 At a crossroads - jan
My husband of 18 years and I have been going thru a
difficult time (approx.4 years). Actually it's never been
a close relationship but we share 2 children and both
have a goal of a close knit family life. However, because
his parents divorced when he was 6, it is my feeling that
he has never been able to totally commit to our
relationship emotionally. He has never cheated on me and
I doubt he would, and he has always been there for the
kids and I financially. In the beginning, I expected
total emotional comittment and gave it, only to be
shunned. The very things that were important to me I
realized, not long after our wedding, were not importatn
to him. I accepted this as the way he was because of
other positive attributes but after this many years there
is so much more that I need emotionally.
So I began in counseling several years ago without his
blessing. He would not go until recently when he realized
things were bad. I told him 2 months ago that if he
didn't start talking to me, sharing with me on a deeper
level that our marriage was in trouble. This after 4
years of him knowing I have a problem with the marriage!
So, I decided that until my needs were met emotionally,
that I would not meet his physical needs....as long as we
have sex he thinks everything is fine. So it's been 2
months, no physical closeness and he has not said a word.
he has made an effort to be physical and I have not
responded, and he has not even mentionned it. What do I
do now?! His attitude since I began counseling is
defeatist....sit back and wait to see what she does.
 From: Bernd
One of my favorite quotes is “expectations are
premeditated resentments”. If I expect Lynda to do
what I want - in any area of our relationship - I set
myself up for eventual resentment, because inside a part
of her rebels at having me attach strings to our
relationship. Love is acceptance, and when I don’t
accept one part of her, the rest of her goes scurrying
for cover - a healthier way of coping than changing to be
more of the type of person I want, by the way.:)
Your attempts to get your husband to open up more
seems to have resulted in him digging in his heels even
more. This, in my experience, is a NATURAL reaction. We
don’t change until we have enough faith inside that
we’re going to gain more with such change than
we’ll lose. Your husband’s background seems to
have made withdrawal and silence the best coping
mechanism he has when he feels his own emotional
boundaries threatened. Ironically, trying to get him to
open up more emotionally sends the unspoken message that
you don’t like his current boundaries - and when I
feel someone doesn’t respect my boundaries, my first
instinct is to do what comes naturally: replace them with
unscalable walls.
I feel safest in opening up emotionally with Lynda
when she reminds me that no matter what I say,
she’ll listen without condemnation, without
criticism, without judgment. And that my words won’t
be used against me later. It also helps tremendously when
SHE opens up, because when she doesn’t have her
walls up, it feels a lot safer to let mine down.
I suspect that it would make a big difference to your
husband if you told him that - even tho you don’t
understand the reasons - that you respect his difficulty
with deep emotional sharing, and that it’s okay, and
that accepting that part of him is part of loving him. To
be able to say that, and be comfortable saying it, will
likely mean a commitment to yourself to find other
sources to get your emotional needs met. I don’t
mean an affair. What I’ve discovered in my own case
was I was leaning on Lynda for a lot of needs that added
weight to her shoulders, and I found ways to get many of
those needs met through inner soul work, recovery work,
support groups, and friends.
We have a much deeper emotional relationship now than
we ever did, because we’re learning the true power
of acceptance - it really helps healing, and creating a
feeling of emotional safety for both of us. When I
dislike something that Lynda does or doesn’t do, I
try to look inside ME to see what the situation is trying
to tell me about unhealed parts of me. Not accepting any
part of her is equivalent to not loving that part of her,
and I’m selfish - I want to be able to love MORE,
not less.
It may seem as if I’m making excuses for him, and
pointing the finger at you. That isn’t my aim. If
you want him to change - and have that change be real and
long-lasting - the only thing I know that produces such
change in others is genuine love. That love - by the very
definition of love - has to include respect and
acceptance of a partner’s imperfections, as well as
strengths. It has to acknowledge that struggles which
affect a relationship have their roots in unhealed
childhood wounds, and that healing of those wounds has to
take place for healthy change to happen. If we want our
partner to take the leap of faith needed to heal a deep
wound, any kind of pressure is counterproductive (God
knows I tried a coaxing Lynda into therapy a bunch of
different ways, all without success). The only real thing
we can give them as a catalyst is our own healing - our
example. The really nice thing is that when we do give
them that example - heal something deep inside ourselves
- the relationship gets transformed doubly (by our
healing AND theirs).
