Indecision

When you hear and know what you are supposed to do, but you don’t act on what you need to do, then you are sitting in indecision. Until you start moving in a direction, you will not see what direction you need to go.

 

Stuck in a toxic relationship? Unless you make a decision you are going to stay stuck. You say…

• Maybe it’s going to get better.
• Maybe we’re going through a rough patch.
• Maybe… if we go to therapy, it’ll improve.
• We have so much potential, maybe it will work out.

The fact is this: Indecision will leave you stuck another 6 months in a relationship.

The longer you stay without clarity, the more you feel obligated to stay in the relationship.

You’ll then justify your indecision with any of the following:

• we have so many memories, maybe we’re not doing all that bad.
• well, he/she did this for me last month so maybe he/she does love me.
• he’s actually a good father so maybe I’m overreacting… I’ll just stay.
• Or, she’s actually a great mother so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and stick around.
• well, people do grow and change and maybe this is just a marital hurdle we need to jump, after all, marriage isn’t easy.

Let me ask: how long can you pretend that everything is ok before something happens yet again?

Narcissists lead you into the F.O.G.

Narcissists are notorious for leading you into FOG – that’s Fear, Obligation and Guilt. The only thing that permeates through that fog is the truth.  Ask yourself: what is your partner demonstration through actions?

The only thing will set you free are the facts of the situation.

• It isn’t love if your partner keeps cheating on you.
• It isn’t love if your partner keeps shaming you, teasing you, or pushing your needs down.
• It is not love if your partner emasculates you.
• It is not love if your partner is withholding
• It’s not love if your partner makes you feel like you make less money
• It’s not love if your spouse goes to work, comes home and doesn’t help you with the kids or house

Until you acknowledge the truth, nothing will change.

How much longer will you continue to accept it? How much is it going to cost you in your health – where you start to lose more hair, get more anxious, or find yourself with another auto-immune disease?

What is the price of indecision?

Sometimes we tell ourselves a story that prevents us from leaving. We are so confused and have been sitting in indecision so long, that we tell ourselves a story when we should be making a decision.

Instead, we sit in indecision, and then six months later, we ask ourselves why things are not working out, and why we find ourselves dealing with he same issues months later.

Why are we so indecisive, then?

We are indecisive because we fear the unknown…
We are indecisive because we are scared that we will fail…
We are indecisive because up until then, we have been doubted so much that we don’t believe we know how to make a proper decision.
We are indecisive because we feel an obligation to the person we are with.

Until you start moving in a direction, you will not see what direction you need to go. So ask yourself this:

Given the toxic nature of the relationship – dismissal, cheating, emasculating, control – if you met someone, today, with those qualities, would you stick around?

So why “stick around”, or continue to, for someone who currently does those things with you? Probably not!

Exactly. So why, then, are you so indecisive?

When you hear and know what you are supposed to do, but you don’t act on what you need to do, then you are sitting in indecision.

There’s a piece of you that can’t see the next step, but you know that there is a possibility of you being happy, healthy and whole. But you have to make a move. You have to make a decision.

If nothing changes, then nothing changes – you will be in the exact same spot in 6 months. One year. Several years.

I sat in indecision for years. 

Eventually, I came to the realization that he wanted me to leave. He wanted me to leave because:

1. It played into his victim mentality. He could then tell people that I left him, that I left our kids, that I was sleeping around – when in fact he was the one who was unfaithful.

2. He didn’t have the guts to leave. Narcissists deal with feelings of deep shame within – and leaving me would have played into that shame.

3. Chaos is normal for him – he wanted the chaos versus face a divorce, work through custody, and pay attorneys

4. He didn’t want his image hurt – leaving would have made him look like he messed up the marriage, he failed his family.

5. He wanted to keep his ego in check. From the outside, people could say that we were doing amazing. But inside, he was giving the abuse.

6. He didn’t want to have to pay child support and divide his finances – they don’t want to lose their “stuff”. Paying child support would highly affect his image. And for narcissistic people, material items are everything to them because they feed their broken ego and insecurities. They have no self worth, or confidence, so “stuff” makes him feel like someone.

7. If I left, and not him, that would allow him to gain control over the situation.

Instead of leaving himself, he tried his best to make a life living hell for me. This is when the reactive abuse started; that reactive abuse was designed to get a reaction from me and that reaction was for me to leave him. That way, he could then blame me for destroying the family, while keeping his shiny image intact to the outside world.

While his affairs lasted for years, it wasn’t until the very end that he suggested counseling – which caught me off guard. He had, until then, never suggested counseling. However, at that time I had already filed – and so then he used that suggestion for counseling to make his victim case even more realistic:

“I suggested counseling and she refused. See? She really is crazy. She left me, she left her kids. I’ve done everything I can to make this work.”

More than likely, he already had a plan. He already had several forms of supply lined up well before I filed for divorce. Quite honestly, I had visited my church for counseling at that time, and my ex husband did walk in. As a non-Christian, he sat in front of the pastor and instead of trying to work through our issues, he immediately resorted to projecting his insecurities on me, and shifting the blame of our failed marriage onto everything but himself.

That blame shifting and projecting continued for upwards of one half hour, until my pastor put a stop to his victim mentality and asked him to leave. And the single session of counseling came to an end; it was never discussed again.

And just as I suspected, he took the victim mentality and proceeded to tell family and friends that I was crazy, and that I left him and deserted the family. This was all in effort to paint me as the villain and take focus off of his infidelity and emotional abuse, financial manipulation, control, power, psychological abuse, and even sexual abuse.

As a result, I moved forward and made a decision. I decided to focus on my personal growth. my personal healing and the development of my children.

While I won’t get those years of indecision back, the most important thing was that I made a decision when I did. And that has made all the difference.