You have a great deal of insight – I am so grateful to find people like you on this board.
Quote: From what I have read in this post your H wants to be close with you even to the point of being mushy, but you say you have been denyng him that. Let me ask you this...if you were pushed away everytime you wanted to be mushy with a lover, would you be willing to have deep emotional and mental conversations with them? I would bet your honest answer would be NO.
I have not been denying him. I would not do that as it would be a very rejecting thing to do. When he is mushy I will say something mushy back – but I will not feel it. It serves to highlight for me how I do not feel the way he seems to be feeling. I guess it is likely that he notices I am not “with him” when he is saying these thing. For example if he says to me – love of my life – I will smile back at him and maybe kiss him, but I do not say the same or similar to him and when he says it my first thought is “how sad – I don’t feel the same for you”.
Yes these probably do sound like WAW thoughts, to be truthful I think it was a race as to who would be out of the door first. He made it before I did. It brought me up short, I did not want to be walked out on. I DB’d I got him back. My sister quoted me that line from Cool Hands Luke “I calls quitting time”. Sometimes I feel that way. On the other hand I do not want D. I have two small children, I do not want to start my life over. We did have a good relationship once and I guess we could have it again.
My thoughts now are simply this, I can keep him here and I can keep him happy. I can make my own life fulfilling. Only I need to know that he is not my stars and my moon. If he wishes to think of me that way then he is welcome to and I will be loving and gracious. When we ML it is good and I feel closer to him. At the end of the day the bronze medal isn’t that bad. I guess I just feel I need to come to terms with it and get on with my life. It won't work however I need to turn soemthing round in my head to feel the right way towards him. To keep acting will leave me in a place where I can no longer be nice to him. At the moment if he gets too mushy, or wants to ML I have to struggle with myself not to let the rejecting feelings out. The feelings that just say "ugh - get off"
I understand what you have been saying and I will work on it. We have read 5LL and he quite quickly understood that QT is my LL. I initially thought that Acts of Service was his. He didn’t really want to say what he thought his LL was and said the book was a little too simplistic. I now believe that Words of Affirmation and Receving gifts are the real ones for him. He did not want to admit this perhaps because he felt embarrassed somehow that he needs to be given gifts and compliments to feel loved. Maybe he felt like it made him a shallow person – whatever. But I am now convinced these are his LLs. His attitude really turned around after Christmas when I got him a lot of gifts.
The homework is a great idea Reuben. It will be difficult to find the time but I think we should try. My difficulty now is I think he believes we are sorted and settled and won’t see the need to do these things, I think he might be quite shocked to find that I need more than I am getting from this R.
take care
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