As human beings, when we see someone else get
something magical and wonderful, it’s very natural
for us to want the same for ourselves. That’s the
power of example.
If you want him to share more deeply with you, share
deeply with him - without expecting anything in return.
Do it for the good feelings YOU get from doing so. Give
him the freedom to dip his toes in those emotional waters
when he’s ready, when his desire to get the same
good feelings is matched by enough faith that it will be
safe wading into those waters with you. Let him take
whatever time he needs to feel safe in those waters, and
learn to swim in them. Keep reminding him that you accept
him without condition, without needing him to be who YOU
want him to be. That freedom, and that support will help
him find his own way to your soul, and as he gets closer
to finding that path, my gut feeling is you’ll
discover that the closeness you actually get far
transcends what you originally wanted.
Those are my guesses anyway. Hope something I said
helped in some small way.
From: jan
Thanks Bernd....your sharing is so insightful. What
you have written is ten times better information and
better said that any counselor I've been to. I will try
what you have suggested but I do want you to know that I
have done this before, especially during the first 10
years of our marriage. However, the difference now is
that he knows I've not been happy where before he didn't.
I've never really been in love with him because of this
lack of emotional commitment on his part so your advice
is truly appreciated. Thank you :)
From: Bernd
My belief is if we base our love on the depth of a
partner's emotional commitment, it makes "love"
conditional - and in my opinion, conditional love isn't
genuine love. You know it's genuine love when you can be
okay with WHATEVER his level of emotional commitment is.
If it isn't enough, the loving thing to do is to find
other healthy sources to fill your needs - and those
sources exist, although to find them means a commitment
to searching for them.
Love is acceptance, and a simple test of whether
something is truly loving or not is "do we accept
another person's right and need to follow their OWN path,
not the one we want them on?" The miracles occur the
more we give other people such respect, because there's a
stronger force than us inside of them, which is always
trying to draw them towards more wholeness and love. When
we stop our tug of war with this force, we get our wishes
- in fact, we get much MORE than our wishes.
Jusr a few thoughts.
From: jan
Bernd....I guess I don't know what it is I feel like I
don't have, if not love. I want to be able to share on an
emotional level with someone of the opposite sex! I can't
have my needs met by a woman in that area. Girlfriends
are great but not to share with and be physical with.
This is the area for me that is not met because he
doesn't let me get close.
From: Bernd
Jan, I hear you. I don't see anything unhealthy or
wrong about WANTING the level of emotional closeness you
want. It's a natural human need, in my opinion. What
keeps you in the trap is wanting a level from him that he
is not ready yet to give. Lynda and I have struggled with
the same issue during a lot of our 19 year marriage.
What I found by going thru therapy, reading a lot of
self-help books, and going to my support groups, was that
there was an emptiness inside of me buried underneath my
need for emotional closeness. And there was a lot of old
pain and fear inside that emptiness. That's what I had to
work on healing, before I was able to give Lynda the
freedom to get closer to me emotionally, without feeling
as if she was being "sucked into" that
emptiness inside of me. I don't know if that makes much
sense, but in a nutshell, my emptiness made it impossible
for me to respect HER emotional boundaries. It only
became safe for her to explore real intimacy with me when
she felt safe doing so - and part of that was not having
to fear that I would react in anger or hurt whenever she
needed to take a few steps - or a lot of steps - backward
from me.
That emptiness has been slowly dissolving away because
of my recovery work, and I'm able to accept more of
Lynda's need for closeness or distance whenever she needs
either. That has made it a lot easier for her to feel
safe being close to me. My recovery work - besides what I
mentioned above - has involved grieving more fully those
things I lost out as a child, and rediscovering a magic
that I believe exists in all of us.
If you want to get the closeness you're lookjng for in
this relationship, I'm not going to blow smoke in your
eyes and tell you it's going to be easy. It isn't. But it
is possible, and more than that, I believe it is very
achievable. I believe there ARE solutions out there that
will bring you closer to what you want most inside.
|
