Wed 22 Mar 2006
I’m trying to sort out my conflicting feelings. The sort of feelings that hit you when you open the door to leave a cutesy little surprise for your boyfriend (when he’s not supposed to be there), and your eyes are met with the sight of your boyfriend there chatting with his ex. And this is the one ex who, despite not knowing you, gave you problems and attitude, ignored you when you tried to smile at her or greet her civilly, said derogatory stuff to other people about you, when you first started dating your boyfriend. The conflict comes from feeling miffed by her, being caught off-guard, and the smothering of the rosy little glow of leaving a gift for your beloved. That’s all under a giant umbrella of feeling out-of-place and uncomfortable. And it doesn’t help that you find out instantly afterwards that when your boyfriend talks about things you guys did over the weekend or whatnot with his ex, he leaves you out of the descriptions. Another side of the conflict is the grownup side of me that really does want the two of them to get along since they have occasion to be in each others’ presence, and they’re finally getting along again now. (They had been friendly for 5, 6 years after the split, and then she suddenly gave him the cold shoulder once she found out about me.)
I think I just feel slighted. That even tho she was the one being oddly immature and catty for no good reason at all, that I had been the one who retreated from the room, only to find out that I involuntarily get retreated from their conversations, too. Another injury came when Mr. W, who came out after me, assumed that I was angry and immediately tried to explain what she was doing there. I wasn’t angry, I’d dropped off his silly little gift, said hello and left, I really don’t care what she was doing there, I don’t have a problem with her being there, so I merely made the crack, “It’s not like she was on your lap.” But his entire set of actions and words at that point were clearly aimed at diffusing a jealous reaction from me, which is the reaction he’d have gotten if I were any of his exes, and now I feel like he’s projecting their flaws on me and not seeing me. Again. He apologized for it after we had a chance to talk a bit, but now I felt wronged. He said his reactions to situations come from learned conditioning, and I said that’s fine, you should learn the cubbyholes to categorize things in when you’re with someone, but you’re not supposed to use the same set of cubbyholes on a new person that you’d developed for an old person in your life. On top of that, his old cubbyholes are not only inaccurate, but offensive to me, because in order to group my actions into those cubbyholes, he’d have to think I’m petty and jealous and not see anything I do to the contrary. And now I feel like I’ve been sacrificial and overly fair (in regards to other people, especially women, in his life) for nothing. And I feel sorry for myself.
But what am I supposed to do? What is he supposed to change? Their getting along is infinitely better than her immaturity in the beginning of our relationship. Maybe I should bow out altogether and avoid dealing with anything. Someone else’s baggage shouldn’t be my problem, it’s not my fault his ex is still possessive over him, and if he’s going to coddle her feelings, my hands are tied.
And yet it all still comes down to this: doubting myself. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just shouldn’t be in relationships. Maybe all I really am, and will ever be, is a sad, sad little girl.
YOU are a very smart girl and an astronomical catch.. YOU are having feelings that anyone else, in that situation may have felt. YOU reacted maturely, but unfortunately you were caught off guard and your natural instinctive reaction was to back out(b/c she set the stage).. I know if you had it all to do over again in the same situation, you would have walked in.. said a cheery “hello” and kissed this man routinely. It’s not your fault you entered a relationship not knowing how immature an ex of his was going to act …and especially after several years had passed since their break up. So there is a history there.. a history that SHE set up by her juvenile behavior. The discontentment (is that a word?) comes from you finding out your weekend was discussed and you weren’t mentioned… what??!! Why?
Of course it’s best that parents get along post divorce… it really does work for the best when you can communicate and discuss your children openly and maturely. You recognize that.. you are not some jealous gf that gets pissed if your guy talks to the ex.. he has to. Yay for you, for not being that way. There ARE a lot of women who do throw hissy fits when their guy communicates with the ex, even if only discussing the kids.
As far as these cubbyholes and categorizing and reacting, uhm, yeah directly after a split, because you’re used to being with someone who perhaps acted that way, but after time has elapsed and you develop other relationships, you *know* there is a difference. You know after 6+ months of dating someone else exclusively how they are going to react to situations. I don’t know.. maybe it’s instinctively set in his brain.
What a sick feeling to go somewhere with such loving intent to be surprised with a sudden slap.
A huge hug to you from across the miles.. chin up.
