</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">From the sunday blues thread
Open the emotional cage you have put around RAP and set her free, free to come back to you in love and all it's glory.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Emotional cage struck a chord with RAP. She said you were right on. I don't understand it.

What would it look like?

What would it make her feel like?

What kinds of things would I be doing to put one up?

What kinds of things would I be saying to put one up?

(I'm asking seriously, not sarcastically. You gotta translate this one into guy talk for me.

Any OTHER lovely women who can shed some light, PLEASE do.

NCWalker - looking for a key.

NCW -

I'm just getting ready to go away for the weekend and am planning to answer all your questions to me on the other thread when I get back but to answer this, what I meant as a woman is -

Let RAP be who she is, love her as she is, flaws and all. When you love someone as your equal in everyway, as someone who has a path to follow aside from the path she follows with you, you set them free to follow it. Have faith in who she is a woman, friend, lover, partner, that she will do as she must do on HER path.

At the end of that path which she must take in her own way & in her own time, will be a cross section which will reunite her with you on the path you had once shared. Only this time down the path you will walk holding hands as complete and equal partners united in love by choice. Not the choice you made years ago as mere children but the choice you make today as separate, new, unique and united partners.

She is a beautiful bird, you want to cage her just so you can hear her beautiful song and so you can have it all for yourself, but in that cage she can no longer sing because she is not free. You lose the very thing you hope to capture, but trying to capture it. Set her free emotionally to sing her song and she will come to you when she is ready, AND have enough faith in her that she will, for you, for her children and for herself. This is love! When you cage a beautiful song bird you scare her, she becomes scared that she will never fly again accept as you allow it. And this has nothing to do with another man, it has everything to do with her soul.

This is why I think alot of women end up in the arms of OM, because in the arms of a stranger they are free to be who they long to be, but are unable to be when with their husband. Because their husband wants to hear the song which he has written for her, not the song she wants to write for herself. She is scared she will never sing her own song again. She wants to sing to you but she must sing her own song, and she must first find her singing voice again.

Does that make sense?

What kinds of things would I be doing to put one up? What kinds of things would I be saying to put one up?

This is something RAP must tell you, only she would know the answer to this.

I tried to give you an idea of what an emotional cage would look & feel like to me, in the songbird analogy...hope it helped. Could not figure out how to say it so a man could understand.


I just thought of an example a guy might relate to -

I HATE the bars. I worked in them for 10 years and my dad died of alcoholism (well suicide to be exact). I pictured the man I would marry as someone who did not go to the bar. My ex fiance is very much an extrovert, he loves people, loves to go down to the local pub (where everyone knows his name). I refused to accept this about him. I thought if he loved me he would not go. He felt if I loved and understood him I wouldn't mind as he was not doing anything wrong down there and only wanted to go infrequently. (I wouldn't go with him either) After a while he felt like he was in a prison forced to be this person I envisioned myself with. Not who he was at all. I did not allow him to be who he was, my love was selfish. I put a cage around him to keep him the way I wanted. He escaped his cage every chance he could in order to remain who he was. I was wrong and it helped to destroy our relationship. If I could, I would give him the freedom to be who he is now and he would not need to escape that cage because none would exist. (I met him at this local pub BTW, but still I was too blind to see that was who he was)

If you want RAP back the way you want her to be, and not the way she is then she does not feel the love. It scares people when you expect them to act in a certain way, to be a certain way. It makes them feel that your love is conditional and that is very scary.

OK. I sort of see. She needs the freedom to be her own self. She needs things separate of me. I will ponder this a bit. It was very good.

I conceptually agree with all this. I mean it makes sense. I THOUGHT I was doing it, but there must be some cage around her because she really related to this post. I mean, the truth of what I am doing is in HER reaction to it. I have to figure out what I am doing to cage her. Talk to her about it.

NCW

<small>[ September 30, 2004, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: ncwalker ]</small>