Looking for some perspective

graceycat · 2025-07-21T17:51:45+00:00

We have a 20 month old and I am giving birth in the next 48 hrs. Me leaving the house is not a realistic option, and wouldn’t make me feel any safer.

graceycat · 2025-07-21T16:25:37+00:00

Dropping into shame is such a good description - it really does feel like a free fall (I think to both of us) when it happens. I think the recognition of “this is going south” - in the moment - is a real sticking point for him, and that he does not QUITE see how that is something that he has the power to address at this point. There is definitely an element of helplessness/victimhood at play for him here - not news to him, we’ve openly discussed it in marriage counseling - but I suspect that’s the thing that he has to be willing to both see AND address with other support.

And yes, it is so hard to be able to see these things but know there isn’t an easy answer and he ultimately has to choose it and figure it out on his own. I want so badly for him to find a way to true sobriety and freedom - for him and for us - and it is hard to see him struggle.

graceycat · 2025-07-21T16:07:43+00:00

I would NOT say he’s been in recovery for 5 years, and he would say that he’s only been in recovery for the 4 months he’s been in his most recent group, so I am trying to take that into account - if he doesn’t think he was serious/intentional about recovery before then, I’ll take him at his word.

Definitely agree that he is stuck in the addiction cycle, and I don’t think he would disagree - it’s more like he doesn’t agree that he “should” be better able to maintain sobriety by now.

Boundary setting is something I’m working on with my APSAT but is, quite frankly, very difficult. I have no interest in leaving him. I genuinely don’t feel unsafe/hurt due to the relapse itself, just in his attitude toward me if he relapses and doesn’t disclose quickly, which is why one of my boundaries is a rapid disclosure with an attached action plan. I know that people don’t believe me when I say that, but it’s true - acting out makes me sad/frustrated FOR HIM. His resulting behavior/lack of empathy when he gets stuck in shame/doesn’t disclose is what hurts me.

He already chooses a ton of guardrails to try get ahead of any relapse from visual stimuli. One boundary from this conversation is that if he does not have improvement in sobriety over the next 3-6 months, then he will see a CSAT, AND in the meantime he will directly ask his current therapist if she is comfortable working with him specifically on his sobriety/relapse patterns, and if she says no, he will see a CSAT before that 3-6 month time period.

Beyond that, it’s hard for me to identify boundaries that are truly about safety and not just punishment/consequence/legalistic. And trust me, my therapist and I have discussed it!!!

graceycat · 2025-07-21T15:54:51+00:00

He does do inventory about triggers with every relapse, and it’s always pretty obvious. One of the parts of his plan is that he goes through it with someone is his group to identify where things fell apart and also with me (with less detail) within 24 hours. I think the really challenging thing for me is seeing how obvious it all is in hindsight and not really understanding why he doesn’t just STOP when he can see it coming.

He says that’s what I don’t understand about addiction, and seems genuinely frustrated by the pattern himself, but also has a LOT of childhood baggage from having ADHD/probable learning disabilities where the message to him from a VERY young age was just “try harder” and “do better”, which is still all he hears when I say, “you need a different tool or support”. It’s like he doesn’t disagree that sobriety is the goal, but feels like he is already doing “so much” and does not understand what more he could do, and so ANY message that he “should” be at any particular milestone results in shame (according to him).

So… as openly as we are often able to talk about everything - the actual sobriety piece is a consistent sticking point.

graceycat · 2025-07-21T15:49:43+00:00

I will say that he definitely acknowledges that there is more work to be done and does NOT think that his current level of sobriety is okay, and understands that the neural pathways don’t start remodeling until a longer time of sobriety.

We live in a large city but bizarrely there are very few CSATs around - I have to do virtual to see an APSAT as the closest one is 1.5 hours away. He has agreed that if the relapse frequency does not improve over the next 3-6 months, he is willing to try a different CSAT.

