Feeling down

We’ve talked three days this week with various degrees of success (ie how long I’d managed to last before shutting down). Yesterday we’d had a day off (I was too tired, despite, or possibly because, I couldn’t get up and lay in bed for a couple of hours).

In some respects, this morning wasn’t any better: again I couldn’t get up. Somehow I managed it and even went for a run (a little further than last time), before calling my dad.

Rug

After showering and talking to dad, I asked the husband whether he’d like to talk. Saying yes, I unrolled the rug that I’d bought for counselling and sat on that. The husband looked a little perplexed, but didn’t mention it straight away.

I said that we needed to talk about what’s happening with us and the house, picking up in what he’s mentioned previously.  I said that I was feeling “open”, meaning receptive and able to listen or talk about anything. I said that I felt that I was waiting on him to decide what he wanted.

He started by saying that he didn’t know.

Later on, he did ask why I was on the rug, “is that your safe space?” I thought for a moment “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but in a way, yes. Although, I decided to sit on the rug because it makes me feel both relaxed and grounded. And I can fidget and move, both of which help me to avoid shutdowns.”

The impact of my words

The conversation turned from the house (and whether we stay or go) towards my behaviour over the years.

To be sure, I have behaved shockingly. I might understand myself better, but that doesn’t excuse the things I said. I have hurt him very deeply indeed.

He has regularly felt silenced by me, either through my harsh words or my retreating from his words. My words have often diminished him, stinging him to take the sting of his words.

I never could look at my part in things, and so made him carry the responsibility for the success and failures in our marriage.

Lunch break

I know enough now to stop for a break when I need to (usually). This time I knew that I needed to eat – feeling hungry is guaranteed to make me say things I don’t mean. It’s also likely to bring on headaches, stress, and shutdown.

I said that we could keep talking whilst I prepared my bread and cheese. When it was done, I sat on the rug and he continued.

He said that he felt that conversations with me were in many ways predictable, but they could also be frighteningly unpredictable. I think he was referring to the extremes of my emotions: he might get the silence of a shutdown from me, or the eruption of a meltdown.

If a shutdown is a retreat from a perceived threat, a meltdown is the exact opposite: it’s a verbal assault on that perceived danger.

Incompatible values

The conversation meandered with large pauses from him. I didn’t say much, but I wasn’t emotional. Something he says that feels like a condemnation to me is “that’s a very logical way to look at it” or “yes, if you strip the emotion from it”.

We talked about him being a one man guy and that’s one of his core values in a relationship. I paraphrased that I saw our bodies as our own to do with as we please, whereas he sees our bodies as, at least in part, owned by the other and requiring their consent to use. “Yes, if you strip the emotion from it,” he said.

This, it turns out, is a fundamental difference between us.

I said that I could accept that exclusivity was crucial to him, and accept that as a core value that has to be abided by.

He said “but now we know that’s not how you feel about sex; there’s play and there’s intimate sex, and you don’t care who uses my body as long as I ‘have fun’.”

This proved to be an immovable point for him. Perhaps he is afraid that I will regret it once day and make him pay for my “sacrifice”. I can feel resentful, especially when I feel that things aren’t even.

Once the shoe was on the other foot

Long ago in our relationship, my sex drive was much lower than his. He said something along the lines of “if you don’t have sex with me more, then I shall have to look elsewhere”. That threat stuck with me, and back then I couldn’t conceive of a successful open relationship – I thought only way was  monogamy. If never have considered an open relationship, and polyamory was unheard of. Besides, this was in the midst of the AIDS crisis, where infidelity could be punished by death – for you and one’s partners.

Back then, I shut him down, rather brutally, by making the problem him: his sexual needs were abnormal. He needed sex to feel loved.

How those cruel words of mine have stayed with him and slowly corroded his self-esteem.

An end?

It seemed that we were in an impossible place. He was feeling overwhelmed and that there was no way forward for us.

I said “I need to go out, we need some stuff for tea; do you need anything from the shop?” I added “I’m not going to go off the deep end today, I’m going to give you some space.”

This has been a difficult conversation, but it had also been a calm conversation. That definitely was another factor that helped me stay with it for the few hours that it lasted.

I kissed him goodbye, did a little shopping, then stopped in a coffee shop to regroup my thoughts.