Hi Sadlyconfused,

It’s obvious your husband does think he said something wrong (not hugely wrong, but a bit off color honestly) else he wouldn’t have told you/confessed it to you. So don’t put it all on you, you know?  Sure there might be previous pain–hence your large reaction–but, he could also have said something he probably knows wasn’t the best thing, else he wouldn’t have told you. Both things can be true.

Suffice to say, I don’t think your husband’s comment is that big of deal. We’re all human, we all flirt. Flirting is fun.  No harm in that. So if you can accept that, then you’re all good. If you trust your husband not to go any farther than that, then cool.

Just don’t put it all on you, you know? If you had made the same comment to another guy, I don’t think your husband would be too enthused. Being married is tough, and these things do happen. But they’re not the end of the world, rather par for the course. We’re all human!

Good luck!

Pink:)

Dear Sadlyconfused:

Sept 22 (original post): “a few nights ago… we were having a discussion the other evening about his Discord use. .. He’s been very open about all his gaming buddies but he’d never actually mentioned this woman to me before… I haven’t seen the photo or the comment, just his vague retelling of it”, Sept 23: “This other woman looks the opposite of me physically and is bubbly, chatty and funny“-

– I am thinking: before your conversation with your husband a few nights ago, you did not know about the existence of this woman-gamer. Therefore, either (1) when you posted your original post, you did not yet see her photo. You saw it and read her conversations with other gamers for the first time the day after, seeing/ reading for yourself that she looks and behaves the opposite of you, bubbly, etc.,  or (2) you never saw her photo or read her conversations with other gamers, but your husband described to you how she looks and  behaves. Which one of these two possibilities (perhaps there is a third possibility) is true may be significant.

I want to re-read all that you shared, slowly and carefully, rearrange what you shared in chronological order. If you are reading, I hope that it’s okay that I repeat your words, particularly on topics that still hurt:

Your very misogynistic (woman hating) father treated your now deceased mother like dirt. He mistreated you as well, expressing criticism and cruelty toward you. Your mother partly protected you from him, but when she died, his criticisms and cruelty really amped up. As a result, you grew up receiving his criticisms and cruelty and walking on eggshells, so to prevent even more of his criticism and cruelty.

You were a generally quiet girl (the opposite of bubbly, chatty an funny), a very sensitive person with a low self-esteem.  Peers at school bullied you for your quietness and for your looks. Among your peers, you felt like you were not good enough.

You got married about 15 years ago. For all the years of your marriage, your husband did not flirt with other women or made flirty comments (“In the whole 15 years or so that we’ve been together he’s never acted like that“). For some time, like you, he experienced poor mental health.

During the marriage, you took antidepressant medications. When weaning off the drugs, in the last year or two, you experienced heightened anxiety and anhedonia (lack of feeling/ emotion). For so long, you felt like you couldn’t feel anything for anyone, including for your husband. In the last 3-4 months you and your husband worked on your communication and it greatly improved.

Your husband is a gamer who uses Discord, a chatting app for gamers. Recently, during a conversation where you expressed your concern regarding his interactions with women on Discord, he volunteered that the only thing he did there that could upset you was that he left a comment on a female gamer’s public photo, something like: “If I were 10 years younger, lived in Texas and wasn’t married…”, a jokey thing, he said, something everyone in the Discord community does. His comment triggered your childhood experience of criticism, cruelty and peer bullying.  partly because the woman he sent the comment to looks the opposite of you physically and unlike your general quietness, she is bubbly, chatty and funny.

My comments based on your 2 posts alone: (1) I am sorry that you and your mother suffered from a misogynist father and husband. I can’t imagine a worse situation for a woman (your mother) and a girl (you) than living with a man who hates women (and girls)!

(2) Congratulations for successfully (if I understand correctly) weaning yourself off anti-depressants. I know how very difficult it is to accomplish this. When I tried to wean myself off anti-depressants (and from a benzodiazepine), I almost didn’t make it because of the intense heightened anxiety involved,

(3) Congratulations for improving the communication between you and your husband in the last few months. May you, your husband and the marriage continue to heal and improve!

(4) I hope that you are no longer walking on eggshells (a habit that is hard to break). I used to move from the two extremes: being passive (walking on eggshells, saying nothing… being very quiet) and being confrontational and aggressive (saying too much and in the wrong way). Moderation is key to mental health, the moving away from extremes.

I enjoyed our short communication and would love to keep it going, if you feel similarly, of course.

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome. The excess print is not a problem for me, it’s okay. It happens to my posts when I copy text from outside tiny buddha and paste it into my tiny buddha posts.

“I think I’ve harshly judged myself all my life for the reactions I have, and felt like there was something wrong with me“- same here. What I learned is that at least in-the-beginning, that is, when I was a child, there was absolutely nothing wrong with my reactions. What was wrong was in the actions I was reacting to. When I fully understood this, I was able to understand why and how I reacted inappropriately as an adult and felt empathy for myself: for the wrong that was done to me, and for the resulting pain and dysfunction that I experienced as an adult.

“There is a difference between knowing that and believing it though“- to believe that there was nothing wrong with you in-the-beginning, you have to go back in time to your beginning, so to speak, and give the wrongness (the guilt) back to whom it belongs.

