Hi, Been doing bits of posting on others threads and not much on my own. My own sitch is pretty quiet at the moment and fairly positive. Since I last posted here we have been maintaining a comfort zone in our interactions with each other and also ML at least once a week.
OK so why am I here? Because although this is OK it is not great, there is not much communication between us, H spends most evenings when he is at home just playing computer games and he rarely eats with us. In the past when we have been in the comfort zone I have just let things lie as it is better than the war zone. But I am feeling now that it is time I stepped things up a little and tried to move us out of the comfort zone into something more connected. How can I do this without seeming needy? "hey H come and hang out with me instead of playing dumb computer games all night". Also the more he just hangs out in his cave like this the more I feel the need for intimacy withering in me. He never initiates but I do need more to go on if I am going to initiate, either I do it because the R is going bad and I feel I need to fix things quick, or better I do it because I feel connected.
Family visits over the Easter weekend served to highlight our differences and make me wonder as I sometimes do what on earth possessed me to marry H in the first place. Really just comparing our two families, seeing what different tribes we come from - LOL. I would characterise his family as stiff and boring, focused on duty and over-enmeshed. He would see them as organised, sincere, hard-working and caring. He would probably characterise my family as brash, inconsiderate, laissez-faire and self-involved. I see them as confident, funny, flexible and self-reliant.
His need to make me more like one of his own makes me feel like I'm in prison. At the moment it is a fairly cushy jail with only two to a cell, decent meals and a TV. At times it can feel like a dank dungeon with an over-flowing piss-pot in the corner and a crazed loon for a cell-mate.
No doubt he feels my need to make him more like one of mine. Any insights on how this might make him feel? Any ideas from the veterans on how to raise our game and build a stronger EC starting from the good position we are now in. I've got a feeling it might involve making things painful again for a while and this is why I have not done what's needed in the past, but I feel stronger in my own mind and ready for the challenge.
It's 200 miles to Chicago, we've got a half a tank of gas, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it! - VROOOM! (Blues Brothers)
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
