SO Reading our Journal (again)

@Zor, I’m glad to hear you talked about it with her. Hope things turn out positively for you. Between a rock and a hard place is the thought that comes to mind...

@birdsong, you are right about the passive aggressive. I probably should have kept my mouth shut on that thought. Something I still work on…

@ Floralie, yes it was wrong for her to do that. I agree 100%. But it was done, so now for the sake of the relationship, the motivation of why becomes important. If the motivation is “you were acting erratic and I was concerned for your safety”, the conversation about it will go a lot different than, “I was curious so I snooped,” with “wanting to learn more” falling somewhere in the middle. It's possible that she is on the verge of acceptance... If so, that would do a lot for Zor et all.

SOHank wrote: It's possible that she is on the verge of acceptance... If so, that would do a lot for Zor et all.

We so totally hope for that!

{\Pixie/}

If you have or have not been expressive enough, does not give her any right take what is not hers. Trigger warning, mentioning example of domestic violenceIt's like saying "he needs to keep his temperament down, and I need to to learn to make dinner ready in time, because it's both of our fault he punched my face. He is right, the dinner was not ready when he wanted to and it's my fault." Not making diner in time is maybe not a nice thing, if you have both agreed it will be done. But reacting to it with illegal boundary violation is nowhere in line with what has happened. It doesn't make it to be OK or at all more acceptable. Trigger warning ends

Reading your journal is her fault. She did wrong, she needs to completely own it. She needs to own it on the level there is no turning back and doing it again. Making any excuses is not that level, neither is you making excuses for her. As long as there is excuses, she will not stop it. Why? Because in the end it was OK last time too. Next time it will be another excuse, and it will be OK again. This will go on as long as she doesn't own it fully, only by herself. You agreed it was not her fault.

How does she expect you to be more open and trust her more, while she is destroying that trust at the same time, and not taking it seriously? You don't reward her by telling her more things about your parts, after she violated them. She needs to apologize THEM too. If you are ok with this, it does not mean this is ok.

My known system is mostly teens, and there probably are many littles hiding. I could never stand uo myself fully, I always forgave mom calling me drunk. She promised not to, then started slowly doing again, at some point I got mad, she apologized and the same thing happened again for 20 years. Now that I know it's not about me, it's about all the others as well, all the ones with the trauma, I made it sure this time. I explained there are KIDS involved with the same drunken mom who is part of them not been able to grow up anyway, still doing the same thing in our life, over and over again. And this time it's her last chance. I do mean it. Next drunken call, and I will be on our side, not soothing my mom like I learned to do. She knows I can mean business. It's totally up to her and how much respect she has over the fact she is violating underage kids. People willing to do that will not stay in our life. I'm in a rescue mission now, to get all littles out and helped. It's way more meaningful than handling everyday relationships the way that seems to be most convenient for me.

If you think there are things you can do better, you can of course do them better. They just are totally different conversation from her owning the journal reading. If you can not stand up for you, stand up for others. It is not just about you talking about it with her. It needs to be you talking about it with all who were involved to know where you stand in. And then you make your conversation with her based on what your system felt like and what do you all together think you should do about it.

Right? Her place is not inside your system. Not between any part and you, ever.

I don't see any value on acceptance that doesn't involve respect.

Hi Zor & Pixie,

I remember one of the excuses said in the past was that the wife wants to get to know your other parts better. But I also remember Pixie has said that the wife gets angry or upset or whatever, when anyone other than Zor is there.

Like, from what we remember has been said in the past, the others have to sneak around and stay out of the wife's presense or she gets pissy about them. The wife gets upset with them if they're 'out' and being themselves. Gets upset if they're 'out' but pretending to be Zor so as not to upset her.

It's a no-win situation. It's #######4. She can't claim she wants to get to know the others more, then push them away, then use wanting to know them more as an excuse to violate all your privacy.

We agree with Floralie, it's not your fault. You don't need to take on some of the blame for the wife violating all your trust and boundaries.

And we still agree with birdsong. There have to be some consequences. It's not the first time she's done this. She has violated your boundaries, and your trust. For all of you.

