Journaling, Short journaling since after two days off, it's taken over 3 hours to catch up with you all. A lot of reading about progress, backslides, perserverance and - always - good humor. You guys are the best.
The Four Agreements has had such a wonderfully, simply liberating effect on my thoughts and emotions (talk about Cognitive Dissonance and the whole Thought leads to Emotion debate over at C-Bart's). I have re-read Be Impeccable With Your Word (the first agreement) a few times because "word" here means much more than one's word or commitment or the audible sounds that we speak. It's deeper and more universal than that. So I revisit it.
I can't begin to describe the profound and liberating effect that the Second Agreement (Don't Take Anything Personally) and the Third (Don't Make Assumptions) have had on my thought processes and resulting wayward, misplaced emotions. Talk about wasting time and energy! I honestly don't even take the bomb or the D personally anymore. I highly recommend this book and thank Gypsy (for the umpteenth time!) for turning me on to it.
I visited Dia's thread and rambled for a while since she had mentioned her and her H's resentments. I thought of my resentments this week, thought about the (fortunately) few resentments I had begun nursing and harboring against my wife pre-bomb.
And it struck me: the issues were few, real and they hurt. However, my resentment toward her was really misdirecting and avoiding resenting myself. I was in reality resenting me for not speaking out on the issues, not addressing them, avoiding the conflict that doing so would have caused and for not leading in this aspect of my R & M with my wife.
Could it be that whenever we resent anyone, we are really resenting ourselves, our own failure to address that which produced the resentment: our own inaction?
Also, while I was in Chicago and spent 3 1/2 hours "with" my wife and with my family, I couldn't find the rope. Thought I left it home. Got home that evening and it wasn't there either. Nowhere to be found.
I must've dropped it somewhere
Goodnight.
Gardener
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own." Cyrano deBergerac
(((Gardener))) Wonderful to see you again my friend!I have just started to visit my resentment and while they are few and far in-between, I agree with you 100% when you say...
"I was in reality resenting me for not speaking out on the issues, not addressing them, avoiding the conflict that doing so would have caused and for not leading in this aspect of my R & M with my wife."
What sucks is it takes something like this happening to realize what we should have technically been doing all along.
I must be doing something right though, he has contacted me 2 days in a row for mundane crap and I just sit and wait then when I respond I keep it short and sweet - I have finally stopped telling him I love him as well (which still kills me)...
However if we are actually talking on the phone, he never fails to end the conversation with "I love you baby" or "I love you sweetie"...
Not reading into that one though lol - Could just be habit.
I did have someone come up to me last night and tell me I was glowing
Weird since I look in the mirror and still see the same scared, lost woman I was months ago...
I wonder what others see that I can't see yet?
May All Who Seek To Take My Life Be Put To Shame And Confusion; May All Who Desire My Ruin Be Turned Back In Disgrace. ~Psalm 40:14~
