How SURE are you about things that are going to happen?

I'm not really sure about anything in the future. I have already been through a lot of chapters in my life that I never expected.

How much do you rely on the past, and the present, to predict the future? Especially about the "negative" things?

Way too much, but I'm working on it! One thing that has been helpful is that when H and I talk about past problems, we keep reminding each other that we don't want to hold on to old resentment, we want to look at what went wrong and do things differently from here on out.

How would you see the situation you're in from an outsider's point of view? What if you were a third-party looking at the events that are going on in your life? How might you see things differently?

Unfortunatly, a lot of third-partys would tell me to give H the big boot. Some of those who would tell me that are some of my family members.

However, I think an objective third-party who had compassion for both H and I would say that, sad as it is, we seemed to have needed a bomb to break out a negative cycle that neither one of us knew how to stop. As terrible as the experience was, any third-party could see that we have made a lot of progress on making our R better and that we love each other very much.

If you were to read your story on the board like it was someone else's thread, what would you post to yourself? What advice would you give to you? How well would you take that advice?!

Oh, geez. I would say that it's ok to vent and get frustrated sometimes, but that it's important to bounce back into working on my PMA and become solution oriented. I would also remind myself to think before I speak to H when I'm feeling angry and frustrated.

If there was no past history to taint your views of the possibilities of things that could happen in the future, what might things look like?

As it looks right now, I would say that H and I are getting to know each other on a deeper level and that the work we are doing will make for a more stable relationship.

If you were to put aside the "fact" that everything your partner is doing is meant to hurt you, what other possible explanations for some of their individual behaviors might you be able to come up with?

This is an area I need to concentrate on a great deal. I am finding that my H has been in a lot of pain in the last few years of our R. He was feeling stressed, fearful, angry, and like all the best things of his youth were gone and was upset about getting older. He is also very insecure and has fairly low self-esteem in general. These things were not my problems to fix or feel responsible for, and his behavior during this meltdown was not intended to be hurtful to me.

What areas of your relationship might it be helpful to "take off your blinders", and see things from a different perspective?

I need to be more aware of my own tendencies to be stubborn, selfish, controlling and critical. I need to do a better job of explicitly communicating my thoughts, emotions, and needs and learn to do this in a way that doesn't make H feel defensive. I need to express appreciation, admiration, and assurances to H in a big way!

What does that dot that the teacher drew on the blackboard represent to you?!

The dot is the circle that hold all things and connects all living things. The circle is sacred and represents the cycles of things and the infinite at the same time.

What would your answer be to the "miracle question"? Your answer to how things COULD be, instead of the way that they are?

In my fantasy of a miricle happening in my R is that H and I would have a more relaxed, less stressed life with less financial worries. In my fantasy, we would always be growing and learning together and each would feel secure about the other's love and commitment.

If you were to start things over from scratch, with a clean slate, what would your relationship be like? What would YOU be doing to help lead it into the right direction?

There are many patterns that we got into early on that snowballed into large problems later on. I think I would have been more assertive about things that were extremely important to me instead of worrying about upsetting H or driving him away. I would have encouraged better communication both ways and would have probably wanted to see a MC proactively, instead of waiting until we had experienced a major bomb. I would show H more appreciation and not take him for granted. These are the things I would do now if we were starting from scratch.