Dear B and E’s Mom:

I am posting on your old thread because your new thread includes profanities and profanity is against the guidelines for posting on tiny buddha, on record here. Please refrain from those in the future.

I read your reply on another thread and your recent thread and would like to communicate with you further. On this thread, page 2, you wrote: “My son hates my husband and thinks he is an outright ******* who is ‘narrow minded and rigid.’”

In your reply on another thread, you wrote: “There have been times when I opened up to my husband about something important to me and I was met with judgment, dismissal, correction, or a lack of listening. Those moments severely eroded my trust in my husband to provide me “emotionally safe” grounds for sharing with him. Why should I bare my soul to someone who is likely to stomp all over my feelings?”

And in your new thread you wrote: “I feel my husband is hypocritical and doesn’t follow through on what he says….all I get are… *reasonable* explanations as to why it’s ok for him to think and feel the way he does. Never mind that if I’d tried what he has done I’d have been met with absolute rejection….if I point out these discrepancies and am given MORE reasonable explanations as to why what he says is OK. I can’t ever seem to “
‘win’ in these situations.”

In this thread you expressed the desire that your children, especially your son, will like your new husband and accept him as a positive part of their lives. But it reads to me that they shouldn’t, because he isn’t. Reads to me that your son’s evaluation of your husband (quoted above) was correct because you agree with it. After all, your son said that your husband is rigid and what you described is rigid behavior on his part- whatever he does is okay and reasonable, no willingness to examine his own thinking and behavior and no willingness to change- this is rigidity, just like your son said.

In your last thread you wrote: “Bottom line – I don’t know what’s the right thing. Tell him to shove off or open myself to him even more in an effort to make things work.”

I believe that the right thing to do is indeed (of the two options) to tell him to shove off. Opening yourself to him even more is unwise because the return for your further opening will be the same rigidity and dishonesty you already received again, and again. His kind of dishonesty (having to be Right no matter the evidence) is crazy making and so, it is unwise to open up to MORE crazy.

I am thinking this second marriage was a mistake. If you agree, can you undo it?

anita