out of clever titles

[hoosiermama]

For me it wasn't so much doing things separately--we'd sort of always done that. H had a lot of outside interests--which I don't think until recently involved affair behavior. So it was either develop my own or be bored. Actually I resented his many outside interests, because with a child at home it meant I was quite limited in pursuing my own interests. So I deferred many of them. However, over time I came to a realization that H really didn't have the capacity for being supportive much of the time, or at least not in a way that was easily recognizable. At the very beginning our relationship was quite codependent, but while H was away being a monk for a couple of years, I did a lot of healing and got to know myself. He says when he returned and our relationship was renewed, it didn't feel as "close" to him. Partly because I had some difficulty dealing with his abandonment, but more because I was just healthier. I struggled with that balance between enmeshment and separateness, and I think ultimately I became fairly self-differentiated. Eventually I will sort all of this out--what was differentiated, what was avoidance, what was response to being hurt a lot--i.e. what was healthy and what wasn't. Right now isn't the time to do that because I'm not exactly objective.

BTW--it's so true, your last statement. The opposite of hate is indifference. There's just so much of that in all my relationships (except with D12) and it's hard to take.