Dear Jennifer I don;t have much to add other than agree with SD about not talking. It is hard for us women to stop and is something I am having trouble with but maybe try to get your sustenance elsewhere and don't expect a man to be your 'best friend' in the sharing all confidences -doubts, fears department. I am finding trying to squeeze girls talk out of a bloke detrimental. maybe this really isn't the problem. just go for the qt as much as you can. thinking of you and JD. big hugs xx
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?
You have got to be the most fast paced pregnant person I've ever seen! Holy cow, how do you do this all? I'm nothing short of amazed at how much you can accomplish while dealing with the body changes and thoughts of the future.
I'm pulling for you. So keep up the efforts and that smile on full beam.
Betsey
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
The commitment to embark on the journey is the hardest part and S seems genuinely committed. As oyu recognized, you can't force him to look at himself--and your T made clear he will get there. It seems T is doing the hard work of building up S's confidence with him so that when you do get there--it will have some productiveness on top of the anticipated defensiveness.
You're near or at the top of my list of prayers. Keep on plugging and surrender yourself to the bigger picture.
Thanks for poking your head in, Betsey! I feel fantastic, and I have loads of energy - I'm back to yoga 4+ times a week, and am feeling stronger than ever. Talk to me in a few weeks, though, when temps get back up in the 90s and I am wilting like the lettuce in our garden.
Merrick, T has been hard, hard work. I hope it eventually does help S. get his confidence up to work on his own issues, but for now I'm trying simply to do the work that is asked of me - and more - and support him in any way I can. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.
Things are looking up in S&J land, friends, and I sense a shift. We are getting along, we are catching potential conflict before the 9-hour marathon Talk happens, and we are laughing and having fun together. I’m almost afraid to post about it, for fear that tomorrow things will plummet back to defensiveness and suspicion, self-protection and fear, accusations and self-righteousness. HowEVER, I will post, because I am feeling better about this R than I have in a long time.
The theater was amazing – Vanessa Redgrave and the RSC were fantastic, and S. was really excited to have been surprised with a nice date. He was strutting around proudly (because when you're pregnant, people look at you, and I must admit, I'd worn a striking outfit that showed off my figure, stunning jewelry, and had spent extra care on my hair and makeup), going way over the top helping me up and down stairs, and generally sticking to me like glue, very affectionate. He was so happy, in fact, that he dug into his pockets and took me out to dinner afterward, and not just to the old neighborhood standby, but to a nice little French place a little further down where we could “branch out and try something new.” We sat in the garden, and had a great post-theater conversation, laughed a lot, and had a lovely walk home.
Upon reaching home, things fell apart. We were gearing up to feed each other ice cream and cherries (those damned skewed cherries!! ), and lo and behold a misplaced, mistimed, and misspoken comment by me sent his defenses WAY up, then his reaction stung and my defenses shot up, and we spent about an hour getting through a failed attempt at mirroring, validating, and empathizing (MVE) before I completely lost it and cried my eyes out from frustration that I had planned this nice evening only to have it disintegrate into this. He immediately said, “Hey, we can salvage this – I had a really good time tonight, and it was very special for me to be taken out and surprised, and nothing is going to take away from that.” So we dropped it and went to bed. The next morning, we got into it some more, but were keeping much saner and he reiterated several times that nothing could interfere for him with the wonderful evening we’d had. He was being affectionate and sweet, and hugging me a lot.
Well, I won’t go into it further, because it’s water under the bridge, but the upshot was that my comment came from a deep-seated fear of moving into a tiny space together with a baby on the way (and my perception of his oblivion as to what that means), and his defensiveness arose from my cutting judgment of the importance of his things. A long powwow with H2H over it helped me to see the underlying issues and why we were both so reactionary over a seemingly innocuous comment that was meant to be a joke (albeit a bad, strained, and ultimately hurtful one).
So the good news is, I am seeing him much better as a person, and not as someone to struggle with and who is against me. It is helping immensely, and he is stepping up to the plate by taking great pains to take care of me – I am letting him even when I don’t need it, because I see that it makes him happy and gets us closer to what we both want – and we are speaking to each other with much more respect and goodwill, and the smiling has hit epic proportions.
I’ve done a lot of thinking on this these last few days, and though sometimes I feel he is the most controlling person on earth, and I feel squashed, I can see him as a person with his own issues and fears – someone who really is trying – and it makes me more compassionate toward him in his faults and not so inclined to point them out (Wendy, are you reading this?) I’m also realizing that we are so much more similar in our faults than I’d ever imagined, and NEWSFLASH! this is why I can see his faults so clearly – not to mention seeing that I rush to point them out so that I detract attention from my own.
So my plan for the week is to continue to work on seeing him as someone with warts like mine, and try to imagine someone pointing out my warts all the time, and act accordingly. In other words, keep on working my compassion toward someone I love and care about and am about to raise a child with. My other plan is to keep the good times rolling... more reasons to laugh, more reasons to smile, and smiling for no reason at all.
Quote: and we are speaking to each other with much more respect and goodwill, and the smiling has hit epic proportions [SNIP]
So my plan for the week is to continue to work on seeing him as someone with warts like mine, and try to imagine someone pointing out my warts all the time, and act accordingly. In other words, keep on working my compassion toward someone I love and care about and am about to raise a child with. My other plan is to keep the good times rolling... more reasons to laugh, more reasons to smile, and smiling for no reason at all.
Excellent! There'll be plenty of reasons for little stresses with the upcoming move, so keeping laughter, smiles and good times first and foremost in your mind through all the daily chores will only benefit you both!
Yes, Jennifer, I'm here. As always, I'm fascinated by your posts and learn a lot from them. Congratulations on not pointing out SO's faults! I imagine that it helps to realize that you two are not so different.
Wendy
Me: 51 H: 52 T: 23 yrs M: 19 yrs S18, D16, S14 (special needs) PA: 2003/2004 Piecing: 2004 on Suspect H had EA: 8/2012-12/2012
Hi Jennifer, your descriptions and insight are heartening. I think we have cloned men in our lives, or is the relationship the same? Anyway, so much rang true to me too in your description of lowering the energy/power plays and your ability to call a truce and see your own habits is really soemthing. It is great to see!
Slowly
), and lo and behold a misplaced, mistimed, and misspoken comment by me sent his defenses WAY up, then his reaction stung and my defenses shot up, and we spent about an hour getting through a failed attempt at mirroring, validating, and empathizing (MVE) before I completely lost it and cried my eyes out from frustration that I had planned this nice evening only to have it disintegrate into this. He immediately said, “Hey, we can salvage this – I had a really good time tonight, and it was very special for me to be taken out and surprised, and nothing is going to take away from that.” So we dropped it and went to bed. The next morning, we got into it some more, but were keeping much saner and he reiterated several times that nothing could interfere for him with the wonderful evening we’d had. He was being affectionate and sweet, and hugging me a lot.