1st appointment with new IC this afternoon. We have a standing appointment every two weeks—so be back two weeks from today.
He’s a LFMT, found him through health insurance website. I told him that I’m here to work on myself, and that I’d like to take what I do with him and use it to help with my family where I can. He’s Catholic, which is nice—I understand it’s not the be-all end-all, but I appreciate an IC who is more sympathetic to my faith and can understand certain topics that I bring up. I consider my faith to be very important to who I am, so it’s going to come through when I talk with him. At minimum, I want an IC whose basic perspective is ‘do no harm’ towards my faith beliefs. I did bring up TDR and MWD, and he said he wasn’t familiar with either, FWIW.
He is also skeptical of MC in general, though he did ask if W and I did / are doing that. I explained that W previously attached conditions to it—doesn’t want to see a Catholic or Christian one (wants a secular one), and he basically refuted W’s arguments as I presented them to him. He did bring up that in some instances courts mandate MC as part of divorce proceedings; however, for one of the parties it can be a ‘box to check’ to say that they did it, it wasn’t effective, and let’s continue with the proceedings—I expressed a similar concern myself, and my hesitancy in pursuing that at this time. Right now I just want to work on myself, and get myself right, for myself, the boys, and for whoever else happens to be in my future.
I explained the Cliffs Notes version of my sitch, and he asked me some questions about how I’m feeling, what my mental state has been like recently, etc. I also told him about the changes I’ve been working on in myself over the last year (though I know that that will be a future topic), and I’ll also later bring up some recent areas of emphasis (working on some NGS tendencies, although I like my progress on that recently).
I also told him about the threats that W has made with respect to claims of emotional abuse. I described to him what W has said about how she feels that I have exhibited ‘abuse’ towards her, and he said that emotional abuse is very, very hard to prove, and it has to be documented. He affirmed my being in touch with a L, and he agrees that my custody log of what I do for the boys could be very helpful for me in the event that I need it.
His initial diagnosis? I have an ‘adjustment disorder,’ with some aspects of anxiety and depression present—which sounds about right, given everything. According to him, my levels of anxiety and depression are within a ‘normal’ range, so he doesn’t seem terribly concerned at this point. He commented that I seem to be holding up rather well, and that I’m functioning rather well—that I’m functioning at all considering what is going on seems to be a good sign.
It’s only one meeting, but I seem to like him a lot—it went much better than I thought, and it will be good to be back in the saddle with that.
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Go ahead and 2x4 me if you must for this, but since I’m in a journaling mood.......I believe I mentioned this before, but I just miss the reciprocal love / sex / attention / affection from a woman right now. What’s odd is that I’m not sure if I especially want sex / physical affection from W right now—I’ve thought about if / when that happens, and that later on if we get to that point, I’m sure perhaps a sex therapist might be in our future, because it’s been a while since sex / physical affection between us—I feel like it would be awkward.
I just kinda hate this part of everything right now, though it’s not like there’s a whole lot of this I like, besides the working on myself portion of it. I don’t feel like I deserve this in general, but especially the lack of affection part. I don’t recall withholding it from her before BD, and when we practiced NFP we probably went at most 2 weeks without sex, unless W was gone for work for a longer period of time. While she was unhappy that I didn’t always give her what she wanted sexually, I was never mean about it, I would sexually pursue her, and I was usually very physically affectionate with her.
Honestly? I just want to touch and be touched, to love and be loved, in body and in spirit.
From what I’ve read here, I know that for her, sex / affection comes down to respect for me, and for whatever reason, she doesn’t have it, so if I want that back, I’ll have to work on getting her respect for me back. But I have to wonder how much I want her right now, myself.
