A Simpler Life 2018

dolly84

Thank you blackcats. I've never heard of the drama triangle but I do know that my mum and sister are both victims, I once told them both that it was like they were taking part in a game show called 'Who's life is worse?' It is so tedious.

blackcatsx2

I’m glad that the drama triangle was useful. I sometimes have to tell myself to step out of the triangle and can often observe when others are in the triangle. When you know the roles it can be very empowering and even amusing.

LameWolf

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

Mr Kitty was a good boy and went into the basket last night no problem at all. He passed his first medical with flying colours but he has to have the collar on until his first post-op x-ray in three weeks time. Three weeks! :eek:

Aww, bless his little furry socks. I'll be counting the days with him, as it's three weeks til I get my next canine guest to stay, and I am Climbing. The. Walls. with no doggy company.

I found the drama triangle thing fascinating, too; though I'm not sure how you have a "triangle" with only two people, as is the case here.
Really, all it is, I'm ending up running myself ragged trying to do 6 things at once, because it's less energy-consuming, and less blood-pressure-raising than trying to get Mr LW to do the task that actually needs doing (as opposed to going off at a tangent and doing something completely non-urgent that he spots on the way to do the urgent thing, and leaving the urgent thing for me to discover has not been done some hours later) and to do it in a satisfactory fashion - for instance not leaving more mess on the work surface and in the washing up bowl than the amount of washing up that was originally there, if that makes sense.

*Sigh* I love him really.

Charis

Thank you Blackcats. I spent a lot of time last night and today reading about the triangle on various webpages. It is a perfect description of what goes on with one family member and myself. It really spoke to me, I can now give myself permission to step away without feeling the immediate wave of guilt I have always felt previously. It does neither of us any good to keep things the way they are.

Molillie

Thinking of competitive victims, when I was a student we had two housemates who would start going on about how they had the worst tutor, etc. and the rest of us would start calling out "four Yorkshiremen" which was fairly recent in those days. It worked quite well, as they'd usually laugh. I'm glad there were enough of us altogether to remind them that in the end they just had to get on with their assignments.

tighteningthebelt

I've managed to scrape together yet another small bag full for the charity shop, and another small box full for ziffit!! I really thought I had got to the end of it. This last 18 months I must have moved on a literal skip full of various clutter, and have only missed and replaced one thing (wine glasses), which only became an issue when I started having people round to eat, because the house was nice! I'm happy to have been wrong on that one!

VJsmum

LameWolf wrote: »

Aww, bless his little furry socks. I'll be counting the days with him, as it's three weeks til I get my next canine guest to stay, and I am Climbing. The. Walls. with no doggy company.

I found the drama triangle thing fascinating, too; though I'm not sure how you have a "triangle" with only two people, as is the case here.
Really, all it is, I'm ending up running myself ragged trying to do 6 things at once, because it's less energy-consuming, and less blood-pressure-raising than trying to get Mr LW to do the task that actually needs doing (as opposed to going off at a tangent and doing something completely non-urgent that he spots on the way to do the urgent thing, and leaving the urgent thing for me to discover has not been done some hours later) and to do it in a satisfactory fashion - for instance not leaving more mess on the work surface and in the washing up bowl than the amount of washing up that was originally there, if that makes sense.

*Sigh* I love him really.

I thought that was just marriage :rotfl: My OH can't seem to prioritise urgent - except that 'his' stuff always is and 'my' stuff isn't. Even if his stuff is setting up the stereo when we moved house whereas mine was putting beds together and finding pans and plates... no wonder we haven't moved for 20 years..

Also, he can't do a job that doesn't involve my help, whereas i generally just get on with it...:cool:

Cottage_Economy

VJsmum wrote: »

I thought that was just marriage :rotfl: My OH can't seem to prioritise urgent - except that 'his' stuff always is and 'my' stuff isn't. Even if his stuff is setting up the stereo when we moved house whereas mine was putting beds together and finding pans and plates... no wonder we haven't moved for 20 years..

Also, he can't do a job that doesn't involve my help, whereas i generally just get on with it...:cool:

I'm afraid I have a DH who cannot prioritise. For years I beat myself up about it, thinking it was my fault in some way, that I was approaching things wrong, but over the last couple of years I've realised he genuinely has a problem. Even with his own hobbies and interests, etc, I've watched him miss out or muck things up and get angry with himself because he just picked something, anything, off the list to do instead of the thing that needed doing first.

I think he picks things that he knows he can definitely do very competently, but that is not usually the most urgent thing on the list. His father was like this too.

[Deleted User]

Oh how much this reminded me of my Mother and my relationship in her later life, her mother had the same attitude. I put it down to attention seeking......I removed myself from the situation and my mother transferred her behaviour to my eldest daughter.

Molillie

I think learning to analyse patterns of behaviour (both others and own) is one of the best ways to overcome problems.
However, a lot of people get put off with memory of work training days (well, this might just be me) where we were asked to put colleagues in our sub-groups into categories based on animals they were like, for example, but the materials used were unchanged US ones, and our choice of animals were things like mustang. Our group spent half an hour arguing over what a mustang was, which horrified the poor facilitator when he arrived with us. On checking, he realised that most of the groups very vague about the likely attributes of North American fauna. He was British, but was obviously used to the terms. I'm not even starting on the exercise which assumed we all had a good working knowledge of all the characters in every Disney cartoon ever made. (I should add that we were never allowed to refer to the internet on these days)
On the other hand, just about everyone liked role-playing, and that was
what has stayed with me now.