Thanks for the visit, Wendy. Last night was a lovely time at H2H's, who is a great cook and fabulous hostess. This morning she got me to work earlier than I have been in months (which is pathetic, because I arrived after 9!).
A lot has transpired in the last few days – a lot to digest. S. was a ball of stress all weekend, and procrastinated a lot instead of working on the paper he is to give tonight. (I took him to the airport yesterday morning.) I was feeling neglected and resentful that he spent the whole w-e doing other things, and by 10p.m. on Sunday night he had settled down to realize that he had twice as much work than he’d originally thought to get the paper done.
I did my best to stay out of his way. Monday night S. asked me to come over to “hang out while I work” after yoga. I was a little miffed and said I “don’t want to come over if you’re going to be up all night working.” (Mistake, shows I don’t want to do the kind of QT he likes, which is together but separate.)
So I went over anyway, and after working a bit he stopped to pack, and I went to bed. When he came to bed, I woke up and started thinking about things from the past week and could not stop myself from bringing up a conversation. Well, needless to say it did NOT go well. I won’t rehash the whole wee-hours-in-the-dark conv here, but here are some things that were said, in no order whatsoever.
1. I had said I was wondering why he hadn’t called me the day after we got back from Vermont, and that we had an agreement to check in every day. He heard instead that I was annoyed that he’d gone out with a (M) friend after work. I was able to restate what I’d actually said without much ado. Interesting that he heard what I never said (or implied). He said he is “chafing” at that level of “checking in.” Whatever. I am filing this under *He was pissed; I was calling him on something; he will kick and scream at the moment I say it but then quietly do what I ask.
2. He said he was aware he wasn’t meeting my needs, and reiterated he was interested in talking about the 5LL, but that he hadn’t felt “safe” bringing up R convs because of the “way we interact.” I had said I was tired of being the one to bring up the R convs all the time – that it made me feel like a nag, and asked why if he was so interested he had never brought it up, when there were plenty of opps.
Here we learned something very interesting about each other – I was waiting for him to bring it up, and while we were in VT he kept asking me to watch a movie after dinner, and I was thinking “NO, I want to talk, and so does he, so why is now not a good time and why does he want to avoid talk by watching a movie,” and he was thinking “If we watch a movie and have a good safe QT interaction I will feel safe bringing up the R conv.”
3. At one point very late, I was crying pretty hard, and said, “It would make me feel a lot better if you touched me.” Silence. Not a move. I waited. Still no move. I said, “Is that a No?” He said, “It’s not a No, just I am feeling very detached from you and don’t feel like touching you. Just like I would love it if you said, ‘I’m sorry I am stressing you out with this conversation, and that I am keeping you awake on a night I know is important that you get some sleep. So we can pick this up another time.’ But I know you probably don’t want to do that, either.” I said, “I am perfectly OK with picking this up another time.”
After a few more minutes of back and forth, we lay silently in bed, like it was the end of the conv and we were going to sleep. I started crying again, but I kept very quiet, though I know he could feel my shaking. He came over and put his arms around me. Then, suddenly he very aggressively initiated sex in a way he never has before. It was kind of weird, but I went along without letting on my surprise. It ended up being very intimate (though aggressive throughout), and we went to sleep in each other’s arms.
I can’t say this intimacy carried over into the next day… we were still on weirdish terms the next morning, and I drove him to the airport in almost complete silence.
4. He used words like, he is “chafing,” I was “annoying,” I didn’t “respect” that he needed his time, finding a “safe space,” I was directing my “emotional energy” at him, he had to find his “autonomy,” “meeting each other’s needs” …
In all, from my perspective, it was a reasonable conversation that was edgy and a little defensive on both sides. From his, it was combative and poor interaction. It wasn’t my most stellar DBing effort. I definitely got snippy, though he took the cake with some comments, which were really sharp and defensive.
So, we’re not on the best terms right now. BUT, he called from the airplane seat to tell me he got safely on the plane, cracked a joke about having to “strip to your underwear” these days to get through security, and I wished him a good trip. THEN, he called to tell me he’d arrived after he had dinner with his friends. I was at H2H’s and I sounded happy to hear from him, acted as if everything was peachy, and got off the phone fairly quickly, telling him we were in the middle of dinner (he knew about sleepover plans).
Today (day of paper) I called to find out how he was feeling, he was stressed, fairly abrupt, and got off quickly. So I’m leaving him alone from here on out. He’ll call after the talk or tomorrow to tell me how it went.
I think it is our plan to have a conversation in short order about (1) how to avoid these types of combative/defensive conversations in the future, and (b) get into the open some of the issues we are feeling resentful about, I toward him and he toward me.
For the rest of this week and w-e, however, I plan to be scarce, so busy will I be with self-affirming behaviors and getting a life.
This morning she got me to work earlier than I have been in months (which is pathetic, because I arrived after 9!).
