You have to take care of yourself to take care of your relationship. If you are not consciously aware of your boundaries you can ruin your relationship with your ignorance. Either because of your own pain or because your sub-conscious takes over.

Odds are that if you are hanging onto an unreasonable behavior, you have a hidden reason for it. You just haven’t told your conscious mind what that reason is.

No one can understand (least of all me) why I am paying my daughter’s phone bill when she swept by forty years old last year. Finally when I was faced with the fact that I had to turn off her phone, it finally dawned on my why I hung onto it.

When husband and I first got together, his family rejected me in every meaningful way. I got a therapist to help me cope and even she was upset about the way I was being treated. My husband refused to see it. Even though he caught glimpses of what I was dealing with, he couldn’t see the fullness of what was happening. At one point, I realized that he liked his family of three (himself & daughters) and had every intention of maintaining it long after he and I were married. If he agreed that my vote did not count in their family, then he couldn’t see the rudeness with which I was treated. Years ago, my brain decided that paying for my kid’s phone was a fitting payment for putting up with his kid’s periodic abuse. I could deal with it. They pointedly ignore me. They make plans that cause me great difficulty and could care less if it is a hardship for me. To this day (more than a decade later) I am not acknowledged as a member of this family.

I speak with people all of the time about their boundaries, and I have been remiss with my own. Is this a long-time boundary violation or did I make a deal with the devil?

I never would have realized any of this if I hadn’t been confronted with stopping the phone payments.

How crazy is all of this secretiveness? And I am secretive with myself of all people. What is happening? A lifetime of understanding is opening for me.

How many women buy jewelry when their husband hurts their feelings? Haven’t I seen a movie where the man buys a beautiful bracelet that seems as big as his crime against her?

What is going on here?

Well, as I discussed earlier in my writings. It is hard to interrupt when people are walking all over you. It’s difficult to articulate what is happening. That’s why I love the “Narcissist” TikTok, they make so many issues so clear it is amazing.

I am NOT claiming that my husband’s kids are narcissistic, and yet sometimes they act that way.

What next? I actually don’t have a plan. I am so relieved to understand myself on a deeper level. I am so relieved to move on from this.

I know my husband’s kids won’t quit being rude and mean and that’s because my husband won’t quit pretending that his little family is all there is. But that’s another story, for another time.