Quote: I want an authority figure to validate my POV
This is not wrong. After a while, wrestling with this issue makes you nuts. It's great to have validation from a knowledgeable outsider that you're not. WE'LL validate that you're not nuts, but we're also inmates.
I had a wonderful session with the C a couple of months ago. After two years of this R, the drinking, the surgery, the lack of sex, the wondering if it's me, if it's him, yadda, yadda, yadda... I went to the C alone and just spilled out the whole situation. I took four typewritten pages of notes with me and gave them to him, and just laid it on the line.
I got such validation-- it was absolutely one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I don't want you to think that we sat there and trashed my bf-- we did not. But what I got was validation that I had been through some real stress, that it was perfectly normal and desirable for me to want to have regular sexual interaction with my bf, that it was perfectly normal for me to be hurt and put off by his unwillingness and deflection of the sexual issue.
I left there walking on a cloud. I felt that I had been restored to myself. That in the two years of this R, I had made many, many teeny wrong turns, many seemingly harmless conpromises, many concessions. That I had been hurt in small ways and just swallowed the hurt. So I had, bit by bit, wandered off the main highway and was lost in the desert. I felt that that one session "snapped" me back on course. When I left there, I felt that I had fallen in love-- with me.
I had been trying to live happily in my bf's world, which is a crazy world when it comes to intimacy. Because he does so many other good, nurturing things, you can mistake it for a normal, healthy world, but it is not. To me (back to the meal analogy) it was like a table set for dinner, with beautiful dishes, flowers, glasses, but the food was not nourishing... I wasn't getting the emotional nourishment I needed to thrive. I was trying to make myself fit--to eat the food and be happy-- but my own tendency toward wholeness was resisting. My internal meter was saying, "you need vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, and you're not getting them."
Why haven't I left him? Because I know many of the issues triggered by this R are indeed MY ISSUES. Otherwise I would not be with him. And I think if this R can be saved, the Schnarch-y Crucible way can do it. If it can't, so be it. I'm determined to GROW, with him or without him.
So, mand, if she won't go with you, GO to the C on your own. Take care of YOU!
