Phobic

For the first time my wife has examined my stepson’s behavior as being a little eccentric or even a little phobic.  She is not getting any dialogue from me which remarkably let’s her explore her own feelings without having to run to protect him against me.

She is not on guard as much when I don’t interfere is my suspicion.  This is not to say that I am abandoning him it is just that I am letting the atmosphere for change to occur without any verbal interjection on my behalf. 

What this allows is for more peace in my world and I don’t have to handle the ball as much.

My Third Wife

Once upon a honeymoon, I found out that my third wife was an angel with the wingspan that overshadowed any intelligence I ever had.

MDR

My wife has become a minimum daily requirement for healthy bones and deep wrinkling smiles of laughter. 

She looks in the wide-open spaces for the comfort she cannot seem to find at the home hearth where everyone relies on her compulsive care giving as she exposes her own lack of attention to the most important person, herself.  

Boundaries

One of my character defects lie in the fact that I have no boundaries.  No boundaries for myself, with my wife or even my stepchildren.  Everyone can trudge all over my newly planted seeds without regard unless I say something and say it elegantly without anger and with a respect for myself as well.  Respect for myself is essential otherwise when discord arrives it becomes much more painful when we could have killed the monster while it was still a baby. 

Public Display of Affection

The public display of affection is a topic I wanted to touch on briefly.  Careful but don’t be unnatural. Your stepchildren when they see their mother being shown affection can stir up an emotional mine field in them.  They may have known only acrimony in their parent’s marriage.  And when they see closeness or just holding hands resentments may take hold.  “Why couldn’t you have done that with Dad?” if you had been more attentive to each other you could have stayed together and we might have had a happy home, instead of a broken one might be one of their thoughts.  I can write a thousand thoughts here about the physicality between you and your wife and how it affects your stepchildren and no two situations are alike but don’t try to teach your stepchildren about how you are doing the right thing because they will see right through it as they did their biological family life. 

Losing Resentment

I am pleased to say that after having adopted the mindset that I would abandon muttering to myself about my still at home stepson and his wife my life has changed dramatically in terms of my internal happiness.

At this time there is no alternative tact I can take about our living situation and I will spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that they want to make their own life more than I want them to.  Therefore, I have let go of silent scorn and resentment without so much as residue in the bottom of my coffee cup.

Oh there are times I still get irritated but there’s no earth for the seeds of my discontent to grow and so I am relatively cool, calm and collected.

Self Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a belief system that people have about their own capabilities that can produce a level of performance that influence their life events.  This self-efficacy is a determining factor in how individuals think, how they motivate themselves, how they feel and how they behave.  When self-efficacy is strong it influences the levels of accomplishment that people can make and the tasks that they undertake.  It inspires people to challenge themselves and when they experience setbacks if their self-efficacy is strong it allows them to bounce back.  When they can overcome these challenges they can handle threatening situations with incredible deftness, which has the affect of lowering stress and helps make them resistant to depression.