It’s been a long weekend in every sense. My (ex) husband left hospital on Friday after spending five nights recovering from a nasty bout of emphysema. It was horrible to see him struggling so much.

Friday was Good Friday, so I took fish and chips to his flat.

Saturday I took him out for a coffee – he can’t walk very far at the moment, so I thought he would like to be somewhere other than his flat or a hospital.

I was delighted when he suggested that we resume the pub quiz in town! I’ll remind him about it in the week – you have to book in advance, so it requires planning and thinking ahead.

I also wondered how he would feel about my friends joining in. That’s a conversation for another day though – he’s only just getting his head around me making friends in what is a hookup app!

Easter Sunday I went for my “run”, called my dad, took down the fence sections damaged during the recent storms, and prepared dinner – my ex is coming over.

Dinner will be slow cooked lamb, roast veg, and sprouts, served in a red wine and blackberry jam sauce. Dessert will be bread and butter pudding made with croissants!

The difficulties started when I fetched my ex for dinner. He looked either anxious or like his emphysema was still giving him a lot of trouble. After I kicked off the cooking, I found out.

Hurt.

He’d been to my blog (I have never made a secret about it) and read the entries Subspace and Churros and 0.9 Seconds.

“Imagine having to find out what you were doing by reading it?” he said.

I had started the dinner and alarms kept going off, I had to break from the conversation to put things in the oven, take things out, or turn things up or down. That was a blessing because it gave me plenty of legitimate time to take a break from this difficult conversation, get my head into some kind of order, and compose a reply to whatever he had last said.

While I was in the kitchen, my head kept saying “if into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find there.” Thanks Yoda. That’s really helpful.

“You didn’t have to read it,” I replied. A bit of a logical dodge, but I felt angry. Not that he’d crossed any boundary because I told him the blog was there and have never said “do not go there”. I felt angry because he knew what he would probably find there, went anyway, and then took it out on me.

He’s also been to Scruff where he’d been upset to find out what I was “into”. That irked me a little because I had avoided using Grindr because that was the platform he was using. But again, we’d not laid out any boundaries as to what was acceptable.

He did apologise for both of those things and deleted the Scruff app from his phone. He acknowledged that he didn’t “have” to go there. He thought that it was a sort of self-harm in visiting these sites trying to find answers.

And he’d found a few. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing – time will tell.

I realised that I had thought that my ex was well-boundaried because he talked about what was acceptable behaviour towards him, but he actually isn’t very good at consistently maintaining his own boundaries – nor at respecting mine.

As such conversations do, the direction changed after a toilet visit.

He told me that he still loved me just as he always did. Ooph.

I still love him, but I have lost the ability to emote that with him. My guards are always up – I cannot speak freely with him, and neither can I use the language of touch with him because that crosses an important boundary at the moment. I really want to build up a stock of relaxed times with him so that I can finally relax and let my guard down. He struggles to see how I could possibly have filtered what I said to him because I have said some extraordinarily nasty things.

Using shame to try to stop somebody drinking – I might as well have been spiking his coffee for all the good it did. Shame is a toll that I am ashamed to say that I have used.

I wasn’t supportive of his desire to shave his chest or lose weight. I had no right to express any opinion on his body. I absolutely own that this was deflection from my own body insecurities.

I’d like to say that these things were spoken in heated moments. Many were. Some were not. None were kind.

Finally, dinner was ready. We sat to the table and chomped away. Fortunately, the conversation paused while we ate. He seemed to enjoy the food.

Afterwards, things resumed, but on a different thread.

He understood from my writings what it was he was unable to give me – touch. He knows his own limitations there. He remembered some of the times I had tried to hold him and he’d shrunk from my embrace. The ways I would stroke him or give him a squeeze as I passed him in the kitchen or in the hall. Only now does he begin to suspect just how much I craved him to do the same.

I added that I had wanted – needed – security. He understood that, too.

This was a painful conversation for him. I was a coward for never being able to express these feelings to him directly – when they would have counted for more – when they might have mattered and made a difference.

He has always said that he wasn’t jealous of my other relationships. He said that he only wanted for himself the intimacy that I shared with them.

To that I replied “I never shared anything with them that I didn’t share with you”. On reflection, that’s a lie – the clue is in the never – always and never are strong indicators of exaggeration. Still, the essence is true: he got way more than I ever gave to anybody else.

I said that I felt that I came from a place of emotional abundance, whereas he came from a place of emotional scarcity. I explained that he thought that if I was emotionally intimate with somebody else, then there was less available for him.

The truth is with any kind of emotion, the more you share, the more there is to go around. Its true of anger and hate, as well as love and affection. I think that this is why I hate the shadow of jealousy: it suffocates love and intimacy.

I don’t know what he made of that, but he did say that perhaps he was jealous that I could make friends. That breaks my heart because he is a kind soul, who wants to help people – and desperately wants to be loved and helped himself – but does not know how.

I was surprised to learn, or maybe I heard it for the first time with open ears, that he feels things but isn’t always able to label what it is he is feeling beyond knowing that it is painful. That was an unexpected moment when I recognised that both of us had real difficulties identifying emotions. I said as much, but I think that he was too emotional to hear it.

On and off, we’d (mostly he) had talked for nearly three hours, with various toilet and fag breaks, plus a more sizable chunk for dinner. I was frazzled, but still with it. I knew that my brain was beginning to shut down on me.

I suggested that we find a film and have our pudding.

I so wanted to hug him and snuggle on the sofa. I am afraid to because I don’t want to further confuse things.

Cuddling is one of the most intimate things you can physically do with another human. But I think that would hurt him too much.

He wants intimacy.

I want intimacy.

Right now that is what is dangerous for both of us.