I took what I think was a lead from Coach - Intimacy = "in to me see". I knew that the MC always starts the session with "So, how are things, or some such, and that when he does so, my W is always silent and reluctant to go first, so I was ready.
After a long pause, I opened with "Things have been pretty good. We are getting along and spending time together, but there is still a lot of tension in the air when we are together because of the emotions that we are both feeling". After the inevitable question "What feelings?" I talked briefly about how I felt angry, both with her and with myself, but that the anger had mostly dissapated. I talked about my fear of the damage that D would do to our family, and told her that, frankly, I was afraid that she would hurt me again. The fear, also is much dissipated, and mostly now it is sadness over what we are both going through. I also told her some things that made me happy - our kids, our family time etc.
This sounds long, but it was actually pretty brief and honest and I stayed calm throughout it.
My W's biggest question was "If you are feeling anger, etc, then why are you always acting so happy?"
But then my opening up about my feelings allowed her to do so as well. She talked about being really angry, all the time, but how it was mostly with herself - for allowing the situation to build, for not standing up for herself, for quietly allowing a situation to exist where she was not feeling loving or loved. This was the first time she talked like this, and was another emotional discussion for her.
She is still very reluctant to accept that R skills are something that everyone has to learn. She seems to want to think that it is genetic - you either have R skills built in or you don't.
The C led her to a discussion about her parents R, where she openly discussed that she had never seen her parents have a good loving R (from what I saw, I agree. Her F was quiet, hard working, worried and controlling. Her M was hates any sort of controls, constantly criticized and belittled her F). My parents also did not have a great R - more like platonic roommates, never fighting, but never openly loving either.
My W agreed to return to the C next week for IC on her feelings about R's (her parents R, our R, etc).
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The discussion about her parents R also opened up old fears that I had. In the past I could see us falling into her parents roles - I was the hard working F who tried to save money, keep the house in order, etc, and was getting criticized by my W who wanted more fun and saw me as boring and controlling. This gives me my own IC work for next week - both more clearly setting boundaries and expectations for my W, and allowing myself to have more fun.
As far as my W's statement that she had not really felt either loved or loving in our M, I can readily attribute that to what I now understand as our difference in LL's. I am primarily Physical affection with a secondary Words of Affirmation. She is Quality Time. With my work schedule, travel, and then kids, we didn't have a lot of Quality time, and I interpreted some of the requests for it as unreasonable demands from her to spend money. This gives me an area to work on.
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After the IC session we went out to a movie (a comedy) and then an impromptu late night dinner of burgers and mojitos at Friday's
She want's to keep going with the C sessions and wants to keep up the date nights, so I am treating that all as positive.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
