[ScottB]

To My chagrin I continue to reflect and my mind continues to cycle on where I’m at.

Two things happened over the past two days. First, my wife and i went out to dinner and she mentioned that her numbness started after her emergency hysterectomy eight years ago, as i mentioned yesterday. That’s when she began to numb out. The next day in church the oddest thing happened, a little girl was crying and my wife randomly picked her up and comforted her. I began to cry. My wife was so natural with this little girl.

That’s when i came to reflect on my wife’s story in a way i hadn’t before. My wife was in her pain after her hysterectomy. An unrelenting pain that was dulling her life and her spirit. Alone at home. She had lost her uterus and no one came to her. She had lost the children she had planned to have. And she was alone trying to figure out her grief and pain. The man that loved her had moved on. He was gone and in his own world. He was fighting a different fight and didn’t see his wife. He left her. And then never spoke of it.

And if things couldn’t get worse, he put pressure on her for sex. Sex that to her did not feel like love. It was a needy sex to fill his holes and as he filled up she emptied herself out. They both knew that she could no longer get pregnant. This gave him license to desire more and this created a pain in her that deepened.

For him sex gave him pleasure and love, for her it was first a reminder of children that would never be, a hole in her heart, and of an unloving husband who didn’t care.

Sex became disjointed. It became physical. It was no longer about the spiritual. It was about an orgasm and getting it done. He didn’t know the difference because he had lost his feelings and so had she, because she had to.

And then it got worse. He complained of HIS pain, of HIS needs; she had lost her soul and now he wanted to take it all. It was all about him. And he drove this home, he even made the point that if she wouldn’t put out he would do it himself. He didn’t need her any more. She was used and abused and unnecessary.

As she was dying and she found someone to see her in her pain and help build her back up. She was getting stronger but angrier. Building herself up but also tearing herself apart with resentment and anger. It ended but the grief and anger and resentment were there and they were fresh.

As the EA relationship was left behind she sunk again into her loneliness. And that is where she stays. Fighting for breath and reaching for hands, praying that someone reaches out and doesn’t let go. The only way out of her nightmare is to leave this man; not for another, but for a chance to heal and find a way to get whole again.

So what is this. This is me working in feeling again and working in empathy. Seeing my wife and not being self absorbed. Feeling is new to me. We began working on this in My IC in January. I’m exploring it and it’s opening new paths and new thoughts, for better or worse.

For example, I’m feeling a lot of shame right now. I feel like I’m letting Steve down at this moment. I’m still working to figure out how to process feelings and such.