Maybe I’m not expressing myself properly. Happiness (IMO) is not something that others can control/dictate in you. I can not make you happy without major contribution from you, you have to decide to be happy. I may help you out by giving you a new car, or paying you a million dollars (yeah right) but if your responses to the events in your life push you toward being unhappy then after a short spike of happiness you’ll be unhappy. All the sudden your tax bill went way up or everyone’s problem become yours etc.
On the other hand I can not make a happy person unhappy. You can come steal everything I own and while I’ll be unhappy on the short term, a week later I’ll be back happy, positive and talking about what I learned from the event and how I’ll have better stuff. I’ve had people close to me taken from me in horrific ways. I could spend life unhappy and many would not chastise me. I instead used their memory and life as inspiration to improve myself and add back to the world. I’m not happy because their gone, rather I’m happy despite their absence and they would be proud of me. The people who created the events taking them did not make me unhappy that was my short term response to those events.
I don’t see how being happy is ever 100% on someone else. Many times how we react to an event (i.e. your spouse’s rejection) has as much to do with the response as the event itself. We all have choices and the ability to alter our responses to our spouse’s actions. This helps to decide/change the outcome.
Now with a spouse the events and responses are ideally positive and have some affirming value for each member. Your not fused rather more balanced, like how I picture the NOPS relations now. Our situation is that our spouses (or sometime us) created events and our responses are inverse to each other. They have the power (or we give it to them through our responses) to control the results in our equation. This may mean we do or do not get sex but it doesn’t control whether we are happy or not.
The problem I’m trying to manage myself is I’ve let the fact that I’m not having sex control my happiness. If my spouse was in an accident and not able to ever have LM again would I simply be destined to unhappiness? Would I leave? My attitude would change suddenly, sex would not be the thing that makes me happy. Having her whole again would be. So it’s not the lack of sex making me unhappy rather something else…
I can relate to empty and sad. But face it, whatever happens in life I guarantee you we will have issues, challenges, problems. If we dictate our happiness around what we don’t have then we’ll never be happy. It’s funny writing this really makes me think about my response to my spousal “events”…no wonder I got the results I have…