“I’m starting to study dialectical behavioural therapy, more too get a better sense of what’s happening when I react so emotionally… I can be very black and white about things and jump to extremes though, when the reality is that it was probably a grey area thing all along“- DBT is tailored for extreme, all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinkers. It is about cognitive moderation. With cognitive moderation comes emotional moderation.

“He probably did have a crush on this woman… but at the same time I acknowledge that I wasn’t emotionally available“- men, including married men, get crushes even when their wives are emotionally available. The crushes often have to do with the man’s emotional experience as a boy, way before he met the woman he married.

“He mentioned her nickname… I looked her up on social media and was able to see for myself.. My husband didn’t go into any depth about who she is“- good, I was concerned that maybe he did go into depth. This makes me feel even better about your husband.

“I feel quite bad currently about getting so upset about it, as I think the game itself was a fun outlet for him… it (childhood) wasn’t the best start I could have had“-  the way you emotionally reacted to your husband’s comment was not based on thinking that the game was bad, and/ or that he shouldn’t have fun. The way you reacted was based on your painful experience in the start of your life.

“I became a massive people pleaser to get through it, which has been really difficult to emerge from as it’s pretty much been my identity my whole life. Without it, who actually am I? What do I stand for?… people naturally assumed that my easy-going, people pleasing habit was my core personality, rather than the trauma response that it really was“- in regard to people pleasing: every young child is naturally a people pleaser (and a massive people pleaser, at that), particularly eager to please her parents and other adults. As adults, we still want to please other people. People pleasing is a genetic characteristic of all social animals. It is not a trauma response.

When as adults we practice extreme people-pleasing, it is a trauma response. But when you try to figure out who you are (“who actually am I?”), remember the topic of extreme thinking: it is not that you are either a people pleaser (and that’s bad) or you don’t have any people-pleasing tendencies (and that’s good). Reality is that you are a people pleaser (people are people-pleasers), that’s really who you are and it is your core personality!

“I need to learn how to process my feelings… I have so much unresolved grieving to do, particularly around the death of my mother. I can’t openly talk about her without crying, and it happened nearly 20 years ago“- I don’t know if it is a good idea, but maybe it is (you decide): if you want to, you can talk about your mother here, tell me about her and about what hurts so much. If you choose to do this, you can italicize all the parts you don’t want me to respond to, and to the parts that are not italicized: I will make sure to respond empathetically and respectfully.

“I didn’t tell my husband that I was weaning off anti-depressants“- when I read that, my first thought was: how nice of Sadlyconfused to not burden her husband with this information.

“.. which I feel was a massive communication error on my part, as my poor behaviour had no explanation. I have such a bad habit of just trying to deal with things alone“- how indeed you judge yourself harshly (see your words in the quote with which I opened this post): a massive error, poor behaviour, bad habit…?

Here is an empathetic reframing of this sentence: looking back, I can see that I made an error not telling my husband because if I told him, he would have become aware of the withdrawal symptoms that I suffered. I have this habit of dealing with things alone because I was so alone for too long,  as a child and onward.

“(Walking on eggshells is) a very difficult habit to break! .. I’ve let little things fester into resentment and they’ve then turned into bigger issues in my head“- how about forming a new daily habit: every day, locate a tiny resentment and appropriately voice it?

“It’s hard to balance (old trauma) with things that are genuinely a present day problem though and which might require an assertive response“- when confused about a current problem or situation, you are welcome to share about it here and get my take on whether it requires an assertive response.

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused,

I would just like to add and echo anita’s words: please have compassion for yourself.

I have actually very recently realised that self-compassion is probably key to developing more emotional resilience (I started a workbook on self compassion just the other week!) so it’s reassuring that you’ve advised this. I think I’ve harshly judged myself all my life for the reactions I have and felt like there was something wrong with me.

That’s wonderful that you’ve realized the importance of self-compassion and have started a workbook on that topic! We all need self-compassion, but specially people who were heavily criticized as children. We need that loving, kind, compassionate voice to replace the harsh voice of the inner critic.

Something has just occurred to me – you asked who you are (since you are not and shouldn’t be a people pleaser!) Well, your true self is a compassionate self, having the voice of a gentle, kind and loving parent. If you can find such a voice within yourself, this is the voice of your True Self. If you get anchored in self-compassion, the pieces of the puzzle will start coming together, and you’ll be discovering more and more of your authentic self.

Dear Sadlyconfused,

I don’t think either that you are a bad woman wearing a mask of a good woman, or pretending to be a good woman, deceiving people. As people pleasers, we allow others to cross our boundaries. We are afraid to say No and be assertive. We are afraid to stand up for ourselves, even if the things we are required to do go against our wishes and our best interests. But we suppress our wishes, we suppress our anger too, and we do what is required of us, maybe even with a smile on our face, because we are afraid of rejection and criticism.

It is in that sense that I used the words “pretend” and “wear a mask”, because as people pleasers, we aren’t authentic. Not because we want to deceive others, but because we don’t want to be judged, and ultimately, we don’t want to be rejected.