Miscommunication of Emails, texts, and IMs when Dating

Oy, can I say Oy even if I'm not Jewish? It seems appropriate for this situation. I was communicating via email with the guy who just wants to be friends. He messaged me that I shouldn't be using courts and lawyers because in the future I'll want to get back together with my ex and I won't be able to if things get messy.

AH WHAT? 

I've tried to explain to him that my marriage is over due to abuse without divulging too much about my marriage. In response to his email I sent one telling him that once my ex finds out about the lien on our house and is served with child support papers he's going to lose it because he is prone to temper tantrums. I also mentioned talking to my daughter about the abuse that day and how the conversation went better than I'd hoped. OK maybe I wasn't as succinct as that, but that is about all I said. Maybe if I'd been more succinct and used less emotional words, he wouldn't have assumed things about me.

His email back told me that my life is a mess and why would I want to purposely make my ex mad by filing papers with the courts. He accused me of talking smack about my ex in front of my kids and if this is how I treated people I didn't hate he'd hate to see how I treated people I did. How could I tell a virtual stranger these things about my ex husband?

AH WHAT?

My next email divulged more about my marriage and how I am not allowing the abuse, the mess, or the issues in my life dictate my day to day. I am not feeling sorry for myself or looking for pity, it just is the situation I am in and I am dealing with it on a day by day basis. I have decisions to make and for reason A, B, and C, these are the decisions I've decided to make.

I wasn't emotional about it, although I wanted to tell him what I really thought of his last message.

My response was unemotional, to the point, with reasons to back up my choices and an explanation about why I was divulging so much information to a 'virtual stranger,' as he called himself. The reason was to explain why I made the choice to file paperwork with the courts, talk to lawyers, and have a plan in place in case he became violent. I also told him the purpose of telling him so much now was to get him to understand that not all marriages are good or salvageable. Plus, to make it very clear that my ex was abusive in front of his children and that although I talked to my daughter it was still done with positive reinforcement and a clear message that her father loves her. I also wanted to make it very clear that I am not an emotional train wreck and still the confident, together woman he met.

In the email I admitted that while my ex may have been controlling and abusive, he was not the only one at fault and I was very aware of my role in the downward spiral of our marriage. I also said good things about my ex and how I wanted him to find someone who would make him happy.

Why didn't I freak out on this 'virtual stranger' and tell him exactly what I thought of his opinion of me?

Well, because he doesn't know me. He assumed that since I am a victim of an abusive marriage who lives with the threat of his anger landing on my door step that I must be a mess. I am a mess in many ways, however, I am not an emotional wreck. I do my best to keep irrational thoughts out of my decision making process and I do not want to make my ex pay via revenge. I just want to live my life and move on. Life is too short for anger, hatred, and revenge.

Email is not the medium to use when having an emotional charged discussion. All that one has is words to interpret what you mean and what you are feeling. People will use their own points of view, lives, experiences, etc, to interpret your meaning in a negative way for the most part. I have yet to come across one person who didn't jump to conclusions, negative assumptions, and hurt feelings when they received an emotionally charged email.

For all I know his ex wife dragged him over the coals with lawyers and courts. She might have poisoned their children against him and ruined his reputation with their friends. I don't know why he reacted the way he did or accused me of being such a hateful, petty, woman. Sure I'm hurt, I'm upset, and I'm pissed, but why escalate things by being overly emotional in my response? It would only lead to another knee jerk reaction from him and more negative emotions for me.

I do not expect to ever hear back from this man again. Nor do I really want to, his issues are more than I want in my life right now. His uncanny ability to only see what he wants and use his experiences to interpret other people's situations only leaves me wondering if he is capable of empathy. I need friends who listen, can offer solid advice, and be there without accusing me of drama.

I have too much empathy and see so little of it in others. I'm not looking for a man to feel sorry for me, or even to fix my situation. I am looking for a man who can understand me through empathy but knows I am capable of handling things with his support as a friend, a confident, and a lover.

I Feel I Don't Deserve to be Loved - How I'm Fixing That

At my core I believe I don't deserve to be loved and those words eat at me when I'm tired, depressed, alone, and hurting. Those words ring so true to my soul I cry out in actual pain from it raking at my nerves, my heart, and my mind. I rarely cry, I rarely feel such pain, but when this lie screams out at me I almost buckle over from the physical agony tormenting my being. My head knows this statement is a lie, but that doesn't matter, I still hurt. 

