My Bad?

Posted by fxckfeelings on September 9, 2010

It’s hard not to judge yourself by how people say you’re doing, particularly when those people are family or family-equivalent; a family or relationship can turn anyone into a version of Ed Koch. We assume that peace of mind begins with being forgiven and accepted, but that’s bullshit (or dogshit if you’d like to keep the Koch analogy going). Just because you love people doesn’t mean that they can stop themselves from giving you shit you don’t deserve or not giving you attention you do, and never being able to see what they’re doing. So be prepared to pursue your own investigation and consult your own conscience before seeking peace, reconciliation, and another term as a well-liked human being.
–Dr. Lastname

I can’t get my ex to forgive me, even though I had good reason for doing the things he’s mad about. He’s the one who said we should just be friends (no sex) after we’d been living together for years, which was OK with me, but then when he found out, by accident, that I had a discreet fling (I like sex), he flipped out and told all our friends I’d betrayed him, and walked out. I can’t get him to see I care or that he really has no grounds to be pissed, and it’s an awful way to end things. I now know what his parents meant when they told me years ago he was difficult. My goal is to get him and others to see that I wasn’t a slut and that our relationship wasn’t a farce.

Even before the existence of cable news, gossip websites, and Stephen Colbert, opinion has come more from feelings than facts.

Your hyper-emotional ex sees the past through the “veil of truthiness,” so determining the meaning of what happened is something you’ll have to do on your own.

In any case, if your goal is to persuade someone that you aren’t so bad, you’re fairly screwed. Certainly, in this case you’re unlikely to succeed, no matter what, and the more you struggle, the more defensive you appear to your ex and all the spectators he summoned to watch.

What’s worse, however, is that trying to change someone’s mind about your integrity tends to elevate the importance of his opinion over your own and make him feel he can hurt you by withholding his approval.

Of course, you’re both hurting, and it can’t be helped. Talking about who’s hurting more, however, or who hurt whom, or who shouldn’t feel hurt, or who doesn’t have a right to punish whom, is a great way to have a really horrible conversation. Enter a misery pissing contest, and you just walk away with the urine of self-pity stinging your wounds.

Instead, investigate his complaint of infidelity by focusing on the facts of the case and your definition of a moral-enough response. Start by reviewing what you said and did, and if you decide you acted like a jerk, apologize and focus on your efforts to keep yourself in check in the future.

If you decide your behavior was good enough, however, don’t apologize. Either way, don’t consider whether you could have prevented his pain. That kind of would’ve-should’ve thinking will drive you crazy with guilt and prevent you from giving yourself a fair trial.

While it may go against lady instinct, don’t seek understanding or support from your friends. It’s nice to know that they care and it may be helpful to hear their views, but a good judge can’t let herself become dependent on reassurance.

The most important part of your assessment is factoring out blame and negative emotion in whatever went down. Go through the events and determine the actual truth to figure out if, according to you, you aren’t so bad.

And if you do come out thinking less of yourself, go before the jury of your peer (still you) to figure out what to do next.

STATEMENT:
“I know you feel betrayed and hurt. I’ve thought hard about what I might have done wrong. There’s something in our chemistry that has been splitting us up for the last few years and that may be why we stopped having sex. I don’t think it was your fault or my fault, because I don’t think either of us did anything terribly wrong. It was sad to be drifting apart, particularly since we’ve been good friends and partners in many ways for many years. When you’re hurting, it’s tempting to think that the whole relationship sucked. Don’t accept that idea. I don’t.”

Raising a family hasn’t brought me any of the warm fuzzy feelings I thought it would. For years I would get home after a brutal day’s work and listen to my 3 kids whine and fight while my wife did nothing to stop them. No one had any interest in hearing about my day or my opinion, so I’d go to my den right after dinner and put on the earphones and play computer solitaire until bedtime. No conflict, but I wasn’t happy. Now my oldest is finished high school and he’s always disagreeable with me and blames me for everything. My goal is to figure out what went wrong and who’s responsible and why everyone’s miserable.

It’s impossible to figure out who did what wrong after you’ve started doing something wrong yourself. It also doesn’t matter.

As long as your first priority is pinning the blame, you’re going to have unpleasant conversations that will give you the brief pleasure of unloading followed by the exasperation of being unloaded upon.

Whether you hire a family therapist to preside or not, such conversations are seldom good for you. We often compare the unloading process to releasing a large fart (cathartic for you, poisonous for everyone else), but no matter how you look at it, venting stinks.

Running a family requires you to follow a higher priority, which is to get the best behavior out of your kids regardless of whether you’re feeling exhausted, neglected or disrespected. By that logic, you should have tolerated bickering more and played solitaire less, but your son’s decision to designate you as loser of the blame game won’t fix the past.

Now, you’re stuck in a game of “you ignored me, so I’ll ignore you, no I’ll ignore you more, no I don’t even see you so I can’t ignore you.” This isn’t parenting, this is a vicious circle you don’t want.

So, when your son decides to confront you, don’t share your negative feelings, though you’ve certainly got a right to feel them. If you guilt or intimidate the kids into acting nicer, they’ll get you later.

Forget who started it or who’s the biggest jerk. It’s your job to break the log jam and move things forward, and you do that by being a good guy, which you can do at anytime, even after your kid finishes med school and becomes a shrink to figure out how to deal with dads like you.

STATEMENT:
“I know I’ve been reclusive in the past, but I’m interested in what my kids have been doing, and I think it’s time I made that clear. I understand that they may not initially welcome my attention, perhaps because they’ve learned to shut me out, or they may be jerks. Whatever. I’ll be consistently friendly and interested over a long period of time and that will either lead us to reconnect or let me know which kids aren’t going to. Whatever happens, I won’t let my fatigue or neediness stop me from being an available, positive father.”