Thank you for your response, Hold.

I see myself in you, Hold. The questions I ask you have been asked of me...and what I've asked of myself.

I learned I had life-long themes, those poles holding up the spiral staircase I am climbing...the patterns I kept running into in myself, giving me the same experience...

One was debt/gratitude...and another was abandonment/rejection. Would you consider you've carefully, through your meticulous cultivation of resentment, formed a climate of rejection for your marriage?

You're right about the ANTS...they are the entities that plow your fields of resentment, and they are excellent at their job.

Least they were for me...tireless, underpaid and seemingly rejected at every turn. They plowed on, though. They don't stop. Rejection feeds them more...because they think for you...they assume you don't mean it...you really want them to keep going to produce what you've trained your brain to hand you at every turn...more rejection, deeper resentment, an abiding entitlement.

I believe Mrs Hold is your true partner, your real mate in this life...you feed in her for her lines...very similar to your own. And through her, you truly can transcend your patterns...come to peace, joy and happiness. She's your ultimate path.

Believe it or not.



And you are hers.

Living in a climate of rejection is rough...and secure. You can experience rejection moment by moment...and be right, smart, consistent. And miserable. And cause misery.

What woke me up was realizing I was causing misery, crushing pain into other people...which I didn't realize because I was too busy counting the ways I was being rejected (or could be, or had been) to see the pain I was dealing.

I don't know what your wake up point is...only you do. I do know the antidote for ANTS...when you crave freedom from them more than assured resentment through rejection.

Forgiveness and acceptance. Forgiving Mrs Hold for her prior behavior...so huge I think you might panic at the thought of it...accepting she really did hurt you mightily, repeatedly...and you really don't know why she did. No assumptions as to why--you don't know. Until she says why, you really don't know.

Forgiving yourself for doing great harm to her, as well...forgiving yourself for doing great harm, daily, to yourself...she couldn't earn your hurtful words and actions, nor could you, to yourself. You haven't been a child for a very long time, needing pain to learn what not to do...punishment isn't a growth choice, hasn't been. Has no redemption or reality...forgiveness and acceptance do.

And I believe you know these two potent antidotes. I wish you would choose to know them more intimately...within you...so you will see them in your wife, as well.

You didn't hear her ask you back, tell you she wanted you back in your shared bed...she didn't use the words you wanted, when you wanted them, stated in the way you would hear them. Please consider after a lifetime of rejecting others and feeling rejected, you won't hear...and she may be saying it, anyway. You smack her vulnerability down because you've practiced smacking down your own...you disguise a lot of cutting words in humor and mockery, and you feel mocked and rejected.

Reasonable to me...how else could you keep the resentment climate the exact right temperature otherwise? How else could you maintain the perspective that she was rejecting you, that you were only worthy of rejection?

We have weird comfort zones...and as you said, the lies we tell ourselves are the padding, the boundaries of that zone. Self-rejection will give you the life experience of rejection...and it isn't real.

Even though it really, really hurts.

I believe you're in this marriage because Mrs Hold really is the one you want to lead you out of this pattern; if she's the cause, she's the cure...the control of it. We make it into a hidden mandate...which transforms our best chance for growth into our best bet for continued rejection.

She can bring up you coming back to the bedroom in front of DD...and you can say, "I'll answer you privately." Your half is equal to hers...you have to keep judging and blaming to foment the rejection, maintain the diminishing returns of righteousness, besting her...

Or you can begin this minute and live differently. God didn't create you to design and maintain a life of rejection...you know he didn't...for by rejecting others, you reject him, too. Each time you smack down your wife's vulnerability, you do your own...and his presence in you.

And I know you know this. Is it His overwhelming forgiveness and acceptance, even his celebration of you, His fabulous creation, that you fear most?

LA