started.  When I got upset about as we left at the end of the night, he said, "You told me to go."

That stopped me in my tracks.

"You told me to drop you off & go home for the cards."

I freaked.  Totally.  

First, it had been about as bad a day as could be imagined.  I'd planned a wonderfully sane, well-managed day.  John, on the other hand, was stressed out - over nothing.  

We were in fine shape.  And I told him as much.  But his stress was catching - he blew off the directions, had to repeat them, as simple & direct as they were, three times (will hand gestures) & he STILL wasn't sure he'd gotten them right.

At that point, I stressed out.  Over his learned helplessness.  He translates everything in the way HE wants.  For example, hearing me say the polar opposite of what was actually shared.  Which is something he frequently does.  And then when I flip out, he says, "Don't let it upset you," when the fact of the matter is it DOES upset me.

There is no way anyone can reason with someone who simply bats away reason if it's in conflict with what he prefers to believe.  It's all about what he prefers.  On every level.  His self-absorption turns everything to his preferences.  He reprocesses statements so they have no semblance of what was actually said.  He then then gets all placating & soothing & "don't get upset" which makes complete sense since the upset anger fury was rooted in my response to his oblivious lack of interest involvement - of course he wants me to be all sweetness & light.

He doesn't get it.  He can't get it.  It just isn't there.  Twenty-six years of marriage & he's never gotten worried about the fact that he's doing the same wretched behaviors in 2015 that he did in 2005 & 1995.  He doesn't change. Told him all those years ago that he'd do ANYTHING for me - as long as it was convenient.  I didn't realize that when it's clear something didn't have the response he'd expected, he just totally rewrites what went down.  He never never never sees it.  Sadly, what you can't see, you can't change.  And he can't see.  It's not that he focused poorly - he doesn't seem to focus at all.  It's easy to say, "Not his fault - when someone is color blind, they can want to describe a rainbow but just can't."  But it's more than just that.  He doesn't have the slightest interest in finding out the whys & wherefores behind his funky behavior.  You can't change a problem that eludes you, can't take a different tack when you flat out refuse to focus.  Besides, other than me getting upset, what he does works for him. 

This is really tearing my up inside.  Feeling torn between respecting myself as a human being & being down on myself for being an unsympathetic, flipped out wife. 
 56

Comfy v. constructive

Three cheers for parents who help nurture in their kids a longing for a constructive, rather than simply comfortable, life!!! Who help their children - of any age - learn how to recognize harmful habits AND turn them around.  Who serve as role models in keeping at a task & who teach - through word & action - that every time we choose & do something that counters lousy habits it leaves an imprint on our brain, so keep moving forward in the better direction, even after a stumble or fall.  Who teach their family that being able to identify the positive & constructive only matters when we have the grit & persistence to make it our own.

Kids raised with those messages, with parents & other adults who model them in real life, have an unimaginable advantage in life.  

 

I don't know how those two words - positive & constructive - came to have such importance to me.  At home & in church & in the parochial schools I attended, the goal was to "see the good," which I interpreted as see ONLY the good.  

To this day, I don't know if that's the message my church & schools intended.  Am absolutely sure "see only the good" was what Mom meant. Time & again, her life would be thrown into chaos because of not being able to simply see what was right in front of her, all of it, good & bad & beyond awful. 

Somehow, "see only the good" got bent into "avoid the harsh, the uncomfortable, the uneasy."  For me, the baby in the family, that evolved into "don't attempt more than you can comfortably achieve."  

Strangely, that didn't set well with me.  Many a time, in elementary school & high school, I'd rail at Mom for offering excuses for my poor performance.  I was never urged to work harder, more effectively, from a clearer focus, with a deeper appreciation of what the teacher was seeking.  And I was too lazy to know & do that for myself.  

