H read my letter before he came home from work last night. As it was such a warm evening, we grilled out for dinner. H and I sat on our deck and had a discussion.
I don't know if I will ever stop being astounded by how he can surprise me. I guess I set the tone for the conversation from the letter, because I was not accusatory or mean. In any event, he was not angry, and we actually had a really great discussion.
He told me that yes he has noticed that our relationship had taken a back slide, but his way of dealing with it was to ignore it and hoped it would 'fix' itself. He said he realized that this was not a very action-oriented way of doing things.
We talked a good deal about my needs, and HP, you were right in that he was thinking that he had to meet certain specifications of mine in order for his needs to be met. I used your line verbatim: "Honey, if you were castrated tomorrow and never able to have sex again, I'd still need these things from you." That revelation rather shocked him.
He then told me he tried to meet my needs and I asked him how he thought he was doing so. Not to critique his efforts, but so that I know his game plan and can be aware of his efforts.
He brought up a specific instance of when we were in the car and he tried to hold my hand. He felt resistance from me. So I said to him: "Okay, here is my point. You are attempting to communicate to me in a way that is meaningful to you, not me. I mean, I like holding your hand, but I get different meaning from it than you do." He asked me how then is he supposed to communicate with me?
ME: "Honey, do you hold hands with your employees? Do you communicate with them through physical touch?
HIM: "No"
ME: "Yet you are able, in a very capable way, of determining not only what you need to communiate, but how to adjust that communication based upon the employee with whom you are dealing. Right?"
HIM: "Yeah, I see your point."
ME: "I'm not asking you to adopt or even accept my needs as your own. You don't have to understand them, nor even consider them rational. But I would like it if you honored them, just as I honor your need for physical affection and sex."
HIM: "But I just don't know how."
ME: "Well, see, that is another frustration of mine. If you don't know how to do something at work, you get a book and look it up. You go to a workshop. You ask someone who does know how to do it."
HIM: "Huh. (head nod) "But there are many times I think I am doing what you need or want and it doesn't seem to work."
ME: "Well. At work, if you do something and get absolutely no response from your employees, you will go to them and say, "I did a,b,c. I'm not getting from you what I expected. Did you not understand? Do I need to further clarify myself? Or is there something else I need to be aware of?" So... if you do something and don't get the response you want from me, instead of getting mad, clarify it. If I'm just being a chump, I'm going to have to own it. (I gave him several other examples of typical interactions between us to underscore my point). He nodded his head and said, 'yeah, yeah, I see your point.'
In the letter I had also said "I am hereby resigning my position as relationship rescuer and intimate secretary to Mr. Corri." Meaning that, I was no longer willing to be the only one to rush in and intiate a conversation if our relationship started backsliding, especially when he is noticing the same thing. I told him it scares me and hurts me when he just goes 'passive' on me.
I told him I was done trying to guess his wants, predict his moods, intuit his wishes... and if he could learn and practice expressing his needs in a manner that might even meet MY needs... he was killing two birds with one stone. (My H loves efficiency).
We talked for a really long time, about his job, about the guilt he was feeling being away from the family so much, him wondering if he was going to apply for his job on a permanent basis (it is an interim position right now, but he's being 'pressured' to apply for it)...
The job thing is still an unresolved issue, and we are going to have to really examine it and what it would mean to us long-term if a) he applied and b) if he got it.
At any rate, I was pleasantly stunned by the entire conversation. Then he told me about an email he got from a woman who works for him, and she went on and on about an issue at work. He wrote back to her and said, 'you just summed up the problem succinctly. But I know what the problem is. What I need from you is a solution. Please get back to me when you think you might have one.' He looked at me and said, 'I learned that from you, btw.'
Wow. He gets it. He really gets it. Damn, now I'm crying...
