[SemperFi00]

You can have these things, companionship, life partner, physical connection and not love the person you're with. Love should never be implied. Nor should anger or pain or frustration. A relationship should be strong enough to hold all those emotions.

So labug this ^^^ is very interesting to me. Always appreciate your comments and the questions you ask.

I agree that a R should be strong enough to handle many different emotions, conversations, actions, etc……. I don’t quite get what a R would look like that had all of those things but there was no love – interested in what that would look like?? Another way to ask the question would be to ask you to describe how you would define/describe love?

For me, love is also about the selfless acts of kindness and caring that a person does because of the feelings they have for someone else.....

Maybe I need to expand my definition a bit though......

You're a very controlled guy, or that's the impression I get from your posting. I could be very wrong. When was the last time you were angry? I don't mean the acting out of anger, I mean you felt anger, let yourself feel it, allowed it to cool and went to the other person and said "Let's talk."

It took me a long time to learn that anger isn't the problem it's how we express it that can be the problem.

Agree that anger is not usually the problem – it is more typically in how a person deals with the anger that can create problems.

When I was younger I had a real problem with how I dealt with anger. I can remember times when I was in jr high and high school being so mad that I would repeatedly hit trees, walls, etc… until my hands would bleed. I can also remember times just out of the military when someone would cut me off driving, give me the wrong food at the drive-thru or say something disrespectful that I would become very confrontational.

Some of this my W was exposed to early in our R (probably 15 or more years ago) but mostly not. Nothing ever physical w/her or the kids but her father was borderline abusive and emotionally dis-engaged from the family so it's a real trigger for her.

I can only think of 1x in the past 5 years or so that there has been any scenario – I slapped a wall in frustration while heading out to my car on the way to work and cracked the drywall. Pressure was caused by a few things: job being relocated to another state, F dying of cancer and W beginning on this “journey”.

So yeah, very aware and controlled about emotions in general – especially anger. Not proud of any of this and I know how ridiculous it sounds when the emotion has subsided and when reading it typed out here.

Have a heavy bag in the basement that I sometimes use to help with the frustration and I also find that regular walks on the treadmill and daily meditation readings help manage the stress level a great deal.

It's even more of a problem when we express it by withdrawing.

Embarrassingly enough have done this also. I have realized that sometimes I was doing it to calm down and other times I was doing it in hope that it would cause a reaction from W. Not a good thing I know and a work in progress..... Haven't done this in quite awhile that I am aware of

Feels at this point like I am at an intervention and should say "....my name is SemperFI and I have been pout free for XXX years"

Will come back to some of your other points a little later....