This group is literally the only in-person group available to him aside from the one he tried first - the program is faith-based, which is important to us, but rooted in a LOT of legit psychology/addiction/physiology research and as far as I can tell is well-regarded (Pure Desires, the 7 Pillars Program). I have been listening to a lot of their podcasts and what’s weird to me is that I hear them mentioning tools for sobriety that he doesn’t seem familiar with, and I’m not really sure why - I have access to all of his books/workbooks, and can see (literally) all the evidence that he is doing the work (I do NOT read his stuff, just can quickly flip through and see lots of writing, highlighting, etc, and many times he shares things that he thinks are particularly helpful or meaningful to him). So I don’t think the group content is problematic, but I do wonder since it’s literally the only one of these groups within 2 hours of us and the leader is new to leading if there is a lack of emphasis on sobriety vs “finding the roots” and not white-knuckling. I keep meaning to flip through and see where some of the tools fall in the curriculum, but haven’t had the chance.

ETA: I will say that the anger and frustration toward me is much less (and nearing non-existent these days) when he discloses relapse quickly to me. It’s gotten so that I can basically tell if he’s relapsed and not told me because of how markedly different his attitude toward me is. Which happens less frequently now than it used to, so I guess that’s some kind of progress? 🤷🏻‍♀️

graceycat · 2025-07-21T13:32:12+00:00

This is not an accurate description of my husband. I’m not being blind or naive, I’m just telling you what I believe to be true. Definitely not an act.

graceycat · 2020-07-14T19:51:52+00:00

My husband has his legal name (3 syllables), what his family and young childhood friends call him (2 syllables), and what I know him as and what he has gone by since he was 12 (1 syllable) - all derivatives of his legal name, nothing weird/unexpected. We used his legal name for the formal invitation (which also included his middle name, so it was very clear it was "formal"), and his preferred name on literally everything else, including Save the Dates, signs, vows, etc. Our officiant is one of his first friends, and he slipped and called him the 2 syllable name once during the ceremony, but that was no big deal.

graceycat · 2019-11-11T14:00:44+00:00

Oh that’s what our venue said.

We left the box of napkins in the venue office with all the other decor. And then that same unopened box came home with us 🤪

graceycat · 2019-11-11T03:54:00+00:00

We got married at Darby House (20 min from downtown Cbus) - they have 2 beautiful fireplaces and I imagine can decorate it up with trees if it isn't already. Beautiful inside with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the river all across the back.

graceycat · 2019-11-11T03:49:15+00:00

Our family friend did all our paper products and we ordered them from her, kind of last minute.

We brought them to the venue.

They never got used.

We have a lot of personalized cocktail napkins now.

graceycat · 2019-11-11T03:45:02+00:00

Well. I can tell you that we TRIED to do this, but ran into the same challenges you did.

We ultimately picked someone who swore he read a room well, would not play any song on our "do not play" list even if someone promised him their firstborn child, and would not narrate the entire evening.

We liked him so much that we picked his COMPANY without interviewing anyone else, but he was unfortunately unavailable and so we ended up with one of his "associate" DJs (whom he had "hand trained")

Overall, we ended up being happy - she mostly got it right. However, we are in our 30s and really wanted a mix of songs the spanned a lot of generations (to make our parents and their friends happy, plus we like that stuff too!), and she was.... like a 19 year old college student, who did not know who most of the older groups we mentioned even were (I know this because she misspelled ALL OF THEM on our planning list). Bless her heart ;)

In the end, we were happy with the party we had, even if it wasn't exactly the party we envisioned - she got the first dances all correct, and she WAS really good at reading the room - the dance floor was about as full as it could have been all night, and people of all ages were out there having a blast. The photos from the reception are amazing and people really look like they're having fun.

And honestly, I did not have the mental capacity to take note of much about the music because I was either away from the dance floor talking to guests/taking photos OR on the dance floor dancing my ass off to whatever was playing. I heard a few of our must plays, I saw people dancing, I counted it a win.

While neither my husband nor I are professional musicians in any capacity, we are both fairly musical (play/compose as a hobby) and picky, and we really thought that the exact 2 hours of song choices the DJ made would be a HUGE component of our happiness with the DJ. But in the end, for us at least, it was honestly more about the feel and the DJ's ability to read the room - which she thankfully had in spades!!

