Trying to save (not sure if broken or bent) p2

[SemperFi00]

Bringing over from previous thread to continue the discussion.....

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....