Lately, I’ve been having a lot of discomfort around email and communication with people. I feel like checking my email constantly (which I didn’t always do or feel the urge to do) and I’m waiting to get some bad news from my lawyer, my husband’s lawyer, whomever.

When I do get something (everything from the lawyers is bad news), I feel upset. When I don’t get something I just feel on edge. For a model, I have this:

C: divorce exists, email exchanges occur
T: I haven’t heard back so that means they are plotting something against me.
F: Scared/on edge/not relaxed.
A: avoid email, check it non-stop, do something else to try to buffer/procrastinate on writing to them myself, draft communication to them and don’t send it, think about what I might do (note buffering is not substances or much eating, it’s mostly research or doing other tasks or spending time with children).
R: ?? I know this is supposed to reflect the thought – am I plotting against me?

I want to break the cycle of waiting to hear the bad news from them. Sometimes I’m proactive and I write, but I think that they are out to get me and going to harm me and that is pretty consistent with the C’s that have occurred from my husband since we started this divorce.

I have a number of divorced friends now, and it doesn’t sound as if any of them have a husband who has been such an ass. I have the urge to ask how I can get my husband to not be such a jerk, but I know we don’t control other people and I’m just calling his actions being a jerk.

Still he’s been doing things that are pretty uncool. I feel jealous of other women whose husbands were so much better in their divorce than mine. I used to think my husband was an amazingly wonderful man, and now I can’t stand him and feel so disappointed and hurt. And he continues to do things that bother me.

Okay, maybe there are two things here: the email dread/fear/addiction, and the continually asking myself why other women’s ex-husbands are not as jerky as my own. I even envy women whose husbands are deadbeats because at least they leave the woman alone. Mine is a continued thorn in my side.

I’m thinking you will tell me that my husband and all of his behaviors are just a C and I get to think whatever I want about it. It’s like I got this message, but I can’t quite put it to use. What could be blocking this for me? I feel as if I see the real and genuine differences that are not neutral between my ex and other folks ex’s, so I’m having a hard time seeing his behavior as neutral. I’m wondering if I need to bang it into my head somehow, but how?

I also think I’m making it mean things about me as I feel like a victim to a shitty ex, and that means there must be something wrong with me. I fight this in my head by thinking I’m a decent person or recognizing whatever I have been able to accomplish but it doesn’t quite work.