__________
2. A specific event that seems important… the morning we were going to drive from my place to visit your Aunt and Uncle. I was somewhat scattered and having trouble getting it together with my last packing to get out the door and go. This little bit of chaotic behavior on my part triggered a full blown reactive response from you that lasted all day. Yes, my behavior was irritating and even maddening, but your reaction seemed way out of proportion to the stimulus and seemed to be about more than just me. In addition, you expressed that you had made a decision to just go with the flow and accommodate whatever I ended up doing, but in fact you seemed angry and reactive all day long. The next day, you didn’t seem to remember much about what had happened and that suggests to me that you may have dissociated.
When I was little, I did this a lot: overreacted if things weren’t “right” according to how I perceived “right”. Don’t know why, but I did. Once my parents were going to divide a couple of doughnuts between me and my little brother, and I threw a big fit until they were divided exactly in half. Then I gave him my half anyway because I wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat a doughnut. So why did I throw the fit? To this day I don’t know.
I’m aware of this tendency and try to control, repress, or defuse it. That’s probably not a very Buddhist thing to do J but the habit is unattractive and causes suffering in me and others. In any event this too has nothing to do with Wife.
In this particular case, I was thinking of how long the drive really was. I knew it was a long drive – in fact, I had a pretty good idea how long it was, since I had made the exact same drive only a couple of months earlier. I also remembered that when I made the trip in October I hadn’t left till noon, and I got into town about 10:00 pm. Fortunately my other aunt and uncle [with whom I was staying that time] were still awake by then [I’m still talking about October], but it did seem to me kind of rude to show up that late [on this second trip, in January] if it were avoidable. Besides, I knew that Aunt and Uncle were expecting you and me for dinner. So as the clock got later and later, this is what was going through my mind. I forgot to factor in that for the trip in October, when I left at noon, I was leaving from my place and not yours: this meant, naturally, that we had two hours more leeway than I was banking on. On the other hand, I knew you wouldn’t want to drive the way I drove when I made the trip by myself, so already I had no idea how much extra time we would add simply by adhering to the posted speed limits. And, as I say, I was worried about showing up late when we were expected for dinner. An overreaction? Yeah, sure. But if we had been staying in a motel I wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t the time itself that caused me the anxiety, but what it would mean for the people who were waiting on us. Of course I knew that they would make allowances, whatever happened. But that’s because they are wonderful human beings, and I didn’t want to presume on their kindness because to do so would have ill repaid the hospitality they were showing us.
Then when we were finally ready and I went to move my car, I found I had gotten a parking ticket for parking on the street. If we had left when I thought we were going to leave, I wouldn’t have. OK, that wasn’t as big a deal as the rest of it, and by then I had already decided to accept whatever happened. But it didn’t make me happier.
You say I felt angry during the drive out there. From the inside that wasn’t it at all. I felt ashamed of having made an issue of the time, and so I felt like I had to prove to you that I didn’t mean it. I was scrupulously careful to drive no faster than the posted speed limit, and to offer you the wheel at every opportunity so you wouldn’t think I was insisting on controlling the drive. Maybe I was angry at myself.
More exactly, the interchange that bothered me was when I said – out of frustration, but not meaning it seriously – that we could make up the time if I did all the driving [because I drive a lot faster than Debbie does]. Then when I tried to assure you it was a joke, you wouldn’t accept the assurance and told me that you thought I really meant it. At that point I felt trapped, because you wouldn’t let me apologize for something that I really didn’t mean. That was a behavior that Wife in particular did all the time … never allowing me to back up. So anytime I said something stupid or clumsy or unskillful, I was stuck with it forever. I could never just apologize and undo it. Now we (you and I) had promised each other from the very beginning that we would always allow each other to apologize, to back up, to undo what we had said. But it felt to me like that was exactly what you were not doing. And that one moment – the moment where I felt that your unwillingness to forgive meant that I was forever, irredeemably guilty for something I didn’t even mean – was what poisoned the interchange for me.