It is this lie that abusers, manipulators, and predators are able to easily uncover and use against me to reel me into their toxic world. If I am ever to find true happiness and love I have to stop believing it and start loving myself enough to put up walls between me and the toxic men who I am drawn to. 

Here is a podcast that I find helpful, and one that you may also find key truths to help you as you heal: 
http://modernloveguide.podbean.com/

I have been working on this with my therapist. She gave me a few exercises and one of them is to write out a list that I read over and over until I start believing it to the point it drowns out the lie. I've started the list and wanted to share it here. If you're like me, it's time you start calling out the lie and embarrass it back into the depths of hell...
Here's my list, I hope it will help you start writing yours.

Each item has the words I deserve to be loved in front of them, but since it was so hard on the eyes to have that phrase repeat over and over on the screen I removed it... when you write your list make sure you write I deserve to be loved before each reason you give.

I deserve to be loved because:
 God created me to be loved. 
 I am intelligent
 I am knowledgeable
 I am nonjudgemental 
 I get along with most people
 I have an open caring heart
 I have lots of empathy
 I am pretty
 I am kind
 I am a sweetheart
 I am a good friend
 I am an excellent mother
 I am a great writer
 I am a good marketer
 I am a decent salesperson
 I have marketable skills
 I can solve problems
 I am a quick learner
 I am resilient 
 I am resourceful
 I am independent 
 I am supportive
 I am wonderful
 I have a giving heart
 I have a positive outlook
 I love coffee
 I am a good cook
 I have a lot of love to give

This list will grow as I look at myself and all the positive strengths God has given me. Don't get me wrong I have plenty of weaknesses, my inability to keep a clean organized house is at the top of that list. I spend enough time feeling bad about my negatives and the next step will be to start seeing those traits not as negatives but either with a positive twist or as weaknesses that someone else can support with their strengths. 

My Insightful Dream Last Night

If you've been following me you know my life is a mass of change and assholes. Last night I had a very telling dream about how I feel and how my actions push men away and how I have to change the way I  feel about me to get off the merry go round.

The dream: In the dream I was at my brother's wedding but my mother seated me and the kids outside the room. Everyone else was inside the room. I was not part of the family photo session, the ceremony, the reception. I was ignored, forgotten and physically removed from the action.

In the dream I got very upset when we were back at the house. I screamed at my mother, I cried, I poured out my heart. I went over every slight, listed out every other family event I wasn't invited to, seated outside of, and demanded she apologize, make up for it, make me feel better. Guess what. She got mad I was ruining the wedding. She rationalized, came up with excuses, put the blame on me, belittled my feelings, laughed at the drama.

In the dream I told other family members about how I felt and they would tell me I didn't understand what they were going through and why I had to be seated outside to keep the family peace because there wasn't enough room inside and heaven forbid one of them were seated out there. Until I started listing off how I was outside of every family celebration, never invited, forgotten and then they started in on my mother and how unfair she was being. Still she pushed back, didn't relent, didn't make me feel better. I did not matter.

Finally, in the dream I walked away. I packed up the kids and left telling her not to contact us ever again. Suddenly she was buying me gifts, planning trips that included us, and trying to do whatever she could to make things better. However, the more she did the more angry I got, the more hurt, the more slights, insults, and injustice I remembered. For example, my ex husband and his mother were seated in the room at my brother's wedding, why were they even invited? If they weren't there would have been room for me and the kids. I was trying to make her pay, get her to give more, apologize more, feel worse than she did. I was miserable. I couldn't feel happy with the gifts, the attention, the apology.

That's the dream streamlined, of course there were many more people, lots more action, and even finer symbolic details.

I don't keep a dream journal. I don't analyze my dreams or even care to really remember them. This one struck me as significant this morning because it's very telling of my marriage, dating life, and even the relationship I have with my mother. It's telling because it tells me how I act, how I demand attention, how I hang on hoping for those crumbs of decency I believe I am entitled to. I play the martyr, the victim, hoping others will feel sorry for me and fight my battle for me.

Currently, I don't feel like I matter. I don't feel cared about, heard, or even loved and that's because I'm not.

