You are absolutely right, and of course I know it. THanks for the reality check.
Had a busy weekend, cumulating in an important conversation tonight.
First, with the season change my boys' asthma has kicked in again, so we've been up a lot with them at night and are paying a lot of attention to their care. W and I have both been pretty tired.
We had their birthday party on Saturday - they turn 3 tomorrow. It was a great party. Funny - their big thing right now is trains, and we already had a lot of train toys - after all the train gifts that they were given, it's like FAO Schwartz at Christmas time - everywhere you look there's a train running. I hope this choo-choo phase lasts quite awhile 'cause we've got a big investment in it now.
Okay, so important conversation - and like all important conversations, I can remember about half of it. W said she had a number of light-bulb moments, so I hope this will be progress for her too.
W talked to her father tonight, got into a debate about religion which she was a bit upset about. After she talked to me about her childhood and how the awful things that happened led her to use control as security - she just takes control, and she feels that it includes me and she doesn't know how to stop it. (Some of you may remember some things I said about her tendency to be a little bossy.)
I said that the way I percieve it is her becoming frantic about things, and also distant. I said that she's felt distant for a few weeks now. She agreed that distance is her method of escaping from feeling vunerable.
She said that she knows she loves me but right now she's having trouble feeling it, having that connection, feeling anything that makes her vunerable. She says that she feels asexual. No desire to move into the master bedroom and no desire to have sex. She wants to work on this but is afraid that it's going to take so long that I'm going to get fed up and eventually say, I've had enough, I can't live like this anymore. I assured her I'm committed to her and I don't do that.
She did say that she's not going to leave, she's not going to divorce me, we're past that.
Well, we talked about so much more, and in the end she did say that she felt connected to me. She does for moments - she did on that vacation we took in October - but can't figure out how to have it all the time or at least more often. We talked about the issues we both have with anxiety, vunerablilty, intimacy, etc.
In the end we cuddled in her bed and spent some time being close.
Well, we've made so much progress since July and I am grateful for that. I guess I need to avoid being impatient - can't stop DBing now - but there's still a lot of work to do. W actually said that she's envious of me that I've made so much progress on myself - she said that it seemed that I changed in a moment - while she feels stuck, doesn't see a path to where she wants to go with her growth. SHe's afraid that I'm going to "grow past her" and, again, somehow she'll lose me as a result. Funny how this got turned around. I mentioned at one point that I still get scared and she teared up, saying that she's sorry that she hurt me and that I'd still be scared but that she understood.
How can you be so close to someone, care so much about each other, and still have issues with distance & intimacy? You know, a bit part of the anxiety that comes up for me is sensing that distance when it happens. That's part of what I'm working on with myself, not having that reaction, not having that dependency.
Okay it's late and I need sleep - catch up with y'all soon -
