Back again -- sorry for my hiatus. It is very difficult for me to write when times are bad, and then easier to write when I have some sort of discovery/revelation. I don't think this pattern is particularly helpful for me, since it's precisely at the bad times that I need the most help, and that's when I close up. Also, I have this history of only reporting the encouraging, cheerful, or easy to figure out stuff, which again is misleading, especially for my therapists.
This happened just the other day with one of my therapists. We were discussing our intimacy problems, and I talked about the usual things: emotional distance, sexual pain, discomfort with vulnerablity, etc. But I omitted one of the most difficult things right now, which has a huge effect on our intimacy: my husband's sadness.
In my previous therapy sessions, I have mainly glossed over my husbands sadness, by saying that this is "his" problem to deal with, and I have a hard enough time keeping track of my "own" problems. At the beginning, I think it was helpful for me to define "his" and "her" problems. I had a tendency to get wrapped up in my husbands feelings and felt instinctively that I wanted to help him, which had the unfortunate result of keeping my feelings deeply buried. For a long time, I was simply unable to feel my deeper thoughts-- to access these emotions and then to name them. After much therapy and some drugs, I seem to be coming to a better understanding of my emotional self, although this journey seems to have just started.
So, this brings me back to my husband's sadness. Why should this be a problem of mine, do you ask? Shouldn't he be in responsible for his own emotions? I think what I'm learning is there is increasingly fewer "his" or "her" problems, but rather a large body of "our" problems.
There are several reasons for my husband's sadness, from what I can understand (and this may be revised after more comprehension and understanding from my part). First, (and in no particular order) my husband is sad because of what we have become -- two very close friends, but more akin to brother and sister than lovers or spouses. We have been struggling with intimacy issues for almost a decade, and we're only in our 30s. He wonders whether this is just how our relationship is meant to be. Were we ever meant to be lovers? Shouldn't it be much easier than this? Sixteen year olds can figure out how to have sex happily, the whole human population survives because of reproduction -- why can't we figure it out? Perhaps it wasn't meant to be for us. These thoughts swirl around in my husband's head and make him feel despondent. I can't really answer these questions with data or facts. I don't believe that we are meant just to be brother and sister. I have felt that there is a large portion of our relationship missing, and I feel that I want that. However, I cannot give him proof of that, and the proof of inaction thus far in his mind could easily explain that I'm not sexually interested in him or in us. So, this sort of discussion usually gets us talking in circles, with my instinct to discount this theory, and his instinct to try and get at whether this is true.
The second reason why my husband is sad is one that I haven't grappled with yet. My psyche seems hell bent on moving my thoughts away from this topic. So, here goes. My husband has been going through progressive stages of hurt, frustration, anger for a LONG time. He has tried many ways to try and get us to communicate better, to try and figure out our sexual problems when they started, or a year later, or several years later. In the beginning, he was patient, then a little more urging, until finally he realized that this was affecting him deeply. He saw changes in himself, an inability to be open, a jealousy of other couples, a pulling away from me. He then pleaded with me to see how this was hurting him, how it was hurting us. He warned that he saw our relationship going in a bad direction, that it would be harmful for us, that we might no be able to bounce back. And then watched as his dire predictions started coming true.
And for the most part, for many years, I turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. I didn't confront him to say that I wasn't interested in sex, or that it bothered me, or that it worried me that we were starting to have bigger problems. Instead, like an ostrich, I preferred to keep my head buried in the sand, in order to ignore what was happening. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was extreme denial, perhaps it was my own need to feel safe at the expense of my partners happiness, or state of mind. And in those multiple years, I chose my my own safety over that of our relationship. I put "me" firmly and consistently ahead of "us".
I think this type of interaction is particularly bad for us. In addition to dealing with the hurt of a decade, and trying to put it behind him, my husband has difficulty trusting me in this way again. How will he know that he can be safe? How can he feel that I value our relationship if I repeatedly choose myself over us? How can I show him that I'll be better this time? And on my side, I don't understand how I spent so many years in denial, and avoiding the situation. This would have been so much easier when we were younger, without the years of hurt layered on it. Why wasn't I able to stand up for us? Why did I choose to hide myself rather than fight with my spouse? What does that mean about me? What do I need to learn so that I'm not afraid again? How can I truly apologize? These also are a large set of questions for which I have no answers.
Finally, the third sadness for today. When we have good days, with me letting go of my fears, and distance and space and enjoying the moment, now my husband is starting to feel "weird" during our intimate the situation. He feels as if we aren't "supposed" to be doing this. He describes it as akin to the feeling when you think of brother's and sister's having sex. This also of course makes him sad (refer to sadness #1), and makes him wonder whether he'll be able to go back. It also makes me sad, as I feel like I've turned him away from me,
So, these some of are some of the darknesses in our lives right now.