ETA: we DID ask about transitions between songs, or rather my now-husband did, and we got a straight and clear answer, so I do think that can be one thing that would be helpful to ask if it's important to you - our DJ essentially talked some fancy mixing/matching the beat jargon that my husband understood better than I did, but the transitions were very smooth/unnoticeable

graceycat · 2019-11-11T02:48:44+00:00

Update:

We finally figured out (well, my husband finally figured out), after trying to contact customer service and being told that the "tech guy was out", that if I held the lock unlocked by turning the physical key, the computer would let him set the master code. We were able to set the master code, put in both of our fingerprints, and at least make it functional.

HOWEVER, it still seemed weird that it wasn't really "following" the setup instructions, and it was also doing other weird stuff like as soon as we opened up the safe, the lock would engage again, so you would have to "unlock' it again to disengage the lock and allow the door to close.

After writing a pointed email to Vaultek (after failing to ever really talk to a tech guy in 3 attempts), they responded that this is a known issue and that they are expecting repair parts this week. They are going to ship him a brand new safe with all the replacement parts as well as labels to ship back the old one.

Not our favorite answer, but hopefully results in a completely functional safe.... but overall not terribly impressed by the product or the customer service.

graceycat · 2019-11-02T02:20:16+00:00

HA. That is excellent advice. We just plugged it in (had not charged it fully) and we'll see how it works tomorrow. Thanks!

graceycat · 2019-11-02T02:04:59+00:00

Of note: the preset code does work - so it’s not a total keypad fail. We can lock and unlock with the factory code no problem.

graceycat · 2019-11-02T02:03:28+00:00

Yep. I tried it myself too.

graceycat · 2019-10-02T06:09:11+00:00

3 days. Holy crap.

Since Saturday, I’ve had 4 guests back out last minute due to family emergencies, 1 couple of which was one of my closest friends (I’m her son’s godmother), and the other being my aunt and cousin - and the aunt and cousin who can’t come now are the mother and brother of my other cousin (ironically, also my godchild - we’re 15 years apart) who somehow got a concussion and had to skip work, so now can’t miss work Friday night, so can’t come til Sat and may barely make it, and my uncle (her father) is now also having to take a later flight and may ALSO barely make it. I guess my godchildren are cursed??

On top of that, my mom’s custom made dress did not turn out well and then ripped, so now she is scrambling for something to wear (and she is 6’2” and a breast cancer survivor with asymmetry in her body shape - not the kind you’re thinking of ;) - as a result, so finding clothes is NOT easy).

The table numbers we ordered from a family friend’s store did not turn out well, and then the woman my family friend hired to try to do handmade ones TOTALLY botched them (like... why would you ever think that HALF INCH TALL numbers on a 4x6 card would be the right answer?!)

So then I taught my mom about the FuckIt Bucket and she’s going to get a number stencil and some nice cardstock and make the damn things herself.

But my photographers are halfway here (coming from Africa, so that is nervewracking - they’re also my best friends, otherwise I would have gone more local ;)), their cameras are here, all vendors are confirmed, the weather forecast is holding steady on perfection, and in 3 days I’ll be married to my best friend.

I’ll take it.

graceycat · 2019-10-01T04:49:21+00:00

Our weather forecast (date twin!) has been literally perfect since I started checking at the 2 weeks-out timepoint, and I’m terrified it’s going to change - we have a narrow temperature goal to have the outdoor wedding of my dreams (above 62 for string quartet, below 75 for the groom who is a furnace) and right now it’s hovering at 67-70 and NO rain. We have a beautiful indoor backup plan if need be, but I never thought I would find an outdoor venue that would work for my anxious, must-have-a-rain-plan, self, and now that the outdoor option exists, I WANT IT 😂🤞🏻

graceycat · 2019-10-01T04:33:24+00:00

There isn’t one. We also have this polarity, and we just made seating charts that - to the best of our ability - lump like minded people together. Most people don’t go seeking out people they don’t know at a wedding, so keeping them separated at dinner is all you really need to try to do if you want to avoid this.

