Hi Brooke,
I had a really awful weekend with my daughter, husband, and family in general. I have a good relationship with all 3 of my adult children but if I am to butt heads with anyone of them it is always my middle daughter. I feel she talks down to me and attacks me if I try to talk to her about something that is upsetting me about our relationship. She is extremely stubborn and when we argue which leads to me outwardly being angry and hurt, she then leaves. I spend the rest of the day upset and crying. I feel like she is ruthless when she knows how upset I am by not reaching out to try and work things out. I continue to try to communicate with her.That is what I thought was the biggest problem I had this weekend until it came to my husband.
I was feeling so hurt that all I wanted was for my husband to be by my side and align himself with me and yes I always have my own back but I would think if we are partners in life and one of us is hurting so badly the other one would be there for support.. Without going into all the details of the argument I had with him about how I never feel supported by him he said something to me which felt like a punch in the stomach and he seemed to be getting pleasure out from it. So instead of him supporting me and helping me to deal with my feelings over our daughter, he said, I was always the cause of all the problems that come up in our family. He is normally a person who can’t stand confrontation and I feel he would sooner throw me under the bus than be supportive of my feelings and always aligns himself with out kids. He sees where my daughter can be wrong but doesn’t want to deal with it even when she continually hurts me over and over.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a wilting flower in my relationships with my family. I have my own back, I speak up, I don’t put up with disrespect no matter how old my children are (I’m still their mother).
So two things are going on here. The first is I can’t begin to understand my daughters lack of empathy for me when she sees I am clearly angry and hurt (not to mention that I tell her I’m hurt.) I always say to her that in a million trillion years I never could and still cannot go through my day if I know my mom is upset and usually by some argument we may have had. Even if I truly think that my mom is one hundred percent wrong in whatever it is that causes tempers to flare, I just can’t live with myself knowing I have contributed to her feeling hurt. I think its cruel the way my daughter can prolong the agony of our argument. Secondly, and actually more upsetting to me is all I wanted was my husband to be supportive of me. I wanted him to “defend” me. I wanted him to tell our daughter that she cannot speak to me in the way she does. He can never do this. Yesterday, when I was with her and my other children, grandchildren, and husband I experienced something that I only experienced one other time in my life and that was like an outer body experience. It was like I was numb and though I was with them all, I felt like I wasn’t really there and just looking in from the outside. It was almost like I was gone and they were all still functioning happily without me.
I know only we create our feeling from our thoughts. But I wouldn’t know what else to think to not have this feeling of hurt not just from my daughter but more so from my husband. When he said that if there is a disagreement within our family its because of me. That hurt so badly. This morning I feel so numb. My husband always moves on like nothing happened (this morning) even when I told him that I was feeling empty and numb. He said, do you want me to take you to the hospital. I think your having a panic attack. I said no. I wasn’t having a panic attack. I just wanted to curl up into a shell and disappear.