Thanks, Ellie, SD, midiP, and Slowly, for posting.

And thanks for resurrecting me, Slowly . I always wait to update because it’s always the direction du jour (up? no down!), and I wait for a period of calm (and it never comes). But, I am optimistic for the first time in weeks, and last night’s T brought me around. And so I bring you this extra-long missive from TurningTheCornerLand.

S and I have had 5 T sessions so far, and it seemed like things were going downhill faster than ever. Petty arguing, sniping, defensiveness, misunderstandings… and contention over EVERYthing, important and not. I was ready to ask if we might consider changing Ts, because whereas we were learning valuable tools and getting insights from our sessions, the aftermath was always horrid.

Slowly, however, I have begun to notice some difference in the way we approach hot-button issues (scheduling, for example, or finances, or work on the house). Somehow, we’ve become a little less defensive, a little less ready to point the finger, and a few weeks ago we talked about how all of that defensiveness came from the fact that we were both cut from the same cloth, and we point the finger to protect ourselves from getting nailed on the very same thing. (Well, duh. We’re a little slow.) In all our differences of approach and background and everything else, we actually are so similar it’s frightening to the other, and so the defenses are at the ready to keep from having to be accountable for our own shortcomings (procrastination due to perfectionism being one of our biggest bugaboos).

Last night’s T was weird, emotional, and surprisingly effective. I had met H2H for lunch earlier in the day, and I had lamented to her that I was having trouble focusing on what the deeper issues were for all the tangents we were getting off on. We’d/I’d go in with what we/I wanted to talk about, we’d quickly get off the subject, and I’d get lost and lose focus on the original idea. So H2H and I outlined some issues that I could bring up as “bigger-picture” issues.

Well, I went into T armed with focus, and I decided to start by saying the above – that I had had trouble focusing, that we got on tangents, etc., and we quickly got off on a tangent about my having felt very controlled last week by S. and that it had made me feel like I’d never get to do anything, ever – that I’d totally lost my independence… and what it reminded me of in my childhood (being controlled by my parents), and it turned into an experimental role play in which I played my father. (This is a good time to remind you that our T is an Imago T – a la Harville Hendrix.) I “got into” the role while S and the T talked about him. I took it on with gusto, burying my head in the Times while snorting occasionally and peering up at them, sighing loudly at times, and butting in occasionally to make snide, drily humorous comments.

Then the T asked me some questions, and I answered them as my father (mind you, he wouldn’t have agreed to answer ANY questions, but I answered them, because otherwise she would have had no information). Then, S. took on the role of the As-If Dad, and I (as me) talked to him while he mirrored me. Believe me, this was weird and I was skeptical of looking at S. while I talked to my father, but I went with it, with coaching from the T. And at the end, I was stunned at how much had come out about how I felt as a kid, how I chose to be lazy and rely on my smarts rather than apply myself and try to live up to my father’s expectations, how I learned to rely on myself and become fiercely independent and how today it makes me unapproachable and intimidating in social situations – all manner of other things that are too numerous to mention here.

I don’t know how much I’ve said here about my family, but we are very close, love each other, and get along beautifully. We have loads of fun together, laugh a lot, and joke around quoting movies all the time. It’s the serious stuff that’s full of land mines, and so I get into trouble with my father because we hide behind our common interests (literature and high culture), and we have a lot to talk about - but when the conversation gets serious or emotional he shuts off and I cry uncontrollably. So we avoid emotional content, for the most part. I have no doubt that my father did the very best he could with the tools he had. I see his same brand of emotional intimacy in his brothers, in his brothers’ children, and in me. I also see that he loves me, he is very, very proud of me, and respects me (my independence and intelligence) very much. He just can’t talk to me.

Anyway, we had a little post-mortem in T when S. said he was amazed at how similar our Rs were with our fathers, and how he could see so many similarities in the way we deal with it today. (The circumstances are different - his father died 6 years ago, taking a very distant, strained, and bitter R with his children to his grave – but the feelings are very similar.) Afterward, as we were leaving, he kept hugging me and thanking me for sharing so much. On the way home, he said he hadn’t felt such an urge to know me better in a long time, and that he really wanted to explore this with me. He said that after so much time and work trying to figure me out and understand me, and after his own unsuccessful struggle to be understood by me, he felt he could go back to seeing me as a person and not as someone to fight against (his words) – someone who could take away his soul (my words).

I must admit, my warning bells were going off, because revealing these things to someone who doesn’t seem quite ready to admit his own large part in all of this can make it easier for him to say “Well, you’re acting this way because your father treated you that way…” but I am optimistic. Our T asked S. if he was willing to do everything in his power to help me heal these wounds, and he said Yes. And then he started talking about the similarities in his R with his parents, and the T gently interrupted and said “Let’s stay with Jennifer this time. You’ll have your turn. This is a good place to stop today.”

So, there’s where we are. We had a nice evening at home afterward, punctuated by a big bowl of ice cream, and this morning I woke up to a beautiful sunny garden before me, a sweet boy in bed next to me who was gently rubbing my poor pregnant aching back, and a twinkle in my eye.

Maybe I’ll be posting more often now.

Jennifer

P.S. By the way, we were up in Vermont last weekend planting the garden with 70 tomato plants (golden cherry, golden pear, roma, moskovich, and bellstar), 18 cucumber plants, soybeans, snap peas, bush beans, pole beans, 8 zucchini plants, radishes, and lettuce (red leaf, mesclun mix, green leaf, romaine) - all organic. If I don't die from Deadly Nightshade poisoning, maybe I'll have some tomatoes to share around the boards, you think?

shameless plug for my NEWEST thread