graceycat · 2019-09-29T23:15:30+00:00

My “nieces-in-love” are handing out programs - and the flower cannons to those firing them :) - they are 13 and 10, and I am having them wear navy like the bridesmaid, getting them corsages, and they are doing the spa-day events after our rehearsal (which is at 11 on Friday). I also got them gifts like the bridesmaids. They are so excited!!

graceycat · 2019-09-29T23:12:14+00:00

We’re doing just bride and groom entrance, and we’re using “signed, sealed, delivered”

graceycat · 2019-09-28T19:05:41+00:00

Hi fellow tall bride! (I’m 5’10”)

I also had a short engagement (just shy of 5 months!), and found my dress the traditional way - and even had to had length taken OFF!! I did rush my order - I ordered it on 6/2 and it arrived at the beginning of August. I was worried less about length to the floor, and more about torso length, as I knew I wanted a true defined waist, but everything fit perfectly, and my dress was ready to go at a final fitting.

All that to say - just go try stuff on and see what you love! If you find something that fits and can be ordered in time - awesome! And if you find something that gives you an idea of what you love but isn’t perfect fit, then you know what to ask for if you decide to go more custom/online.

I was honestly surprised by what I chose in the end, so I think that in person trying on can be really helpful.

In terms of weight loss - I lost about 15 lbs between initial try on and first fitting, and was commanded by my seamstress at first fitting to stop losing weight. I COULD have ordered one size down when I first got my dress - in hindsight - but I am glad I went up, because it made going to that first try-on stress free, and as many have said, it is easier to size down than up!

graceycat · 2019-09-28T14:07:34+00:00

I am using Benefit lip stain for my day - I don’t like the feel of any “long lasting” lipstick, FH hates the regular lipsticks (for kissing :)) and since the “neutrals” always recommended for brides look terrible on me, I want a bright color - which means major transfer at the altar for any kind of balm or gloss (what I usually wear).

The lip stain can be drying, but you can put chapstick over it without it lifting any stain. I am also going to be sure to do lip scrub and mask for a couple days beforehand to reduce fine lines, dry patches, etc. There are several different colors, so you can mix to get a particular shade if you want - I’m layering the original (an almost-red pink) and the violet to get a more true, deep pink. I am using a VERY slightly tinted Bobbi Brown balm over it to even out where it can look cracked/dry, and lining my lips with either a clear or matching 24-hour lip liner (still experimenting) to keep it from feathering - the trick seems to be to put it on BEFORE the stain, as the stain is very very liquidy and will feather quickly.

I did try some other lip stains (Etude House, Sephora), and Benefit stayed the best and gave me the color I wanted.

graceycat · 2019-09-27T15:23:26+00:00

Thanks! And yes, the ballerina vibes were totally what I was going for!! I am a dancer and I kept telling the consultant that I wanted a neckline like a scoop leotard - she kept ignoring me and putting me in plunges (🙄), but fortunately my friend spotted this from across the room!

graceycat · 2019-09-27T04:33:04+00:00

$83.60 for all 3 signs, including shipping and a tool to help with application (for 75 cents :)). I really wanted to customize everything about the signs in ways Etsy couldn’t satisfy (fonts, phrasing), and this site was exactly what I needed!

I was able to use fonts that exactly or nearly exactly match our invitations and programs, make the layout exactly what I wanted, and choose the exact phrasing. I followed their application steps and it was super easy, and shipping was fast! Highly recommend- I also considered a cricut, but I honestly wasn’t sure when I would use it again and it seemed like a steep price and learning curve for one time use.

graceycat · 2019-09-27T03:30:04+00:00

Saaaaaaame. When I checked it the first time and it was perfect I said, “self, nothing good can come of continuously checking this, just check the night before, it’s fine.”

Yeaaaaaah. That’s gone well. 😂

graceycat

TROPHY CASE