This really is one of the keys in taking care of yourself through your husband's Midlife Crisis.
First of all what is emotional detachment? Well, in the scenario we are talking about here it is the ability to let go of the attachment that you feel towards your husband. It includes not expecting him to live as though he still feels attached to you.
Detaching from your husband means not hoping to control him or his behaviour and accepting that whatever he is doing is his choice and for his own reasons. It also means being self contained enough within yourself that you do not judge yourself based on what he does or doesn't do.
It might help to consider it this way. Every one of us is a whole and complete individual, we are all separate, stand-alone beings. When we get married we join our being with another to form a whole circle known as "the marriage", this circle is made up of two halves, you and your husband. In many marriages the separateness of the the two partners becomes blurred, rather than two distinct lines separating the two semi-circles, there is just one line and it is like a porous membrane. Wants and needs seep through the membrane and are met unnoticed by either partner. This becomes 'the norm' and all seems well, problems then occur when wants and needs are not met and there is an expectation that they 'should' be. This membrane can only function if it has the agreement of both partners, it isn't really the ideal way to live, but it does occur frequently.
When your husband goes through a Midlife Crisis he is no longer willing to contribute to this arrangement. He may want some of his wants and needs met by you, but he is incapable of making this a two way system. Detachment for you means redefining the line of separation between you and your husband. You need to stop the flow through the membrane. Otherwise you are putting too much energy in trying to give him what 'you' think he needs and are being hurt when that is rejected. At the same time you are still looking for your needs to be met by him and again feeling hurt and rejected when that is not what you receive from him.
Detaching from your husband means finding your grounding and identity in yourself and accepting that he must find his grounding and identity within himself.
When you can detach from your husband you can love him unconditionally, that means you can love him no matter what he does or doesn't do, no matter what choices he makes. You can care about him as a person who is going through a difficult time. You may feel that he is making some very 'bad' choices, but once you can detach from him you can accept that they are HIS choices and they do not reflect on you. You may wish that he would make other choices and behave differently, but once you can detach from him you will see that that is YOUR desire and it is for YOU to do the work on yourself to find healthy ways to cope with your own circumstances.
Some of the ways in which you can learn to cope with your circumstances are by looking at
Control, Responsibility and Refocusing.
Each of these deserve their own post too, but for now I will say that in learning to detach from your husband you will have to think about these:
Control
You cannot Control him! You cannot control his behaviours, his choices or his outcomes. No matter how much you want to it cannot be done. The sooner you come to understand that the sooner you will be able to stop wasting your energy trying to control stuff that's not yours and redirect it towards the one person in this world over whom you do have any control - that's you! Oh, and by the way no matter what you may be allowing, he does not control you either, he only has as much control over you as you GIVE to him.
Responsibility
You are not responsible for his Midlife Crisis, no matter what he might claim at times and no matter what you might beat yourself up with in the long sleepless nights. You are not responsible for his choices or behaviour. They are his responsibility, let him own them, you can't detach until you remember that you are two separate individuals who each has an intellect and a free will! Most important of all YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for your own well being. Not accepting that responsibility or trying to push it over and make HIM responsible for you is denying that you have any control or power over your own life, you do - and it's time to reclaim it!
Refocus
In order to detach you need to shift your focus away from your husband and onto yourself. He is someone you cannot control and are not responsible for. Why keep using all your time energy and focus on something you cannot influence? Doesn't it make more sense to focus on yourself, the one person for whom you really can make a difference? Try to turn things around so that you maximize the importance of your own well being and minimize the importance of his actions.
Welcome to Midlife Wife Support
For the Wives of Midlife Crisis Men
You would think that midlife would be a time to sit back and reap the rewards, really wouldn't you?I mean, by the middle of our lives we have a couple of decades of adulthood behind us. We have launched and worked hard at careers, marriages, families all those things we aspired to achieve. Yet for so many of us it is a time to see those things fall apart.
Midlife Transition is a natural passage of adulthood, we all reach a point where we assess and evaluate our progress in life, we take stock, tweak a few things or even overhaul them and set a direction for the next stage of our lives.
The Transition process is as individual as we are, for some it is barely noticeable, an integral part of our daily life, for others it is a time of reflection and introspection. For others though the Transition can hit a brick wall and can turn into a full blown crisis. When this is the case, the sufferer themselves is often completely unaware, it is their partner who suffers.
If you are the partner, the wife who is left wondering what happened to your husband, your marriage and your life, then this blog is for you.
If you are seeing your marriage fall apart as you watch your husband go through a midlife crisis then I hope you will find useful information / thoughts / musings here to help you get through this time.
My whole point in publishing this blog is to help you to see that their crisis is their own issue. No matter how much you want to, you can't fix it for them. No matter how badly you want to help them, you really can't. It is an inner journey that they need to go on and you are not being offered a companion ticket!
You will do best if you can turn your energy and attention toward yourself. You see, you are going through a crisis of your own and although you cannot save your husband or do his inner work for him, you must do your own inner work and save yourself!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This has helped me a great deal years of hurt pain blame self doubt through hisangry words and actions all put to an end! Thank you sooo much I am sure sooo many can benefit from this useful information.:))
ReplyDelete