Progress

So, I had about 24 hours of gifted peace, then I started getting antsy :-)

J came home from work yesterday, and he was sad and down and feeling crappy -- all because he's disappointed in himself from the day before.  Totally normal feelings -- but, codependent me was getting more on more on edge about it.  I hate when he's sad or mopey, 'cause I just sit there stewing about whether this is gonna be the excuse to look at porn or not.  So, I was trying my best to detach.  Give myself from space from the situation . . . which is where I went wrong . . .

Before dinner time, I told him I'd got get everything ready for dinner, and he could stay upstairs and work on his LifeStar homework in peace.  I figured it would give us both some space away from each other and feeling this need to 'talk about it', plus, he hadn't had a chance to even start this week's booklet from LifeStar, and his next meeting is tomorrow.  Win-win, right?

Um, not really.  I was basically telling him to get his homework done.  When he made some comment about maybe not wanting to do it right then, I 'suggested' that he take the time when he had it, and get to work.

Yeah, I'm not trying to control anything here, am I?! :-/

Later, I could tell he was a little distant, and I asked if he was mad at me for pushing the homework thing.  He admitted he was.  From his stand point, he's spending a ton of time on recovery work, so for me to push him about getting more done on my time table, not his, makes him feel like I don't have any faith in him.

I apologized, and admitted it was none of my business to tell him when to do his homework, and I shouldn't have pushed.  I told him how much I appreciated all the work he was doing, and I know recovery work alone was practically a part time job for him right now.  And it means the world to me that he's putting in so much effort.

But. (Always a 'but', that's why this is called 'progress' and not 'perfection'.)  My pushing was coming from my own feelings of fear and resentment.  I shouldn't have told him what to do, I should have told him how I was feeling. 

Last week, when he'd gone to his second meeting without all of his homework finished, it was like a kick in the stomach to me.  We are paying a lot of money to do this, and for me to feel like he's not really committed to it beings up all my feelings of fear, insecurity and worries about our future -- not to mention, a little ill when I look at our budget this month.

Admittedly, I'm also holding on to the past a bit.  Years ago, in our second year of marriage, we spent a ton of money going to counseling for this as a couple -- and J never once did the homework, wrote in his journal, kept track of his triggers, not one assignment from the counselor was followed through on.  In hindsight, he admits that a.) he didn't really get the magnitude of his problem, and b.) didn't actually want to change anything.  So, for him to not complete the homework just sends me back to six years ago.  This brings out my fears of it this just being one more time I get my hopes up, and him not really wanting to give it up.  And, dude, the money.

I'm also, admittedly, a little jealous.  I don't get to do this with him, with the young baby and all it just doesn't work for my schedule -- and I would love to do it.  But, I don't have the opportunity, and it's hard for me to not think, "I'd do all my homework . . . "  As in all things in recovery, I don't want any of it to be punitive to him -- penance for past mistakes -- I want it to be edifying, helpful, something that makes his journey better and easier.  So, here we are paying good money for him to have more tools, more understanding, and for him to not even complete the homework makes me a little sick to my stomach.  Missed opportunities and all that.

Also, life is pretty busy for us right now.  Neither of us are getting nearly enough sleep, and we're staying up ridiculously late almost every night.  Trying to schedule time for his homework kinda needs to be a joint effort -- I need to know when he needs a block of time with no distractions.  He needs to hear from me that it's OK to take that time for himself -- J is, for the first time in his life, learning to ask for what he needs.  And he's not very good at it yet :-)  (With being at meetings several times a week, he feels back about taking away more time from the family, leaving me with all four kids to get to bed on my own, etc.)  So, one issue with homework is that it never gets done because we never set aside time for it, and it's either do it at 12:30AM (he wakes up before 6AM for work), or get some sleep.  I was trying to encourage him to take the time while the boys were napping and the girls were at friends and I was working on dinner, because it wasn't time being taken away from family time -- I should've just told him what I was thinking about our schedule for the evening, and then let him decide what to do with his 'free time', not just tell him it was time to work on homework. 

I had every right to share with him how his actions were making me feel -- but no right to tell him what to do different.  I want the change to come from within him, not 'cause I'm hounding him.  And, left to his own devices, he really does get a ton of his own stuff done.  (Just not always what I want him to get done -- and I need to drop this idea that my way is the 'right' way.)

So, he has almost no homework done for tomorrow night's meeting.  And I'm not going to say another word.  And, you know what, there's a real chance that without a single prompting from me he'll get it all done on his own terms and won't that mean even more?  And, even if he doesn't finish, it doesn't negate all the other great things he's doing recovery-wise. 

So, I didn't handle things well, but we talked about it, and I think we both learned a little more about how to handle things in the future.

So, no more hounding.  In theory.