interesting

i’m extremely detached from DW. separate rooms. at night i’m in my room with the door firmly shut. civil. we do things as a family sometimes. i often don’t have dinner with the family, stay over at a friends or go away for the weekend.

he was emotionally abusive to me in the last 10 years. rages. righteous, entitled anger.

the other day, he got angry towards me for the first time in months (he has been ‘nice’ because he knows he can’t get away with the anger now). over a stupid thing. the details don’t matter. but it was because i started to wash a dish before sitting down to eat. he got incredibly angry, that i was doing this, when he was waiting for me to serve myself first (i know, ridiculous)

i at first reacted, told him to calm down. he kept at the anger, in my face, provoking me, blaming me.

i put my plate on the counter and went downstairs into the music room. i thought – i don’t need to eat dinner with you and my son, i can eat later, i’m out of here.

i was calm, i wasn’t very upset, just didn’t want any of that shit. i went to work on a grant application in my laptop. i did feel some of those old feelings of injustice, hurt, desperation. but i thought to myself, you don’t have to play this game anymore, that was then, this is now.

ten minutes or so DW comes down. says he’s sorry he hurt me, starts justifying and explaining. i say nothing. eventually he stops explaining himself. pause. i say. apology accepted. i resist the urge to apologize for anything (before i would have found something i did…) because i did nothing wrong.

pause.

why don’t you come up and eat?

pause

ok.

very interesting. that’s the first time i broke that pattern. now as you may know, i’m not interested in a relationship with DW. but it is empowering to know that i’m breaking those abusive patterns.

by walking away. by NOT apologizing. by not explaining myself or trying to convince him of anything.

interesting and empowering.

🙂