Settling In (LB55 Thread 3)

[LB55]

So I wound up having a discussion with her, it was mostly her talking, I listened, validated her feelings and viewpoints on what went wrong. I refrained from providing my viewpoints, or counterpoints to hers, as this was about me working on my listening and validation skills more than getting my point across.

I think it went well, she is still angry, still blames me for our problems, its my fault that she had to choose D, she has tried for all these years and I ignored her. She isn't wrong, I wasn't emotionally available to her mostly, I kept myself locked up inside and didn't share my true feelings with her very often.

I am mostly happy with how the hour passed, talking in the driveway. She tried to leave once, not angrily, but to try and end the conversation before we got into anything past the surface discussion. I didn't say anything, I just stood there, and she turned around and came back and the conversation continued.

I asked her to help with a timeline for getting the D complete, and she anticipates it taking 2 years or so before we are done. I told her I would like a shorter timeline, because I need to move forward in my life. She didn't say much other than we can't make a mistake with our assets that costs us both dearly. I definitely got the tone of 'I am unsure that I want to think about it being final yet and certainly don't want to do the work to get there. I don't want you doing it either though'.

She did reflect a bit on some good times we've had, laughs we've shared, and when life together was good. It was nice to reminisce a bit. I miss my friend so much. She said that it would be nice if we could sit together at a baseball game, and I told her I would like that too.

I told her I am open to more in person conversations, and less email/text, because she typically takes my written communication out of text. I told her I enjoyed talking, let's do more of this, and said goodnight. All in all, I think it was a good productive conversation and I was able to demonstrate some maturing emotional intelligence to her without overtly pointing it out(something I would have done in the past...see what I've done dear? Im working so hard for you!)

One of the things that I identified, and I didn't point this out to her, but its totally the wrong mindset for love. This is what she told me, and I wrote it down to remember it because it was so wrong in my mind. "I wanted you to love me the way I wanted, not the way that you wanted to love me." Basically that sounds like 'I don't want the gift you lovingly picked out and gave to me, because I want something else.' Selfish? Wow.

Why do I punish myself? Love shouldn't be punishment. It does take effort though. Effortless relationships are the stuff romance novels are made of. But yet I still love her. Not pursuing her, but I'm not doing a good job at letting her go either. At least not the past couple days. I am so desperate right now for some close physical contact. Not sex, just a sit on the couch watching a movie holding hands kind of contact. This is tough.