M>BH D307

Im not sure if I mentioned it before and I am too lazy to go back and check out the past convos. But last February Snarky and I fought hard, things were coming to a head again something that happened shortly after Little Bear was born in 2015, I went back to work after my maternity leave ended and I had so many problems with management and the warehouse lead and I knew my days were numbered there. From my point of view the warehouse lead saw me as competition because I took my job seriously and I did my best to make things easier between the counter people and the warehouse people and she hated that I was making efforts to ease their work burden and she did get after me many times telling me that I need to make them do their work and just focus on my work, but I was doing mine and had enough time to do theirs well, and even if they had time to do their warehouse work they never did. The entire time I worked there they rarely ever did their warehouse work which only meant more work for us.

But anyways, we butted heads so many times and then we got a new branch manager and while I was first very keen on him I could tell he hated that I was horrible with my time management and he said I was ‘overly sensitive’ and hated that I used my phone to listen to music to youtube as I worked because he thought it was too much of a distraction for me, regardless that I got my work done and then some! 

But after currently conservations with Jesse I am thinking maybe my view on these events are totally wrong and maybe he’s right, they are grandiose thoughts. I don’t know anymore.

But anyways, so I quit working for Warehouse 1 and was a stay at home with Little Lion and Little Bear  and I was having a hard time with them, post partum depression, and depression about the job and how I cant seem to interact with people on any meaningful levels, and our marriage was strained but when I work I can ignore them and just pretend everything is okay. But being a SAHM I have all this time to think about these problems and it cumulated into a huge fight and I started to pack up to leave. I was seeing a therapist at that time and I was explaining everything to him and he suggested that I give it 6 months. If, after 6 months things are not improving to go ahead with the divorce. But Snarky was going through a lot at work, he had just moved from residential/commercial electrician to oil field electrician and I knew that he was going through a lot and he was under a lot of stress so after a long talk I decided to just drop it and wait to see if things got any better or not. I quit Warehouse 1 in June, we fought in September and by that 6 month mark I was hired at Warehouse 2, another warehouse, and like before I was able to just completely forget about all of our problems with work to preoccupy my mind. We still had little fights but like I said before, we would fight and it was leave my mind and be completely erased. 

So I got fired in September, and since then, again, Ive been able to think and overthink all of these problems. We’ve talked about them, argued about them and last February it came to a head again and we were fighting hard one evening before I had a Master Gardeners class, I hate fighting in front of the kids and I had retreated to the bedroom and he started yelling at me and it scared the kids. I nearly physically attacked him for that, the only thing that stopped me was the boys, one of them had run in and tried to defend me against Snakry's yelling. I had told him that I had enough, I was leaving. Id be back after class, finish packing and I would take the boys and leave. But when I got back we had a long conservation and we agreed that I would give this a year, one year to get better, but there were certain things that I wanted. First I wanted a real marriage proposal, I never had that, the only reason we got married was because I was pregnant and I wanted to move down here to be with him but mom and dad were insistent that we get married first that way “you are both on even ground and no one can talk down to you or put you in a lower position”…. thinking back that doesn’t even make sense to me. But I yielded to their pressure and we got married. It wasn’t because we had decided but my parents decided. This has lead to a lot of guilt on my mind, I feel like I forced him into this and we never even really talked about it.  So I wanted a real proposal, he had proposed to his former fiancee but she laughed at him and he said he’d never do that again and it made me feel like I wasn’t special enough for any of these simple love and romantic gestures. Who doesn’t dream about being proposed to?? So I said I wanted a real proposal within 6 weeks, and I never got that. I was devastated but he said that he wanted to make the proposal on our anniversary so he didn’t think that it would be a problem waiting past the 6 week mark because to him it wasn’t a big deal. But it was a huge deal to me and it devastated me and even though I had agreed to not leave for 1 year I was on the verge of leaving again. 