Some Fluxes

Zor wrote:It IS crossing boundaries- and doing this several months ago reveals two things to me... 1- I have not been as open and expressive as I NEED to be with my wife... 2- she has NOT made a lasting commitment to me, and the others, to respect privacy and boundaries.
IMHO, BOTH of those need to change. I need to be more open and explanatory with her, to remove this "need" to expose more information, so she doesn't feel she "needs" to look for it... AND she needs to simultaneously respect that not all of me/us is/are ready for that kind of vulnerability and exposure with her. This needs changes on BOTH our parts.

I agree with Floralie and others that this is emotionally abusive and your response is classic for someone in an abusive relationship. You have been as open and expressive as you felt comfortable being, based on your wife's responses. How open and expressive you are depends on the atmosphere that SHE creates. Has she sat down with you all and invited Pixie to have a conversation with you? Has she asked you, with genuine interest, to let her know more about the likes and dislikes of different parts and how she might make them feel more comfortable? I haven't heard that happening.

She is breaking trust with your system--so of course you're not ready to be vulnerable and expose more of yourself to her.

Good thinking Zor.

Your big problem is she broke her agreement. That means it was deliberate. Not a well intentioned mistake. If you don't confront this where are you then?

Colin

So he did like talk to/with her... twice...

He told her that she needs to respect the boundaries, our privacy, and stuff... and tried to explain why it's hard to like open up and stuff. IDK if it'll work or not- time will tell, right?

We're cautious, to say the least... but she DID start reading some "SO" parts of a few books we've got about DID that Zor picked up for us to learn about what's going on- cuz like we've been here like forever, but not like overt and known to him... So she's at least showing a willingness to learn and TRY... even if doing bad things sometimes and generally very confused, scared, and angry at times.

{\Pixie/}

Remember me kind of my ex.
She wanted to know the others, she tried to be kind to the others, but was jealous of the relationship between Daem and me. It was making Daem feel uncomfortable being out around her, and she was like "I'm sad I don't interact with him that much". Eeerh.
She wanted to learn and help, I gave her all the ressources I had, even this forum, but she was waiting for me to educate her. So if things went wrong, it was my fault, I wasn't communicating enough.

The more I was setting my boundaries, the more she tried to cross them and/or to blame me for it. I started to take some distances, then she broke my trust (lying about a stupid thing) and tried to manipulate me by creating fake texts conversation with a friend in order to blame me for not trusting her. The manipulation was too much.

From this relationship, I learned that I should run away as soon as the person try to cross my boundaries then apologize by making excuses. Excuses mean nothing more than "I kinda get you're not okay with it but I don't understand why and I still think I was right". It means the person can do it again, because the only thing they will fear will be an argument if they get caught.

One of my friend told me once "When people say 'I'm sorry', they shouldn't add 'but' after, because everything you said before 'but' doesn't mean anything then". She was so damn right.

Be careful guys... :/

Zor wrote:It IS crossing boundaries- and doing this several months ago reveals two things to me... 1- I have not been as open and expressive as I NEED to be with my wife... 2- she has NOT made a lasting commitment to me, and the others, to respect privacy and boundaries.
IMHO, BOTH of those need to change. I need to be more open and explanatory with her, to remove this "need" to expose more information, so she doesn't feel she "needs" to look for it... AND she needs to simultaneously respect that not all of me/us is/are ready for that kind of vulnerability and exposure with her. This needs changes on BOTH our parts.

We DID talk earlier, but I've had some input on certain things from Pixie and understand her position in this better... and I hope (once she's awake, currently napping b/c of not sleeping well due to her injury) that we can talk more at length and MAYBE I can be more assertive (something that I struggle with and that genuinely terrifies me on some level for whatever reason- likely dating back to WHY we're dissociative to begin with, eh?)

Thank you for responding. I perhaps do not understand what is required in relationships as I have no desire to partake in such a thing, but from what I have observed of the relationships between others within my system and outside people, openness and expressiveness can and likely should be a flexible thing based on the situation and your own comfort. I can logically understand that your wife perhaps feels in the dark and justifies the boundary violation under the notion of "but I have to, because you won't tell me", but the difficulty is she is not first accepting that a large part of this condition is about attachment and trust.

