Things are going much better between H and I at the moment.
We had a long talk about everything. The talk managed to stay at the talk level rather than the screaming row level. Reason for this: there was another person in the room! I could call her the cardboard counsellor – LOL. (For anyone who knows about software development there is such a thing as a cardboard programmer, that is when you explain your problem to another programmer standing there and you get insight into what is wrong without them saying a word). Just in case you are wondering why we had someone else in the room at the time, it is because she is our new au pair(N), she was watching TV while we were eating dinner, as her English isn’t that good and she was concentrating on the TV we felt OK about discussing personal stuff but it did mean we kept our voices down and didn’t let ourselves lose control at all.
Certainly a cheaper way of doing it than going to a C!
Anyway, H has forgiven me for being drunk and silly, and I managed to get in a line about being “a highly sexed exhibitionist” which he smiled wryly about. And said well I am not an exhibitionist… (leaving out the not highly-sexed ;-))
We had a long talk about how my efforts to make things work had been blown off course my my mum’s illness and death. In the end I think he understood that a) I am loving and benign towards him and my intentions are always good even if I miss the mark sometimes b) I need positive feedback for doing things right (just as much as he does) c) He needs to forgive me for whatever he is still holding grudges about and start with a clean sheet. Bits of the conversation that I still feel a little uncomfortable about are: He is re-writing history a little with regard to his A. He gave me an insight into something I said to him (ages ago) which was a weird spin on things, which basically deflected any blame or need to change from him. As N was in the room I did not pick him up on it because it would have been a bit of an A-bomb.
I have been reading Stop Walking on Eggshells, very good insight into people with borderline personality (definitely strong traits of this in H), at first it made me sad and kind of undid the good work of our long talk, but as I worked through it in my mind I realised that that is just him and that I can live with it, that the book will help me do that more. One of the things that BPs do is alternate between being very needy to pushing you away, and this is exactly what H does. If I can learn not to take the pushing away part too personally and actually learn to expect it and be OK about it then I think I can manage not to push back. It is cyclical. When BPs let you get close they get scared of “engulfment” and withdraw (or push away). This has made me suspicious of the good times because I feel they are false, I feel that it will all fall apart again and he is just being nice out of self-interest and doesn’t really care about me. I now see that he does care, but he just needs to maintain this cyclical state in order to retain some sort of balance in his own mind. When he withdraws or gets nasty next time I will know to expect it and not feel like throwing in the towel thinking that everything has gone down the pan again, just that he is going through that phase and he will come back out of it.
Excellent score on the ML this week up to 3 times so far! Also plenty of communication around this. He is opening up loads more about what HE likes (taking a leaf out of GEL’s book here).
take care all
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
