HAVE I BECOME THE TOXIC PARTNER

Hello there! I trust that your week has been abundant with wisdom and completely positive and all that nice stuff; I just planted some greens in the garden so I could say that mine has been great!
Anyway with all the good vibes going round I came to a kind of revelation while deep in my daydreams, that although I have been the recipient of some especially rotten antics, I may have borrowed from them a little more than I want to admit, and that I may have become a bit toxic from that.

Obviously, 'a bit' is relative.

So anyway the main reason for this conclusion is that sometimes I get really aggressive and go all out in revenge not caring a lot about much else- feelings, thoughts, responses, and anything else (of the other person) just cease to matter to me. And the it's not a change that occurs at the snap of a finger though that is what it looks like to the outside observer. It's a process that begins very much in advance and builds over time, picking random pieces here and there and growing in size like an avalanche until finally boom! It hits the unfortunate victim; nowadays mostly my spouse who I guess has developed some rather thick skin and mostly deals with it better than I expect him to.
It doesn't make it any better for either of us to be able to predict the patterns that lead up to it, but it has to be worth something. He's asked me before if I can stand to live with a person like myself, and in my mind I just see all the logic, planning, rationality, and order that would be there so I say yes every time. But maybe what he sees is everything that I have managed to get out of my self. Maybe I wear all my unlikable traits on the surface so that the inside is nice, calm, and lovely, because I value within a lot more than I value outside - it is my final stand after all, the only place I can find peace, serenity, and security when the world around me goes dark.
I can understand why he wants me to make our house into something similar; so he can have peace, love, quiet, and all those nice things going when he gets home from a bad day out there, so he can rest and rebuild the strength to go face the terrible outside world another day. So why do I not share my inside peace with him? Maybe it could be because I think he doesn't deserve it; he got himself thrown out so now he should just brace himself for the coming winter without any help or sympathy from me. Maybe there's a magic key or set of keys that he needs in order to get back in.
We tend to take for-granted the things that we don't have to work for, and feel they are less valuable than the ones we sweat for. The first time round I gave him the key free of charge, and I can't help but to wonder if I had made him work for it how different things would have been right now? Maybe we would not even be together, and maybe that would have been for the best. But we are now, and have kids that we brought into our stupid, messy lives, so any decision I/We make has to be filtered through their eyes first.

I heard that women find it easier to forgive cheating spouses than men do, but could it be that it's not easier for them to bear mistreatment, but rather it's harder for them to dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions?
As as stupid as it sounds when you hear 'I stayed and endured it for the kids', it's a very different railway track when you become a mother; when you look into the eyes of your little angels and you cannot think of a single person or thing that you wouldn't kill (or try to) just so those eyes will never cry in pain.
What then is your own self worth at this point? Of course you want to hang around and watch them get little ones of their own and succeed infinitely but what if by looking out for your own self interest and leaving their father you will throw a spanner in the works?
I know it's just as messy to have to watch your parents fight every damn day but honestly, would you rather they just stopped trying and parted ways or they stayed and tried to fix things no matter how much it seemed to take? After all, you never asked them to have you...
So which one would I choose; stay and grow bitter from all the hurt or leave and watch my kids grow bitter because they feel short-changed? It's true they rarely appreciate the sacrifices that you make for their sake but some of these actions have consequences in real-time; and the results are visible for lifetimes in the afflicted. Sometimes.
So which would you rather; that I stay and lose my mind trying to get things under control, or leave and try out new roads, at the risk that my kids will lean the other way when it's too late to change anything about anything?
Which would I rather?
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THE APP OF THE DEVIL LOL

The day of lovers, what a wonderful, warm, love-inspiring name.... if only we were a pair of normal people who did not respond to feelings of disconnection in our relationship by downloading tinder on our phones *sigh*. Welcome to today's post though, read on, that you may be wiser where I was not, and that you may not fall in the same potholes I fell in....

The story begins when we have a mood fight at some point of the evening because I'm feeling unwell and don't get the degree of pampering for the length of time I had envisioned and I end up feeling lonely, bored, restless, and alone.

 They were not wrong when they talked about an idle mind being the devil's workshop, and in the wee hours of the night with sleep still some light years away from me, I get a bright idea. Pick up my phone, and try to resist at the last moment, opening pinterest to look at some crochet ideas in a small effort to occupy my mind. It doesn't really work, the way nothing does when you have sex on your mind, so with a sigh, I open the play store, and start to type.

It seems the universe is plotting with me here, I get the suggestion just after the first letter and click on it, then click 'install' with a kind of anxious hope that my phone does not have enough memory but alas, I did get the extra RAM for moments like this, clever, silly me. At this point I am strangely starting to get sleepy but it's too late now and there's no turning back. So I log in, and get asked to confirm my phone number, but start to get taken round in circles because I didn't pick the facebook option to log in, and I didn't want to because *information theft.....
I have to do this in the end though, and this worsens my already bad mood some more, but I am in, and I have messages, from my past chats, like a year and a half ago. I curiously go through them, stealthily creeping along not to trip any live wires that might be there, but only for a second. I loose the care in a snap and go through the messages, responding to some, ignoring others, swiping left and right on the main page, etc. I get a message and I am rather surprised, it is after all half past one in the morning, and I though it would take a while to get those old gears going. It's a blast from the past, with a VERY randy message, one that makes me look over my shoulder in a mix of fear and childish glee.

Wow....
Do I want to do this really?
I don't feel too sure if this is what I wanted........... So I respond in the positive and it's on, but not for long. Seems my chat-mate is sleepy as he's soon offline, I learn after I doze off myself and wake up to no responses. I get a brief vision of hastily undressing in the throes of passion just to fall asleep before any activities, barking dogs, ha.
Naturally, I awake with some difficulty at some minutes past eight and wonder if my indiscretion is still private.... The notification bar is alive with a million things; twitter, whatsapp, instagram, telegram, text, and of course, tinder. I carry the phone to the living room where he's sat down, we pour the tea and pair it with some sweet potatoes that I regret buying; they are watery and stringy as hell but well whatever.
A child randomly yells outside, another screams, so I go outside to investigate but cannot come to any conclusion with no injuries in sight, I go back to my tea. We have some conversation about nothing in particular amidst sips of tea and screams of babies, and he asks if I will be so kind as to open the gate for him, I agree, and though I catch something there I am not too sure what it is so I
release it.
He leaves, I finish my tea, then pick my phone up from the seat where I left it, and start to clear the notifications one by one, but there are no red flames from tinder any more..... I was sure there were about four when I woke up, or did I open the damn app before going out to look at the yelling kids? I can honestly not remember at all so I let it go, no point losing my mind over something I will know soon enough, one way or another.
Days pass and I guess he's gotten as numb as me, or is playing some strange game so I think ok, I will wait it out and cross that bridge when I come to it.....
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