IMO, I think the difference you describe between your childhood and your marriage is more common than not for marriages in trouble. Think about it… as a kid, you did as many kids do, locked in a power struggle with a parent, often out of anger at one or both parents because the child’s needs were not being met. Rather than withdraw, you fought. As I kid, I withdrew.
Now as an adult, your needs are still not being met, but the needs are different. Intimacy and sexuality force you to expose vulnerabilities and the tender side of yourself. It makes sense to me that you would cry after exposing this part of yourself. It makes sense to me that my wife does not cry (as high as your walls are, I think my wife’s are even higher).
Both you and I have felt like we were walking on eggshells at one time. In hindsight, I can see that for me to do something like that says a lot about how much I wanted to make the marriage work, how much I wanted to avoid unnecessary fights to preserve some level of intimacy. I think the amount a person walks on eggshells relates to the level of “desperation” within that person to get the intimacy s/he desires. This desire holds us hostage to ourselves. No wonder we cry.
The offsetting balance is that our spouse does his/her own form of distancing, whatever that may be, including anger and yelling. I can see that my walking on eggshells was detestable to my W, even though it seemed as if that is what she wanted. She tried to intimidate by being tough, but what she really wanted was for me to be tough.
I am starting to see many times when she made a statement that I think was really a projection of what she wanted from me. For instance, if she complains that I am controlling her, I am now seeing in her words that she DOES want me to control things, maybe not her per se, but the uncertainty that frightens her. So the ideas of Blackfoot and Dieda are slowly starting to sink in.
I am turning tossing around an idea with regard to your Grand Unification Theory of value/validation about trying to find the right “mix” of value/validation. Maybe all we have to do is listen to the “projections” made by our spouse, that they are actually telling us exactly what the right mix should be. The task is in hearing them right and decoding their words. Of course it would help if they had enough of a clue to just tell us straight out.
