That really is the heart of our problems...our communication style sucks. There is a lot of nonverbal stuff going on and in the meantime resentments brew. And when the words do come out, they're expressed in an angry, critical and sometimes explosive way. By both of us.
I know I have a problem with self-assertion. I ran into an acquaintance-friend the other day, a very bright girl, and somewhere in the course of the convo she threw in something like, " IHJ, you being your most assertive is basically a joke." I'm basically cheerful and easy going... but with my H there is this angry, negative piece from all the communication failures and resultant hurts along the way.
One thing this last sexual go-around made me see is that I watch for my H's signals and work around that. It's just so automatic and nothing gets expressed. A version of this happened in the nonsexual realm this morning. H busied himself with some project and the usual morning routine was thrown off...nothing was discussed, and I filled in what needed to be done. And then I felt resentful because this is the way he controls me.
So once again, I "get" how things in the bedroom really are symbolic of the rest of the interactions ( Lil's theorem #3129).
All this connected for me and this morning I had a talk with H. I told him all it would have taken is one sentence from him: " IHJ, I am busy with abc...can you do xyz?" He said that in a healthy marriage, things don't have to be delineated so specifically( his attempt to deflect) and I said in our marriage, because of past events, they really do. And in the course of this convo, it comes out that he is resentful of doing "abc" all the time in the morning, and we decided we would do abc together...share the task...and after resolving that, the air suddenly seemed so clear between us. The EC was back. He had about 10 minutes, and in that time he put on a video of us taking our daughter home from the hospital when she was born ( 13+ yrs ago), something we meant to do on Mother's Day, and all these sentimental feelings came out. ( a note to Chrome... I looked so mom-like and nonsexy then...amazing the change in me..change is possible). A note to myself... I looked so young and innocent and happy. What happened? And a note to all..don't wait to fix your marriages...H and I have been through so much trauma together...it's so unnecessarily stressful and sad.
