Cold differentiation, fusion and stuff.

[Burgbud]

I web navigated my practically complete response to your post into oblivion, so the discussion of Deida will have to wait as I now only have time to get to this:

(Cobra) Fine. Lets hear it.

The two relevant paragraphs, quoted in their entirety:

IMO, you are still espousing a very feminist mantra, one in which you think men need to be in touch with a woman's emotions, that the men should be focused on the woman's feelings for in that way conflict can be minimized and both will feel validated, secure and able to stand in a differentiated mode. But you model is not the kind of man I want to be or the kind of man I think anyone should be. I feel that a part of your "message" has a subtle emasculation of men that sort of turns me off the more I think of it. Sorry, that's just how I feel. I'm also beginning to develop suspicions why your H left you.

The message from your H is very much in line with what I was thinking. What I was going to guess is that he left you because you are much more highly differentiated than him.


Making those two pieces of communication congruent really sets my mind to spinning. I don't see how a rational person would be expected to extract the meaning explained in the second paragraph from the words written in the first. I suspect your wife deals with a lot of mixed messages of this type: "When I said that thing that had malicious overtones, what I meant was something totally benign." That can quickly build into a gaslighting effect and does very little to build trust.