Actually, I did walk in, put his little gift on his desk and said something to the effect of, “What are you guys doing here? Is briefing over already?” She of course didn’t respond to me. I said to him that I was going to leave this on his desk but the surprise is over now that he’s there. And then I walked out, saying hi to another person there on my way out. He then came after me and said something about that I “stormed out,” which I took extreme offense to because if I were “storming,” I would’ve chucked the gift at him and whirled around and left without saying a word to anybody. (He later apologized for characterizing my leaving as “storming out.”)
This ex is not the mother of his children. The mother of his kids and I are fine. I try to support her whenever I can. I feel it’s important that there be peace there. This ex I was dealing with apparently had massive issues with his kids’ mother, as with his last girlfriend. I feel some of the things these exes said to his kids about their mother is very immature and uncalled for. I may have my opinions about some of her actions, but I feel I should respect her as the mother of his kids, and I don’t say anything negative about her to her kids, ever, even if they’re complaining about her to me. And in return, she has been extremely civil to me, even tho I know she wasn’t with this ex and his most current ex. Gee, I wonder why. But I also feel it’s important that a mother be comfortable that someone who comes around her kids out of her supervision is a good person and won’t be a bad influence to her kids, someone who certainly should not be trying to put a wedge between the mother and her children.
BTW, apparently he has only had experience with immature catty women, cuz it’s come up before when he projected some random stuff on me, and when I called him on it, he said that “all” women are like that and that “all” women have had problems with such and such in his life.
But it does help that he called me later on to make sure I was feeling better, and I told him I’m just feeling confused, and he asked what it was he could do, said that if I just tell him what to do, he’d do it. That meant so much to me, but of course I didn’t tell him to do anything. I thanked him, told him I appreciate his trying to comfort me, but that unless he could reach into her brain and change her personality, none of this is within his control or mine. It’d make me feel better if he wouldn’t hide me, but he said it’s not that he’s hiding me, it’s that he’d rather avoid any conflict anywhere, including mentioning my existence to an ex who doesn’t like me, even if it would put her in her place. If she’s that unreasonable, I’d rather he not deal with it at all to just keep the peace.
See what I get for not reading all your archives? That’s a little different, I thought she was the mother of his children and he had to communicate with her. It’s hard for men sometimes because of ‘some’ women and their cattiness… I guess I read it wrong about him excluding you from the weekend talk to avoid her being a pain in the ass… however, he should feel free to discuss you with anyone and everyone.. but her behavior (towards you) is juvenile, I would think he’d tell her to leave him alone or not even talk, unless she can be civil(where you are concerned). Men like to avoid these things, that’s for sure. I was reading your post, going through my mail and talking to #3 about getting some KFC… so I may have read it wrong. I’m glad he called to ask you how you were… Yay, Mr. W.
I can’t imagine working with an ex… one reason why people shouldn’t date co-workers I guess… LOL… sorry.
You wouldn’t have gotten this information from my archives. The prior times I’d been troubled by her, I wasn’t specific. This is the most specific entry I’ve written about this and I’m actually not even that comfortable with it now that I’ve written it. I keep reading it and rereading it to see if maybe I was too tough or insensitive on the way it was written. But I just *needed* to get it out there, you know? For therapy, and to try to organize my feelings.
I don’t think you read it wrong, you actually reflected back to me exactly how I felt, and the part about *which* ex it was, well, I didn’t say, so how could you have known? You were right in that excluding me from his weekend talk was just to keep her from being a pain in the ass. He doesn’t want to deal with any negativity from her so my name’s taboo. And he would not stand up to her for my benefit because he doesn’t like conflict. I wouldn’t even ask him to do that, because 1.) I know he wouldn’t, and 2.) she’d probably freak out and it’d just make everything worse.
I know what you mean… after I posted some of the stuff that I did about Oregon and Marriott, I was thinking.. ok delete delete delete.. and felt uncomfortable with this stuff being ‘out there’. I left it because they are my feelings, right, wrong or indifferent.
I understand about him avoiding conflict (most men are the same way) so it’s just *easier* to have chit chat, excluding what you know would stir the pot or invoke juvenile behaviors… but it still doesn’t help that you have to be affected by it. It’s really tough for some guys to keep the peace with everyone because *they* want to keep the peace… it’s like “can we all just get along?” No. Some of us can’t.
Anyway, so feel free to delete my comments (or part of) in the future when they make no sense! Your post brought me back to another time.. in my own life.. and I may have been shooting off from my own standpoint. I should blog it.
The only comments I censor on my blog is spam.