Defensive

I am good at projecting my own guilt onto others. Tom will sometimes say something completely innocent, with no ulterior motive behind it whatsoever and there I go, putting my own spin on his words and suffering from hurt feelings over some imagined insult.

Or, he’ll ask a question, nothing big, nothing worrisome and suddenly, I’m defensive as hell, mad at him for questioning me about something and he’s wondering what happened to his mild-mannered wife and who this madwoman is.

These days I am very uncomfortable about my weight. I hate that I am where I am in my battle with pudginess (that’s putting it nicely, this is a family blog.) It doesn’t help that Tom is at what he considers his ideal weight. And yes, he works hard to maintain this weight, blah, blah, blah.

It still makes me uncomfortable. And because of this, he’s not allowed to talk to me about food. Like at all. I know, unfair yet whenever the subject comes up, I get defensive, frustrated and sad all at once.

I deal with quite a bit of self-hatred in this area. I’ve always hated my body, even when I was a tiny 120 in high school, I felt like my body was ugly and there was always room for improvement.

The defensiveness isn’t just about my weight, though. I also get very defensive if I feel like my parenting choices are being questioned. This is because I so often doubt my own abilities as a mother. I fear I’m too lenient, but sometimes too strict. I’m not affectionate enough, I yell too much, I coddle them both too much, I don’t give either of them enough individual attention, I let them walk all over me, or I might be too bossy, the list goes on and on.

So whenever Tom or my mom mentions, even casually, something about my parenting, my defenses immediately go up. I have tried to explain to Tom that this isn’t his problem, it’s mine. I already have so many doubts about my own ability to be a good mother that anything he might say is going to make me feel like he criticizing me. I know this is wrong and we’re a team. I know that I need to be open to his thoughts and feelings about how we parent our girls.

And yet, I’m so careful not to ever come across like I’m criticizing him and I’d like the same courtesy.

I imagine it’s hard to be my husband (or my mother/brother/friend.) And I’m sorry to everyone who have to tiptoe around my defenses and the voices in my own head that tell me I’m not good enough. I’m working on all this, I promise. I try to look at the good things I do and remind myself that we’re all human, we all have bad days and probably my worst days aren’t much worse than most people’s bad days.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes…it doesn’t.