I have not been posting or reading as I have been at a health retreat for the past week - the best decision I have made in a long time. I have returned feeling refreshed and ready to start making some of the changes I need to make for me.
Starting my own thread - now that is scary!
How are you going? I have been wondering if you are getting the nuturing you need in your relationship as yet I seem to recall you wondering out loud when it was your turn to feel truly loved and accepted and most of all understood - if I have that wrong I apologise it may just be the way I read your comments.
It strikes me that you have had (as poasibly we have all had to one extent or another) a troubled pathway as a child and while you have done the work on you to resolve those issues and to give your wife unconditional love I am not sure I get the feeling that you have been the recipent of this unconditional love from your wife - then again I could be way off track here!
True intimacy, as you know, is about someone really getting who you are, what your fears, strengths, weaknesses are as a person not as part of a couple but Frank the individual, Frank the child who suffered a lot of rejection and how this has contributed to making you you.
Just a thought. I say this because my Husband has a strong outward persona, but inside he was very sensitive and would take every argument/conflict with me far more personally then I ever did. I trusted he loved me and I thought he trusted I loved him (I certainly told him so enough and believed I showed him the same thing but who knows how he interpretted my actions/words). When we fought he would go to pieces inside butI really didn't get this as this was not what happened for me...I know, I know...much wiser now in hindsight. You would never tell from his outward demeanour the pain he was feeling - he would go quiet and cold, distancing himself from me and I always saw that as him not caring when in fact I think it was him caring too much. Now of course I can see the suff he bought with him from his chilhood but I didn't see it then. I hope that he is using this time to work on this but who knows...I know I am using this time to work on my stuff
Anyway just dropped in to say Hi
I read this great quote on my retreat "there are many paths to the gaining of wisdom But all begin with a broken heart"
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; (Life, the Universe, other people)
courage to change the things I can;(me, my attitudes, my behaviour, my reactions)
and wisdom to know the difference
