So we talked again last night.

My idea.

I started by reading what I wrote the day after counselling about my new insights into how my communication insights have taught me something important about myself: I feel frustrated with my communication difficulties. When my husband pushes for a conversation, I often respond grumpily – not because of him, but because I am already overwhelmed by the effort it takes to engage.

I took care to replace the phrase “my husband” with his name, although despite that I could hear that my reading wasn’t the emotional declamation he wants. It is what it is.

In truth, I’m usually the one who asks to talk, because he’s afraid of that if he initiates that I’ll respond irritably. He’s told me before that initiating conversations was always something he had to do because I would avoid them. I’m trying to be different.

He appreciated both the new insights into myself and the ownership that is was taking about my behaviour.

I think that he’s beginning to understand the gulf between my awareness and what I feel, and how difficult it can be for me to connect to those feelings sometimes.

He asked me “have you ever heard the phrase ‘knowledge is power’?”. Of course I have, and I said so and that I understood his meaning when he said that.

I then quoted something I’d learnt way back in Al Anon: “Awareness is responsibility”.

I said “that strongly implies that gaining awareness and insights into the way my own brain works not only presents me with new options, but furthermore requires that I actively seek to change my behaviour where it is hurtful and when I can.”

The problem I am only aware of my feelings after a period of introspection and thought. I never seem to be able to get to them “in the moment” – the immediacy that he cherishes and requires is so very difficult for me.

I’m afraid that despite gaining insights and being willing to try, that I will never capable to fulfilling his needs. I said as much to him.

He believes that it’s my responsibility to tell him if what he needs is impossible. I’m not sure that I agree: I’m stubborn and do not like to admit failure of any kind.

Stubborness is one of my traits. It’s connected to “rigid thinking”, although that is too do with inertia to adapting thinking to different situations. I think that my stubborness is actually a defence mechanism because I cannot process emotionality intense things as quickly as my husband can. Work stuff is fine: I can think as good as anybody else on the areas that I like and know a lot about.

Maybe, I really do have to feel more confident in saying “I don’t know yet” or “I need to think about this”, rather than digging my heels in. Writing my thoughts down really helps me a lot.

I’d mentioned that one of the reasons we’d stopped having nighttime sex was my inability to switch off from the need to get to sleep due to needing to get up for work in the morning.

This moved the conversation into my controlling when we talk about sex. Ok, he got me good there: I have clearly said recently that I didn’t think that we were at that place yet.

Which led him to ask the question: “Do I still think of him on that way?”

That’s going to take some thinking about…