Starting to Think I had the Ick in Journal

or something, since W is now coughing and acting fatigued, as I felt for the last 2 weeks. Thought it was just my preggo hormones/energy getting me down. I felt like a human yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks. No other symptoms, though, so that’s interesting.

DH is more and more wiling to open up to me about his family, dad, and feelings. It’s really difficult for him, but making the benefits and costs clear, I think, is motivating him to continue. I feel honored, excited, and hopeful, to be a part of it.
I did feel resentful, even just 6 months ago, that DH was still choosing his parents over me. But, now I’m not really so much. I think that it was wrong, of course, but I also know that he needs to feel the consequences of his own decisions instead of me ‘providing it’. That is the trap that so many parents fall into- if we don’t provide consequences, the kids will never learn!-. lol. When the opposite is reality. No one can impose control over another person. Not even a child. They either will live in the real world or be forced to react to a punitive projection that is one-dimensional, manipulated, and charged with the unconscious emotional repetition compulsion. And the sad part is, everyone knows. Everyone already knows it’s a personal, individual, and deeply intimate failure to try to punish and control. Which is really humiliating.
I found it so hard to back away from trying to provide consequences. I thought about it and contemplated it and felt that it was not right. But I inevitably continued on with my inane assumptions. It was a part of me that felt unheard, of course. That part of me that felt invisible, hurt, miserable, unseen, unheard, uncared about, it wanted to know that it could have some effect in the real world! If that effect was only making others feel how miserable and invisible it was, then so be it.
And, another part was ultra-critical of that invisible, miserable part. If you can’t play nice, just go away! Again feeding the misery, the lack of visibility.

The more and more I do, the more I realize that there is no real core personality. We are all just doing “what works” in the environment that we find ourselves in. DH now feels safe and welcomed to express himself, and so he does. When DH felt my punitive wrath (however unconscious or passive), he was withdrawn, silent, avoidant. Of course. The more I resist labeling people and instead just acknowledge their actions, or their behavior, and give them full responsibility for it, it seems less and less likely to me that personalities are a static thing. They are rather, skills and characteristics and likes and dislikes expressed in a particular environment. Change the environment, change the personality.
All that and I certainly acknowledge the power of compulsive reenactment. Parts of us with a deep motivation to continue, to survive, seek out the environment they need to survive. Such as the beaten girl who seeks out abusive men to date. Etc etc. The part of me that feels invisible and miserable creates and projects the environment it needs to continue to feel invisible and miserable. That is, these repetitions continue only in the absence of self-knowledge.
Self-actualized free will is self-knowledge.