I've read your responses and thanks to you all for your insights. I do think you are right Fran, my views on love and relationships are VERY immature. I'm not saying that as self-loathing, it is something I guess I have always known just never really focused on how to fix it. I am a romance-junkie as several of you have said it. I guess I just filed romance away in my mind as a NEED, and never stopped to really look closely at it as a potential problem. I know it is a FOO issue, born from an abusive father and distant mother, exacerbated by a M that has very little romance and a huge disparity in what sort of M we find acceptable. So long as I could hide behind low self-esteem (romance is not in the cards for me because I don't deserve it) I was ... "ok" But getting a taste of romance/adoration, finally feeling the stirrings of infantile love that I had never had before has formed an addiction inside myself. Maybe I am misusing terms here, but I hope you see what I mean.
Although it is probably too early to really start forming a plan of action to solve this problem, my mind has been pondering. I'm thinking the ideal way would be to go through the stages of love in the way they were intended to be experienced. Trying to have a mature relationship without having the proper foundational steps might be difficult. Is it possible to skip all the intermediate steps? How possible would it be to go through those earlier steps with my W, especially given the bad decisions I have made over the years that will now weigh very heavily on our R? Is doing that even necessary? These are all questions for my C as well, but he couldn't get me in until next week.
Things are difficult at home right now. My FIL is very sick and the doctors can't figure out why. I hope I am making the right decision, but this didn't seem like the time to talk about the mistakes I have made with the W. I am having a hard time masking my self-loathing though, which I am sure is adding to the tension. We got into a very unecessary argument about my W working once the kids got into school. I did finally realize that although I am right (we have 3 kids and I don't have a high paying job, she is going to have to go to work), what I really should have done is been empathetic to her worries about not being able to find a job that makes it easy for her to be home when the kids are home. I am having trouble focusing on our compatibilities instead of our incompatibilities. I am hopeful though that the medication will kick in soon and the endless feedback loop that are my thoughts will stop or at least slow down.
Cobra,
You definitely found the right button to push. I am sorry that I haven't been listening or responding to your posts. My only excuse is that I found many of your statements to be uneccesarily vituperative and found myself responding uneccessarily aggressively to them. I ended up focusing on the logical fallacies in your arguments instead of focusing on the helpful stuff you were saying. I hope you will accept my apology, as I can clearly see that you spent some time trying to help me. If you want to talk FOO with me, I will listen. If you are tired and fed up with trying, I understand.
Chrome
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
