I'm at 74 days smoke-free and I think the key to the success I'm currently experiencing is in reflection. I've been digging deep to find what makes me happy and avoid/eliminate as much as I can that does not. In the cases where I cannot avoid/eliminate, I have been working on coping strategies. The trigger that has been the hardest to avoid has been my husband. Understand he is quitting too. At the beginning of this quit, I thought about how I would react if he went back to smoking and so I totally detached my quit from his. He's still clean- but he has not had to mentally do what I am doing to stay there. It's like he just doesn't THINK about it!!!
So... I have been secretly hating him. Well, no. It's so much worse. I hate him in secret at home but I blast him constantly to my family and friends. And mostly, it's because he doesn't share the load. Not the physical load. Not the emotional load. Not the financial load. He just goes to work, watches TV, sleeps, and does it all again. Or at least that is how it has been feeling to me.
I share this now because I was on the thought train that I might want a divorce. I didn't allow that train to leave the station because we were both quitting and it seemed like too much to throw on the fire at once. And then a conversation went wrong with the kids at dinner tonight-- and I LOST MY MIND on him!
(Basically, I opened a conversation for the kids to engage with him and he shut it down with attitude.)
Out it all came. (After the kids left the table.) It did not go so well to begin with, but after we both finished yelling and blaming, I think we actually got somewhere. I have been thinking I'm 100% awesome. But an awesome wife doesn't go and complain to everyone else about her husband. An awesome wife makes the effort to communicate her needs directly to him instead. I was so afraid of a fight, I didn't ask for what I needed.
We're both changing. Perhaps my change is a tad more dramatic, but that doesn't make his wrong. He went with me to talk to both kids about our fight because I knew they heard. We even shared what started the whole thing-- and he admitted he didn't realize I was trying to open a dialogue.
I feel heard. I feel respected. I didn't even THINK of cigarettes while all this was going on. I think I learned some things too.