It is okay to not feel comfortable sharing certain things, even a lot of things. You aren't lying or withholding information out of spite. It is a private and complicated thing, this condition we all live with. I would make the argument that no-one has any right to know more or less about you simply because they are your partner, or your parent, or a member of your family, or so on and so forth, but I am probably not the right person to discuss such a thing considering I lack personal experience in that matter, and I am also a very private and reserved person compared to a lot of people, I suppose.

From what was said in a recent post, you talked to the wife and she responded well enough to attempt to read more on the subject. I hope that leads to an improvement with regards to this matter. I wish you all luck with it all.

- Charles

Dwelt wrote:One of my friend told me once "When people say 'I'm sorry', they shouldn't add 'but' after, because everything you said before 'but' doesn't mean anything then". She was so damn right.

That's one think I do say a lot too. And another one with crossing boundaries or doing something hurtful, (which didn't happened in this case to my knowledge) is, if the one doing the thing says anything even near to "I would never hurt you like that/I would never cheat you/ hit you/lie to you/"..pick here the thing that they actually HAVE JUST DONE. When someone refuses they would never do a thing they just did, it's them not being able to handle the fact they just did. If they can not admit to themself, well, you can't change things you (in your opinion) actually didn't even do. That is one of the classic ones. "I'm very sorry for doing thing X, I would never do it." Sentence like that doesn't even mean anything. "I just lied to you, but I would never lie to you." Is that suppose to be a joke or something? To me it's so stupid, it's funny. But there's so many people in there who believe, genuinely, it was an apology. No, it was not. It was a straight out lie. They should say "I did it. I'm so sorry about it. I am a person who does things like that. I don't wanna be that person anymore. I will change." After that they do actions which will help them to change. Speaking about changing is not a same thing as changing. And if that was the last time they ever did that, it's forgivable. If they do it again, they simply are a person who does things like that, even if they would hope they weren't. It's their problem to solve it, and grow up to be better. If you stay there waiting for it, it means that action doesn't have any consequences. You can not heal other people than yourself, or make them different. You can juts open your eyes how they actually are.

I grew up listening to this $#%^, and I don't get how people are so naive they buy it. It happens when they hope something so much, they don't see what actually was done and said, but are in as much denial as the one doing the thing. There's nothing outsiders can do about it. You can't save people who don't wanna be saved. They learn it eventually by themselves, or they keep on living like they do. Don't get emotionally involved.

It's about having boundaries, and you can't create healthy boundaries as long as you live with people who break them. You need healthy attachment to learn your boundaries. Hopefully you get better in therapy, and learn how to stop her from crossing yours, or if she is not able to learn, you grow strong enough to get her out of your life.

There are so many inconsistencies with what your wife has said and done, I don't understand why you don't confront her every time and make her to pick the solution she wants to. It's not an option, that others would go away. She needs to spend time with them and behave like an adult, or she needs to give you PLENTY OF space to be on your own, so they can be out when you go to do your own stuff. In that situation it's maybe better you don't live together, because it's not ethic others need to leave out in order to be who they are, so that is one option. She will have relationship with only Zor, and she leaves the rest of you live their own life and does not ask questions about it. But she can not choose to be with you all the time and then complain when she sees others. They can not disappear, so what does she wants, to leave you be, or accept them and behave? Only two options there, no buts, no excuses, no victim roles, just an adult answer. And this is the nice approach. You could also tell her how things will be done from now on, and let her choose only if she stays or goes.

I don't see any commitment on her side. You know the truth about someone by watching their actions and what do they choose. Words don't mean anything. It is a problem itself try to talk with someone whose words and actions don't match, and who probably is not even aware of it. It makes conversations useless. Personally I don't have that kind of patience that I would start teaching someone what do words actually mean in real life.

This is not meant to be an attack. I just feel better when I have said what I have to say, to tell about things we've seen so many times, and after that you decide what to believe. Then it's out of our responsibility. You're adults too, we won't come to fight your fights. It wouldn't help you any way. The one of us with the boundaries is a teen, so we'll keep him out of other peoples problems from now on.