“We won’t be having any more sessions,” was the last thing my husband said to out counsellor as we left. At which point I was a wreck. That’s when it hit me: shit is getting real.
The start of the session was silence. The husband wasn’t ready to talk. I don’t much want to talk – I’m afraid of what he is going to say. I said as much out loud.
Then I told off the past fortnight since it last session, including my confusion over his saying that I’d called him old and a bag of bones.
He started talking by saying that I’d asked him to be patient with me when we last talked. I wasn’t sure that I’d said that, and looking back now that wasn’t anything quite like it that I had said.
“My body is my body,” is something that I’d said about bodily autonomy within the last few years that has stuck with my husband. I don’t experience jealousy like he does. His explanation for that is that I “don’t care”. No, it just means that I don’t feel – or I don’t perceive myself as feeling – jealousy.
He said that he didn’t feel emotionally safe with me. I have heard this before from him. There is a part of me that wants to scream “What?! After the physical and emotional abuse you’ve put me through?!” But that would be point scoring. He feels what he feels. I’ve recognised that I have feelings too, but I have to put them to one side.
He said again that he didn’t feel needed by me. I tried to give him some examples of how I need him. I kinda feel that being held somehow didn’t count; I’m wondering now why I feel that way. To me it’s of critical importance, but it’s not so much for my husband – he rather feels that talking is what’s important.
Whilst I agree with him that talking about things is important, I also said that “I hate talking,” I said, “that’s when the troubles begin.” My experience of talking to my husband really hasn’t been great. My own mouth causes us a lot of pain and trouble.
The session got more and more emotional. My throat hurt, my brain felt like it was full of glue, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe, I was crying.
My husband was shaking and crying. He never cries: he is overwhelmed by what is happening to us. Seeing him upset is upsetting in its own right.
Towards the end, in part of answering what my husband does for me and why I’ve not left him, I said that the most sacred moments are when we are lying together in each others arms. There is no future. There is no past. There is only a now. In such moments I feel safe and I feel loved. I’m such moments I love most deeply.
My head is spinning. My ears are whistling. My brain is killing me.
What the fuck just happened in there?
Eunuchorn 
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