Three cheers for parents who get across to their kids that grunt work & slogging through difficult, tough parts are natural parts of getting from one place to a better one.  Who teach their children the importance of first knowing what you don't want to do, then what you do, then how to do it, then doing it.  All the ways, from start to finish.  Who let them know that being comfy is fine when it's a break or the reward at the end of a completed effort, but never in place of rolling up sleeves, knowing the best next step, then taking it.  

 

Still Alyce

Over forty years ago, I wrote an important paper for Mike Brown's Psych 101 course.  I would have been a sophomore at the Academy of the New Church College (now Bryn Athyn College of the New Church).  It was the second important thing I wrote about me myself & I.  

The first was written just after high school graduation, to someone who'd been my first true friend in our junior year.  For reasons totally outside my control, she took a different path in senior year, one that veered away from our connection.  In the letter, I considered both of our natures, thanked her for the friendship, respected where she was & where I was, noted that perhaps one day our paths might intersect again BUT that I wanted her to know how much I appreciated her being, even if they never did.  

Other than in the slightest ways, we've never reconnected over the years.  I know she has no memory of the letter, which isn't surprising.  A LOT was happening in her life.  And its importance was less in her reading & more in my writing.  She would have seen just the words on the front & back of the single sheet of paper.  I still have in my heart all the ones that weren't included & could have been.  

It doesn't wound me, knowing she has no memory of the letter, apparently little memory of a past connection.  She had a lot of friends - I was one of many.   

What made her so unforgettable in my life was the hope she gave that there WERE people out there with whom I could connect at a true soul level.

No one could have foreseen the circumstances that drew us apart.  In my 60s, am pretty amazed at that long ago girl NOT putting it on herself, impressed she could see that it was due to that particular moment in time rather than to her failings.  That's pretty stunning.  It would have felt so good to wallow in self-pity rather than to realize it is what it is.  You go, girl!

Today, building off that distant past letter plus my equally ancient paper - Fantasy in Frustration - written for a junior college Psych 101 class plus my current read & reread of Richard O'Connor's Rewire, am taking a deep dumpster dive down to the deepest level of my being, to the foundational layer of unwavering self respect that was always & forever my unknowing bedrock.

 

How it came to be formed is anyone's guess.  Maybe that's why experiencing a genuine connection in junior year was so important - just by itself - in my life.  Even then, part of me sensed that my family (with the probable exception of my father) was wildly UNconnected - within as well as between, so much so that I grew up thinking it was normal to feel uncomfortable, uneasy with yourself.  That friendship let me know there was something deeper within me, it let me know sharing a deep genuine connection WAS possible.  

That was all I needed.  Ok, that early connection wasn't lasting.  Didn't make it any less genuine.  And twenty years later, that early promise of lasting genuine connection was fully realized when John strolled into my life.  

One of the greatest gifts John brings is how well he tolerates my inner explorations.  Drives a lot of folks bonkers.  My oldest brother once told me, with oversized exasperation, "You always need things spelled out in forty pages!"  He was right.  I do.  I have a driving need to understand, at least as well as I can.  He's right - I dig, I delve, I examine consider dissect, always remembering that what I discover might be right or it might not, but it's the best I can do at the time.  Know what I know, but hold the reins free.

Maybe that's how I felt about that long ago but still treasured friendship.  I could let it be what it was because of honoring it & holding it with a light rein. 

I'm doing my inner deep dump dive as a way of honoring everything that has brought me to this spectacular moment in time.  It might take forty pages, it might be less or considerably more.  I'm sure to come up with lots of trash & quite a bit of garbage, but there will be treasures in there, pieces waiting to taken out of still-sealed boxes or needing some sanding & refurbishing.  We shall see what we shall see.  

As for that long-ago dear friend?  She turned out pretty much exactly as I expected, years full of adventures, highs & lows that enriched herself & others, and - in her here & now - apparently having the time of her life.  

Here's to you, dear friend - friendship is indeed a sheltering tree & I still feel the blessings of being nurtured under your branches.