That’s amazing: I didn’t think of it in terms of the promise you and I had made to each other until just now, as I was typing this. When I discussed this with my therapist, the only part that I saw was the hyper-reactivity, which is as old as I am and which truly has nothing to do with Wife. Only now do I see that the specific poisonous moment was the one I describe in the immediately preceding paragraph … and what made that moment so incredibly painful was indeed that it was exactly something she used to do all the time.
These two things seem to me to be related to living so many years with a person whose behavior was chaotic, unpredictable, often threatening and sometimes actually violent. Anyone would develop similar coping behaviors in the same circumstances, but they make me feel cautious.
When I was little, I did this a lot: overreacted if things weren’t “right” according to how I perceived “right”. Don’t know why, but I did. Once my parents were going to divide a couple of doughnuts between me and my little brother, and I threw a big fit until they were divided exactly in half. Then I gave him my half anyway because I wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat a doughnut. So why did I throw the fit? To this day I don’t know.
I’m aware of this tendency and try to control, repress, or defuse it. That’s probably not a very Buddhist thing to do J but the habit is unattractive and causes suffering in me and others. In any event this too has nothing to do with Wife.
In this particular case, I was thinking of how long the drive really was. I knew it was a long drive – in fact, I had a pretty good idea how long it was, since I had made the exact same drive only a couple of months earlier. I also remembered that when I made the trip in October I hadn’t left till noon, and I got into town about 10:00 pm. Fortunately my other aunt and uncle [with whom I was staying that time] were still awake by then [I’m still talking about October], but it did seem to me kind of rude to show up that late [on this second trip, in January] if it were avoidable. Besides, I knew that Aunt and Uncle were expecting you and me for dinner. So as the clock got later and later, this is what was going through my mind. I forgot to factor in that for the trip in October, when I left at noon, I was leaving from my place and not yours: this meant, naturally, that we had two hours more leeway than I was banking on. On the other hand, I knew you wouldn’t want to drive the way I drove when I made the trip by myself, so already I had no idea how much extra time we would add simply by adhering to the posted speed limits. And, as I say, I was worried about showing up late when we were expected for dinner. An overreaction? Yeah, sure. But if we had been staying in a motel I wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t the time itself that caused me the anxiety, but what it would mean for the people who were waiting on us. Of course I knew that they would make allowances, whatever happened. But that’s because they are wonderful human beings, and I didn’t want to presume on their kindness because to do so would have ill repaid the hospitality they were showing us.
Then when we were finally ready and I went to move my car, I found I had gotten a parking ticket for parking on the street. If we had left when I thought we were going to leave, I wouldn’t have. OK, that wasn’t as big a deal as the rest of it, and by then I had already decided to accept whatever happened. But it didn’t make me happier.
You say I felt angry during the drive out there. From the inside that wasn’t it at all. I felt ashamed of having made an issue of the time, and so I felt like I had to prove to you that I didn’t mean it. I was scrupulously careful to drive no faster than the posted speed limit, and to offer you the wheel at every opportunity so you wouldn’t think I was insisting on controlling the drive. Maybe I was angry at myself.
More exactly, the interchange that bothered me was when I said – out of frustration, but not meaning it seriously – that we could make up the time if I did all the driving [because I drive a lot faster than Debbie does]. Then when I tried to assure you it was a joke, you wouldn’t accept the assurance and told me that you thought I really meant it. At that point I felt trapped, because you wouldn’t let me apologize for something that I really didn’t mean. That was a behavior that Wife in particular did all the time … never allowing me to back up. So anytime I said something stupid or clumsy or unskillful, I was stuck with it forever. I could never just apologize and undo it. Now we (you and I) had promised each other from the very beginning that we would always allow each other to apologize, to back up, to undo what we had said. But it felt to me like that was exactly what you were not doing. And that one moment – the moment where I felt that your unwillingness to forgive meant that I was forever, irredeemably guilty for something I didn’t even mean – was what poisoned the interchange for me.
That’s amazing: I didn’t think of it in terms of the promise you and I had made to each other until just now, as I was typing this. When I discussed this with my therapist, the only part that I saw was the hyper-reactivity, which is as old as I am and which truly has nothing to do with Wife. Only now do I see that the specific poisonous moment was the one I describe in the immediately preceding paragraph … and what made that moment so incredibly painful was indeed that it was exactly something she used to do all the time.
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