Analysing my feelings

Using the feelings wheel that my counsellor left me is actually useful. Today I need to see my husband. He is planning to have the dog adopted because he doesn’t want to look after her and I cannot have her in the flat. I am going to suggest that my husband and I swap places: that I live in the house, while he moves into the flat. The wheel has helped me name some of what I’m feeling about this situation:

• Anger>Threatened>Insecure: I’ve worked out that some part of me is feeling insecure. I think this is because my tenancy at the flat is threatened by my husband’s actions. My husband feels insecure because he thinks that I would allow him to be thrown into the streets. I will never permit that to happen.
• Anger>Hateful>Resentful: I’m not keen on the “hateful” element of this emotion’s breadcrumbs, however I do feel Resentful.  I feel manipulated.
• Fear>Anxious>Worried: I’m worried that, if we do swap places, that my husband will have a meltdown in the flat and that will be completely unable to care for him because there is only one set of keys. Actually, I’m also worried that he’ll get himself locked out because he’s dyspraxic and has a tendancy to forget things. I’m also worried that he’ll smoke and damage the furniture or carpet and we won’t get back our £950 deposit.
• Fear>Rejected>Inadequate: I always feel inadequate around my husband, especially in the arena of expressing emotions. He can express himself clearly, and whilst not especially quickly, it is continuous torrential of talk. I cannot think as fast as he talks. I feel inadequate because my emotional responses, when I articulate them, are often not what he’s expecting, not what he considers “kind” or “loving”. I’ve learnt that they are part of ASD, and that sometimes there are other emotions in there, I just haven’t got in touch with them. Sometimes the strange reaction is the only response I have. I know that my husband feels inadequate (he’s told me) because of the things that I’ve told him about my sexual fantasies.
• Disgust>Avoidance>Aversion: I do not want to go back to the house. I do not want to see my husband.
• Sad>Lonely>Isolated: apart from my counsellor, whom I see once a week, there isn’t anybody I can really talk these things through with. I think that my husband probably feels the same and for the same reasons.
• Sad>Despair>Powerless: I feel that I’m being manipulated at the moment.
• Sad>Abandoned>Victimised: my husband wants honesty. I give him honesty. He throws a tantrum and threatens to get rid of the dog. I don’t feel that he’s playing fair.

That’s quite a list! I don’t think I could have worked out how I was feeling without that structure.

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Rising anxiety

I can feel myself putting off going to the house. I have a bad feeling about what I will find. I’m afraid that what I said to him last week might have triggered him. It’s exhausting constantly being in fear that something I say might trigger him – it is also scary. I fear for him. I also fear for me a little, but I can always come back to the flat if things aren’t good there. As he says, I have a bolt hole.

If he’s not well, then I’m back to making multiple visits to the house to look after the dog and make sure that he’s not in any danger.

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The cycle repeats

And he’s in a bad way again.

So I’ll be scuttling backwards and forwards to the house to look after him and the dog.

I’m tired of this.

Of being held to ransom.

I tried to explain to him that we could change places, so that I am in the house and he’s in the flat. But he’s got it fixed in his brain that the dog has to go.

I am afraid that he might be right, but we cannot discuss it while he is as he is.

I took the dog out for a walk. I phoned the doggy hotel, but they have no space for another week. I’ve not booked her because, well, I can hope that he recovers enough.

I’ve come back to the flat for a few hours calm before I must return to the house to look after the dog and give husband some food.