What I also know is... I will eventually have to put down my own guard. I will have to be willing to "receive" from my W, as well. And I'm slowly working on that.
so i found this interesting. do you remember when you put up your guard - right after BD or did it come later, slowly?
Unfortunately, the brutal truth is, my guard started coming up probably a year and a half before BD (so sometime around spring of 2009). It was a slow and steady process. If I fully open my eyes to it, that could be the beginning of my W's possible MLC. That's something I might take a look at, sometime in the future.
Anyhow, the wall was pretty high by the time BD hit. I'd put guesses that I slept more than 50% on the couch instead of the marital bed, by the spring of 2010. BD was subtle during the summer of 2010 and then the rude awakening in Oct. 2010. That's when the wall tripled in thickness, surrounded me entirely, and then varied from hour to hour between granite rock and tissue paper...
By late summer of 2011, the wall was pretty well stable. A few cracks, but otherwise solid. I know that wall, it's protected me before. And my past has allowed me to recognize it more easily. It's not easy to bring down. But one has to see it before one can begin to disassemble it.
Originally Posted By: zig
we PLAN and MAKE PLANS on expectations... so it can be quite irritating when the results don't meet our expectations, because it prevents us from executing the next step in our "plans".
it is more than irritating, don't you think? but after i read this i began to see how what i had written on the other thread was the wrong way to go about it. it's really about ultimately turning away and sort of forgetting about it all and not making any plans based on whether it works out or not. and the next step shouldn't really be planned - it should be left open to come to us...in it's own time
In all fairness, those words just kinda appeared on my post before they even really sunk into my brain. And I think it's some of my more powerful, insightful, concise thoughts on the subject... if I do say, quite humbly, myself...
Joking aside, that IS what expectations "do" to us. We expect that we are done work at 5pm. So we make reservations for supper at 6pm because we expect to eat, then. And then we expect to have our favorite ribs because that's the restaurant we chose. And then we expect to go to our favourite club after supper and have our favourite wobbly pops and expect that some time around midnight, we will be snug in bed with our favourite partner.
All these plans for just an evening. We expect all of this and we plan on our expectations. And you can see how just one thing... such as getting out of work 15 minutes late, can completely change the entire evening...
Now just think about how we plan on expectations weeks, months and years ahead. Again, how one variation in expectations can snowball way into the future.
It is OK to plan on expectations. We just have to equally expect that things may not go as planned.