I am on a merry go round of hurt, pain, emotional baggage. I know that until I can store that baggage in the overhead compartment for good because I matter to me, I care about me, I love me, I will never matter to anyone else.

The question becomes, how to jump off this merry go round? How to love myself?

Divorce, Decisions, Depression

I was looking forward to my forties being a great deal better than my thirties and so far... I've got side swiped and then banged up. Five months before turning forty my husband of twenty years tells me he wants a divorce. At least he didn't literally kick me to the curb and I still have a roof over my head. Only problem is, he's still under it too.

Not only that but my kids became teenagers and now they want very little to do with me. Problem is, I gave up a career in finance to stay home with them and struggled through flexible jobs that I was barely any good at to raise them. Now what? My dream career has always been to be a writer, but I'm hardly alone there and only 1% of those trying to become writers actually make a living at it. Depressing.

My marriage ended over a year ago and all the decisions I have no control over are beginning to piss me off, so I've started taking control of my life for the first time in ten years. Yes, I gave up control of my life to my husband about ten years ago. He made all the major decisions and after a short fight, I'd just nodded my head politely saying "it's a bad decision, but if it's what you think is best." Problem was, he didn't consider my needs or take care of me financially in the process. Now I've got no credit, a manageable debt, a low paying job that won't support me and two teenagers living in a very expensive city.  My parents and the bulk of my friends live in a totally different country than I do, on a different continent and moving there is just too much change to put the kids through.

I've decided to push my ex to finish the renos, I've started dating, and I'm gonna move out before he's ready to sell the house. I forgot how good I was at making decisions. Yes, it's much easier to give someone else the responsibility. It's not smart though. In my case my husband wasn't very good at making decisions even though he wanted to be the one in control. The stress of making bad decision after bad decision caused lots of friction in our marriage, a major loss of trust and some very bad blood between us. He was always miserable, always stressed, always blaming me for the consequences and I resented him for dragging me along kicking and screaming behind him.

Divorce is going to be a good thing for me, once I can finally get a decent pay cheque or a second part time job to afford rent. If I could trust my ex to pay child support I wouldn't worry about a second job, but I know him. There will be no cheques sent my way unless the courts force it and I'm not sure I want to put everyone through that nastiness for an extra $800.00 a month. My kids need their dad and I've seen what courts can do to kids. It's not worth it. I'd rather work a second job than put my kids through it.

I've been on medication to manage my depression for over ten years now, but when situational depression gets added onto the clinical, it can be hard to push through even with the magic pill. I had a job interview yesterday and I was hoping it would be a quick solution, but wasn't. The interview made me think there aren't opportunities for someone like me out there, which I know is not true.

Marc hasn't contacted me in seven days now and he'd hung up on me without saying goodbye, so that lifeline is only adding to the blue feelings swimming around inside me. The other guys I've been talking to online have become silent and there have been no new ones interested in a middle aged overweight curvy housewife. The distractions of the last two months are silent.

My friends have their own lives and are all happily married. Besides none of them deserve to listen to me moan on about how difficult I allowed my life to become. I work from home, so it's isolating with very little in the way of face to face interaction. I get hung up on constantly, rejection is a daily word in my life, whether it be a sales call or a query letter to an agent.

My kids are extremely smart, extremely teenage, and extremely vocal about what they think should be going on in my life. They know how to push my buttons, make me feel guilty, and how to get me to do what they want me to do, all while spending my money. Yes I know, time to change that too.

Some days depression wins out, this is one of those days and I feel like I was hit by a train, my brain keeps rebooting every so often, sending a jarring electrical shock through me. Very distracting. I know that the best way to move on is to find joy within myself instead of in the attention of others. The only time I feel at peace alone is when I write or read. In other words, when I'm living in LaLa land and not having to face my crappy life. However, not facing my reality will not help me gain the independence I need, nor the solutions.

I should step back from dating. I should definitely take a step back from Marc - a huge step back. I should get a grip on my life and what I want from it before adding more crap into the mix. What do I want? My mother asked me that question when I told her Chris wanted out of our marriage. Funny coming from her because she always told me what I thought and wanted growing up. I didn't have an answer. I do now, but it still takes the mighty dollar, a whole lot of determination and facing fears I never thought I'd face alone.

I know I  will make it in this crazy world, one decision at a time.