When It all Goes Horribly Wrong

Oh this is not a post I wanted to write. It's hard to be this transparent. Especially when we've supposed to be role models, seasoned veterans at this after almost six years. But the truth is it's important. It's important to understand, especially for those of you relatively new at this, that times like these WILL happen. Maybe not to this extent, maybe worse even. But if you're not prepared with a game plan to handle it, if you're under the impression that everything will always run how it's supposed to, it can derail you, even destroy your dynamic permanently.

The reality is that DD is not made up of a perfect HOH and perfect, s-, um, I mean, not HOH (NHOH?). It's made up of two imperfect people doing their best to work as a team in their roles for the good of each other. So there will be times when emotions go haywire. When outside stress is a factor, events trigger coping mechanisms to past traumas, when buttons are pushed, when tired and cranky, sickness...often more than one of those, or all at once even as I think happened here, producing a deadly storm. We're human. That's kind of part of it.

Now what I'm not talking about is abuse. That's different and I would never advocate that. DD is never a license for domestic violence. It is always based on trust and consensual. Anything other than that, I advise to stop immediately and seek help. I'm also not talking about a pattern of behavior. If this is constantly happening, then I would explore together why that may be and how you both can work to change it. Or maybe your relationship needs something different, perhaps not even DD at all. Don't settle for it, it's not supposed to be that way.

With that disclaimer covered, there are times when an HOH is angry, and may make an unfair determination in the heat of the moment. Or there could be a huge fight about something. He may say things in anger that cut and wound that you would never expect. There could be a misunderstanding that gets blown to giant proportions and all the problems that go with it. Whatever the specific circumstances, it happens when there are imperfect people. But with how vulnerable we make ourselves in this dynamic, this can be devastating. Even more so when we put them on a pedestal, thinking such a thing isn't possible for them to do. So what happens when it's so bad that it feels like trust was broken?

I can tell you it felt like that yesterday night.

Jay is, I think, an incredible HOH. He has earned my trust in a thousand ways, he works hard to strike the perfect balance between encouragement and um, negative reinforcement (sometimes literally, ha!), to make sure I feel I always have a voice. He's sensitive to what I can handle and what I can't, no matter how much that changes. So I have.no idea how last night even happened. One minute we were fine, both sick, yes, stressed out from our day, yes, but fine with each other. And then I made a quick decision to do something, fix something that I didn't agree with because he refused to, and, well, how do I put this...you know the movie formula of all hell breaking lose when the hero/heroine touches forbidden treasure? Kind of like that. Yes, I went into the settings of his new phone and changed something important, an accident that happened when he switched phones. It needed to be changed, and he wasn't seeing that. Plus I was pretty sure it was really because he didn't know how to fix it.

Anyway, he went ballistic. He was so so angry. I broke his trust. I violated his personal space. I rationalized it that refusing to listen to me was violating my trust, and I still think that's true, but I also know that there's no rationalization that truly works to excuse what I did. I took matters into my own hands. I can say if I had thought it through I wouldn't have.

A friend was ever so kind to help me process through this part by the way. "Geez Kay, even I know that's a rule."

"Well maybe it's like the hindsight bias thing where you only think I told you that."

"No. You've told me that it's a rule. Multiple times."

OK then I must've blocked that out. Thanks oh so so much, you know who you are. Okay yes. I'm not supposed to. Honestly though, how much it would affect him never occurred to me. I was genuinely blindsided by it. As he explained later when we talked, he has huge issues with someone touching his phone, stemming from his past. But I never expected even one tenth of the reaction I got.

I was blindsided by his harsh words, and by the horrific punishment he was talking about, completely disproportionate, I felt, to the crime committed. I didn't understand and I didn't feel heard. That's not normal, and it scared me. It brought back memories of dysfunction from my past which I projected onto the present, with all the fears that go with that. And I freaked. I tried to pull consent. He said he wasn't allowing that just because I didn't want to take what I had earned. I could make that decision after. So I decided to leave the house for a short while. What was I thinking? I don't know. I don't think I really was. I did exactly what I've advised other friends to ad nauseum not to do. He saw me gathering my hoodie and keys and then things got exponentially worse, especially things he said, his attitude, everything. I was shocked that this was the same man I trusted so much. I wouldn't let him punish. Not like this. I fought him, and he let me go. He disabled the car though, so I just went outside. He let me be alone for a bit, then came out to get me.



Now here's the crucial part, because by then, even though I wasn't showing it outwardly, because hello neighbors, inside I was a mess. I felt like I was in a bad dream.

Jay first quietly assured me that he would wait until the following night to discuss discipline, if I would agree to talk. This was an extremely important negotiation, as at that point, I felt so shaken, that's the last thing I wanted to do. This is the first hurdle to overcome. It's wise to wait a little bit, to wait for emotions to calm down, but talking needs to happen. And sometimes it's hard to get that started.


 
He started first by having him look him in the eye, which took actually a while for me to be able to do. Once he got that far, we reaffirmed one at a time, that we both still love each other no matter what. It was an important start that made the rest easier. Then we began to talk. We acknowledged that we both felt betrayed by the other's actions. We tried to stay away from blame, honestly speaking how we felt. Then we started breaking down what happened event by event, beginning with how he felt about his phone, and me, my feelings of what led to that in the first place. Everything we talked about was accompanied with my response, his response, and how both of us should have responded. This was more healing than I can express. One of the biggest hurdles to me about recovering from something like this, is the fear that it will happen again. Instead of reassuring each other that it won't, we approached it instead that it might. Not that I'll touch his phone again ha! But yes that we'll possibly again have a major fight. Yes there might be times I don't feel heard, and vice versa. Here's what to do. Here's a more constructive way to help him understand if he doesn't get how I feel the first time. And of course, that it's never okay to take it out of the house. So here's what to do instead in that case.



To summarize, we both messed up. But we acknowledged each part we played and apologized for handling each thing we handled the wrong way, we opened up about what events in our past contributed to how we felt, and created an action plan for each other. Then we fell asleep in each others' arms, knowing everything was going to be just fine.



I'm still processing through everything. I kind of can't completely because I still face tonight. I don't think it will be as severe as it would have been last night. But it sounds like he wants to make sure I remember the phone rule so it will probably be memorable. Eep. After we settle things tonight, though, I asked for a few days off from DD and he agreed to it. We'll probably start again on Sunday, new week, new beginning.


In the meantime, we'll be in a kind of rebuild phase. Trying to show we love each other as much as possible. That's our current mission, just like after every fight.


We're not role models. We're just two imperfect people doing our best to work as a team, for the good of each other.


And we try to learn from every mistake. So I have a feeling we will come out of this, having learned what to do to make that bond even stronger.