Anyways, we’ve hard our fights, he’d start to get better, we did some research together on communication and how to strengthen the marriage but then it would fall to the wayside, like I knew it would because this is how the cycle with us always goes, and then he would notice and start it up again. At this time I was talking to an old exboyfriend of mine, the one who really set the standard with me in terms of all other relationships, he is the one I compared everyone to and no one ever even came close to what him and I had. I know that I see this is rosy glasses but I honestly don’t remember any bad with him. We had great chemistry, we talked constantly, the sex was mind blowing. He was going through a divorce and we talked a lot every day rekindling a friendship after 11 years of not being in touch. This also led to a lot of strain between Snarky and me and i knew that talking to Wolfie hurt Snarky and pissed him off but I didn’t care. I was getting affectionate attention from Wolfie and nothing from Snarky, I got compliments and encouragement from Wolfie and nothing from Snarky. But then I knew that I was being unfair and that even though I regretted this marriage- I prided myself on having no regrets in life at all until I got married to Snarky which I still consider my only regret and my biggest mistake- But I knew I was being unfair and even though I regretted this marriage I owed it to the kids and to Snarky to at least try. I told Wolfie that I was going to stay with Snarky, I was going to call off the year trial and that Wolfie should totally start sating this one younger woman who was totally infatuated with him. I told Wolfie and I always loved him, will always love him and was honestly afraid that if he dated her she would take him away from me completely and we would be lost to each other again. He assured me that would never happen because he loves me too and would never lose me like the had before. Wow I was stupid to think that would ever be the case. Haven’t talked in months and that also devastated me but it made Snarky happy. 

Anyways I had told Wolfie that I wasn’t going to leave Snarky but I was too scared to actually tell Snarky because I had a suspicion that if I told him then he would stop what little progress he was attempting to make and just go back to the way things were before- complacency and ignoring problems and running away from any martial strife (literally running away in a couple of cases). Wolfie had told me not to tell him, that if I told him it would extinguish the fire under Snarky's ass and again… I didn’t listen. I told Snarky my decision and just like I feared, no more progress has been made. He doesn’t work on communication with me, he used to go to the gym with me but doesn’t anymore, we had divvied up the chores and those no longer get done either.

Sometimes I wonder if this marriage is worth trying to work on any further or if I was in the right mind state 3 years ago with wanting to walk out. I made a mistake in marrying him, and everyone in my family loves him, he’s a great guy AND HE IS, he is a great provider, he’s a moral and ethical man, he doesn’t drink, smoke, flirt or whore around, he has a great work ethic and is frugal with the income and always makes sure that all the bills are paid on time that even makes sure that we have enough money for a yearly vacation. But Im not happy, shouldn’t I be happy or is that too much to ask for? You only have one life to live do you really want that life to be settling for unhappiness? Just making do? Is that really what I want to teach my kids? That it is okay to settle as long as you have a “good” partner to settle with? When I talked to my mom about this- don’t know why I made that decision, she as never been of the same mind of me that ‘happiness is obtainable’ whether it be in work or marriage or anything really- she said that happiness isn’t something worth divorcing for, he isn’t a bad man and I have no real reason to leave him. 

But I have been doing a lot of research lately on ADHD, Bipolar, RSD, Emotional Dysregulation, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and more and more I am seeing how ‘bad and messed up’ I am and how I should have been treated when I was younger for the best opportunities to reach a more level playing field but since my parents were so against me being negatively labelled they refused any help and any therapy that could really help me. And I know that this is all in the past but I am still just so damn angry about this, I am angry about this, I am angry about the missed proposal, I am angry about so many things and I can’t seem to shake this anger. I cant seem to let it go and it pisses me off more that I am incapable of doing these simple things. But it seems to me that the more research that I am doing and the more that I understand about my actions, reactions, moods, irritability and everything really, the worse they seem to be and the more strain it seems to be on the marriage. Am I making it worse by acting on these ‘problems’ that I am reading about or am I finally seeing the way that I have always been acting and actually observing it now? 

When I get into a funk and don’t want to be touched I am being honest with Snarky and telling him that I do not want to be touched and I am feel oversensitive and just want to be alone. But while I will tell him to not touch me I won’t tell the kids to not touch me and I see the look on his face but I don’t explain it to him that I wont refuse the kids and make them feel like that they aren’t loved. 

Ive also been more observant to my irritability and while sometimes I can’t seem to stop myself when I am gripped by rage- the other day I was running late to a part time job Snarky got me at his job and the boys lost their shoes and weren’t being compliant with the morning routine and I exploded and screamed at them to find the f**king shoes and why cant we keep the damn shoes in the damn shoe bin right next to the door like they were doing so good before?

But other times I can feel the irritability getting disrupted and when I get pushed over the edge I will bark at them- “HEY” just one word yelled and they stop and look at me and get really quiet and I take a moment to breathe, sometimes using the red panic button on one app, and they just stand there and watch me until I calm down and address the problems. I am happy that they are seeing me using the breathing methods to relax and calm down and already Ive seen Little Lion use it a couple of times. 

But I feel like I am having a hard time to getting a hold of my emotions and all of this research makes me feel guilty and I keep feeling like the marriage is falling apart, and like I am the one making it fall apart and I still feel lost.

What can I do?How can I get a better grip on all of this?