Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.~ Rumi
This blog is for me to talk about me mostly. It’s very self centered. Once in a while I feel challenged to explain something. Today I feel like I’ve been called out. Whoo hoo am I going to need a shower after this post!
(There is much more to her post than the part about me).
I guess she thinks it appropriate for me to blog on the above subject, the horrible treatment she has received from “those people”/my people.
In my first ever blog post I said my husband saw her as “manipulative and needy”. She has held that against me as a cruel thing to have revealed into the blogosphere. I am also manipulative and needy sometimes. So is my husband. It can be a problem. People who think they are above manipulative and needy behavior can be annoying too.
Regretting that I did not have the wisdom and maturity to see through her adolescent posturing when she first called me doesn’t change it. Shame and guilt dominated my behavior.
I have to accept and work with these things, now.
So, as for her visits to my home — Joy visited my parents home once. It was quite stressful for all. She said she planned to visit her grandmother before she died but Grandma died sooner than Joy expected I guess. Or maybe she changed her mind. IDK.
She’s visited me, in my home twice, maybe three times. Two times, quite close together. One time we were expecting her for dinner. I was trying to be as relaxed as I could and pretend it was a normal occurrence. Hum te tum tum
She didn’t show up until the next morning, so I planned a quick breakfast. Now, eight years later, she expresses once again that she was affronted when my husband chose to follow his regular routine that morning instead of joining us for breakfast. We didn’t really know when she was coming and he doesn’t like breakfast anyway.
We live a little bit differently than most I believe. He treasures his alone time. Weekend mornings were especially precious to him. When Buster and Ezzy were little, he and I used to take turns giving each other time alone. They had issues with it as teens.
That weekend morning I spent with Joy and Tomtom, happy to have them to myself and for him to have his time to himself. I didn’t realize Joy’s tension was wrapped up with his absence.
To me, he wasn’t locked away. He was doing his usual thing.
So that’s that.
I hadn’t got the rhythm of Joytime yet– something to not plan on.
I have invited her to come again. She doesn’t want to. A couple years ago she said she wanted to see me when she came through. I invited her for dinner. She declined, saying she didn’t know what time they would arrive. I said I’d make spaghetti, something that could be held till they arrived. Uh, no we don’t know when we’ll get there. But whenever you get here you’ll be hungry. Oh, no I don’t want you to go to the trouble. So I waited for her to call me from her hotel. Then I came a running to meet her at the restaurant where she was having her dinner.
My tendency to drop whatever I am doing to meet Joy has confounded and offended my family and friends. But it’s not really her fault. She never says, “I will be there.” She avoids making commitments. When I try to pin her down, she kind of agrees to a time. But she doesn’t mean it.
She has more to deal with than fits neatly into her life. I don’t fit neatly into her life. Last time we saw each other I thought I had anticipated her concerns. I asked which of the three days I was going to be in town would work best for her. I double checked that. I made all my other plans around her. It didn’t work out very well. We got quite worked up before she let me know her amom was scheduled to arrive the next day!
Oh. my.
OK. Excuse me. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Joy didn’t grow up with me. She doesn’t get the idiosyncratic way we do things. Her siblings and my husband don’t get her idiosyncrasies either.
Joy’s sensitivity is such that she is hurt because my husband doesn’t behave the way she wants. His sensitivity is such that he will continue to take care of himself, even if it flies in the face of her sense of right and wrong.
So right now I’m wondering, what’s next? We’ll see.
singout 
My point was, I am flummoxed that he the termerity to call me “manipulative and needy” when I wasn’t even around. It seems counterintuitive to me.
I am not responsible for whatever I was in your collective imagination.
You know there is a lot more behind what I wrote than the lack of civil exchange on one visit.
Joy,
What do you mean by counterintuitive ?
His perception was based on hearing my side of our phone conversations as well as dealing with me after them, when I was needy.
I agree we are all responsible for our own imaginations.
Yes, there is more. I’m taking things one at a time.
I mean goes against all evidence.
If someone is so needy and manipulative, moreso than the average person, where it be a label placed on them, and used as a “justified” reason to be excluding them, it seems one would have to be around to “need and manipulate”
Your/his discription make it sound as if I was ill-behaved and demanding. When in reality, I wasn’t even there to upset your apple-cart. Also one needent disrupt one’s routine for a five-minute “hello” I certainly was not in need of his company for the meal, it would have made me feel differently to be treated with common courtesy and a modicum of respect.
the way I see it, we’re both needy and manipulative sometimes. You have the right to see it differently. I agree it’s certainly not a justifiable reason to exclude someone. You are not excluded from our life. You were invited to dinner, which we normally eat together. Consider it an open invitation.
But believe me, I’ve had apples rolling all over the ground a number of times.
I am sure you have been tripping over apples, but those apples are yours and your husbands.
You know I am not talking about me being overly sensitive, which I may be. I said the words mean, I said the words self-absorbed, which I am guilty of myself.
You and your husband made your own decisions about how you wanted to treat me, just as my husband atm and I made our own.
It is not fair to fob it off on me and label me with words that while may be accurate in some situations, are not fair in this one.
The labeling of me with perjoratives, just furthers the original situation. While I am sure the original situation was quite difficult for you, I can assure you it was also difficult for me.
I hope things are getting easier for you a bit, as they are for me. You are right about labeling being limiting.
It is more than limiting, it is just plain mean, esp. given the situation. Especially given that I was wholly absent except in your and his inventions.
Now perhaps you can understand why I wasn’t able to make it in time for spaghetti, and it is quite unlikely that I will be able to make it in the future.
Would you want to have dinner who took exploited the vulnerable situation you were to hurt you more?
I was so vulnerable, so young, so hurt. So you all decided to call me names…
Like I told you all those years ago, you have the right to do whatever you like, I am not obligated to like it. For me to like it would be to participate in harming myself.
I hope your obligation is to be true to yourself in the best possible way. I don’t want you to do anything to hurt yourself. I do not want to do anything to hurt you either.
I’m doing the best I can in each moment. I’m sure you are too.
Take care.
I imagine we are all of these things (whatever the label) at one time or another – can’t imagine a person who does not act or feel ——- (fill in the blank).
And I know that negative labels can be restrictive, but just want to say, from my perspective both you and Joy are courageous and tenacious, and for that you have each other in your lives. Are ‘positive’ labels less restrictive? IDK, but it feels like it opens up to possibilities a bit more.
I wish you both the best,
Carol
thank you Carol.
It’s good to hear other perspectives.