It wasn’t just a frantic Friday – what with meetings at work, my husband had asked me to pick up his medication (his emphysema is particularly bad at the moment).

As a result, I had no time to unwind before this evening’s counselling and started off feeling stressed.

Today I wanted to talk about my husband’s jealousy – or at least what I was seeing as such.

From reading “Polysecure”, I’d realised that perhaps he wasn’t jealous but was expecting emotional monogamy? Emotional monogamy is where you don’t form emotional attachments to people outside the relationship. I had formed external attachments and I had shared intimate details about myself with them – I had allowed myself to vulnerable.

Richard, my counsellor, wasn’t quite so sure. He knows about my husband’s upbringing (I have had to share some details with him for context). His thought is one of perspective. I largely grew up and live in a world of emotional abundance: I feel that there is enough love to go around and nobody has to go emotionally hungry.

My husband grew up in an environment of emotional scarcity and many events in his life reinforced that belief. He therefore feels that if emotion is “spent” on somebody else, that means there is less for him.

This revealed itself in unspoken expectations about how long I could spend with other people (mum, friends). An early symptom of that expectation was cutting comments if I came back late – “it’s late; what are we going to eat?”. He even accused me of having an affair with a straight friend.

To try to manage my husband’s feelings I tried to include him in my friendships. Sometimes he’d get abusive and run me down to my friends. That didn’t go down well with them – they tolerated him because he came with me, but they slowly stopped including him in invitations.

I had even suggested that the company I worked for at the time had an event for families of employees to include them in the social aspect of work (which had always been important to me). He frequently got drunk and ruined them for me. I cannot ever be certain, but is it a coincidence that these popular family events got dropped?

The conversation moved onto the differences between how he and I showed love. For him it was gifts. For me it was physical contact.

And because physical contact is so crucial to my ability to perceive love, Funiculosus and his rope are perfect for expressing that emotion in a way that I instinctively understand.

Richard pointed out that I was effectively a carer from my mid-twenties, with no experience, no assistance, and no guidance … and all around denial that there was even a problem.

Part way through Richard noticed that I was becoming emotional. He asked me what I’d like. A blanket and a lie down. I kept talking though. I said that I wasn’t entering shutdown, but on reflection I realise that my vocabulary was reducing – I was on the way. At the end of the session he left me curled up on sofa and I did zone out…

…however, dogs have a way of making themselves known and I was forced out of my zone by being licked across the face by the hungry madame!