Zelda - I want it all, all right now.

[Vanilla]

V - you are right on so many levels. Yes, I am the assertive strong one in our R, and I was emotionally flooding all over the place for years.

Now that you have stopped flooding with your emotions then I think two things are happening (at least this is what happened for me):
firstly you are detaching rather than reacting: in your earlier post you describe asking H (calmly) to remove his fists,
secondly you are losing denial and H is no longer able to say 'see Z your reaction made me so this.is Z responsibility, if you had done X instead....'. You stopped the cycle of blame by retaining balance during an incident. You kept calm and your reaction is inacapble of being a 'cause'.

This has given you insight and clarity as if you were a third party observing.


But, I have ceased criticizing. I have ceased having expectations or pushing him. Communication has appeared to improve. The truth is I am feeling bullied, emotionally, physically, psychologically.

Actually I believe this feeling of being bullied etc was always there.

it iwas that your own flooding masked the bullying etc and also enabled it through denial and reaction. This is no longer the case.

Your flooding added an extra emotional layer, I think the fact that you experienced anger first (The physiologically more dominant 'lizard' or lambic emotion) was covering up your sadness (the longer term parasympathetic emotion).

Now I believe as in my sitch the sadness is exposed: it has always been there but by reacting I said to myself this sadness is of my own making, if I change my anger the sadness will go away. It can not do that because the sadness is a result of the self being negated in the R, not because of the anger (screaming banshee) which has arisen during flooding. Hope that makes sense.

I feel like I am in denial. There was a period, here on this forum, where I wrote that I felt like the fog was lifting, and I was happy and free. Now the fog is back and I want to tell myself why everything is normal and ok.

Z, from reading your posts then I sense that the issue is that you are no longer in denial. You may want to be as that is more comfortable. Actually you appear to be in full colour acceptance, there is no going back to denial. The fog is sadness and it will shift as you manage your expectations from your R.

The truth is I am scared to be without him and alone again. That is the stupid ugly truth.

I understand this, and this is only one of the choices. There is a journey ahead of you Z. A journey to find Z.[ in this type of relationship then there have always been great alone periods, the cycle of abuse will indicate those periods of isolation./color]

That I would rather feel this heartache week in and week out from some source I can't pinpoint than be an individual alone in the world again, without the idea of marriage or family 'secured.'

[color:#6600CC]In truth we are all alone throughout life but we need not be lonely. Abuse isolates and in my case has made me lonely even though I am supposedly in an R. I have decided that I am better off being free of abuse, I am lonely in this R anyway so actually I prefer to be alone instead and free of abuse. H has attempted to isolate me anyway (without success).

This feels to me like trying to 'love' the abuse out of the abuser.

I thank you for the energy you are putting into your responses.

I am sharing as much as I can with someone I respect very much.

I am flat out panicking at the choices I feel I am looking at in what to do here - none of them seem good.

z, probably the choices are not that glowing and I feel the same. You are younger with a life and children ahead of you. This is a cross road in your life, one of many. Z, you can be free of a life of abuse, whether with your H or in another R or on your own as a single mom. It is the loss of our dreams that hurts the most.

V