Have been keeping up with your sitch, lurking in the background. Wrote a long post and decided to scrap it.
I am relieved that you and W are more comfortable talking now. It is an important step.
I wanted to raise an issue with you and discuss a different matter on which I would value your views.
The first issue is that of righteous anger, I am a left footer and in my religion of course everything is confidential, sealed confessional and intensely private. My priest (minister) is merely a conduit to the higher power. This is of course a harder and an easier path. My conscience is between myself and that which is spirit, my married partners path is also with their spirit. it is not for me to judge my H, he and his higher power will hold him to account.
In my faith no one has the right or the authority to interfere between Spouses nor between any person and their higher power. So I am incredulous when I hear elders in other churches managing that relationship. When Jesus said do not sin he was mandating not condemning. This is very unfamiliar to me., the concept of holding to account. It is very different and I find myself unexpectedly resisting the concept.
So to return to righteous anger, we justify our anger by telling ourselves we are 'right' and entitled to our beliefs. Another must have the societal structured response or else be forced back into line. Most of us do what we believe is for the best even if our thinking is unbalanced or crooked. Some one with the background of your W is unlikely to be acting as she is from a narcissistic stance and is most assuredly behaving from unmet need of one sort or another. MCS when W realises that unmet need is not to be met then she will cease running down the cheesless tunnel. Righteous anger will not help MCS, expecting penance atonement and to free of guilt and shame are conflicting goals for W.
In order to move MCS position to R or a new relationship MCS may need to let go of expectation and righteous anger. This is not serving MCS well, change happens MCS and like it or no change will continue. You can accept that W has new goals and desires or you can stay stuck. So how to let go of righteous anger, detatch and observe? This will be much harder if we add the conventional expectation of M, the sense that W should behave in a specific way. V believes that these constraints may be the shackles from which W would like to escape and she can see no disbarment to change. W has her needs. MCS has his. Both want the best for their children. With peace I say this, MCS please let go of righteous anger, let W work her sitch.
The discussion point is about love, it is Vs belief that there can be no unconditional love between adults. Between the individual or the higher power love is unconditional and we channel that love to others. Love for children and dependants is always unconditional but with another adult this is not possible except for rare moments. I also question whether unconditional love for self is either possible or necessary.
The love, I talk of is universal love the type which surrounds us and into which we tap to support ourselves. It is good that you love W and this will shine from every pore.
So what is love? A study of love takes us to analysis categorisation of it. My way of thinking of love is more in line with the structured view that marital love has three components to it. The Stemberg model of adult love, which I find appealing.
Love in this context is not a physiological (lambic) state, whether one accepts that there are six (Eikmann) or eight (Plutchet) states of emotion, [joy, contempt, sadness, anger, surprise and fear plus anticipation and acceptance). It is not governed by the primary hormones of the body.
In order to explain this mystic state of love we end up with mental or higher mind emotions. What is clear to me is that it is possible to quickly change state with the mental emotions but not immediately with the physiological ones.
Anger of itself may be involuntary but the body can not it appears hold two states at one time. Anger can be managed by changing state, by doing something different in that moment. Righteous part of anger can be released and the anger managed. I believe this is why it is called anger management rather than anger control.
I have concluded that there is no physiological state called love and that limmerant love is a mental compulsion and has its analogous root comparative in addiction and compulsion. This of itself has to diminish as all addictions require increased doses, which in a relationship context becomes unbearable. This appears to me to be the reason that WAS trade down in an EA or PA as the needy A partner will be more tolerant of addictive love. I am open to be persuaded that unconditional love exists in an adult relationship context, but at the moment I am incredulous. I would value your views.
V
Last edited by Vanilla; 02/07/1511:58 AM.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
