Mvg,
You asked where I was...and I am here, on your thread!
LOL
I just began posting again yesterday evening. Been following you...lurking behind you, you might say. Or not.
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Big congrats to your DD on her proposal...you didn't say if she accepted him...I get the inkling she did.
Thoughts and prayers with you on your surgery on Monday...gall bladder and partial hysterectomy? Are they gonna take your appendix, too?
Wanted to tell you how that same procedure for me in 2001 was such a blessing to me...I love it...and recuperation wasn't odious, either...not the worst or the best in my experience...just in the middle. I am sorry it's going to be on your 30th anniversary...and I trust that means something else...like a second chance for your FWH to get the passports applied for...something great on the way, I think.
Don't know. Won't change you being married 30 years will it? Maybe some excellent compassion, sharing and caretaking coming your way for a little while...don't know. Do you?
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Snowy...the dance you've become aware of is really common...even has a name...the pursuer/distancer dance. I believe all of us have experienced it in our lives...begins in FOO, btw...and what changes that dance the most is awareness...and then standing still.
Not pursuing and not distancing. I think you working at the distancing with awareness (and a lot of DJs, to keep to it for one week) is different than the times both of you did it unconsciously...reactively. We lock ourselves into the "either or" two-options only and that sneaky dance continues...even when it looks better from the outside.
Options: Pursue or distance...or neither. We learn to talk about our DESIRE to pursue or distance instead of doing them...we listen to know what our partner's desire is at the time, too. Why this dance?
Because of our fears...we fear being abandoned (pursue)...as if we control whether we are abandoned or not (ignored, neglected, not being connected with, loved, cherished...write your list out of what you fear and how pursuing feels like you can control what others do/not do); distance is our fear of intimacy...too close, we cut one another, humans bump into each other, we bruise and are bruised as part of connection...even as we're healed, btw; too close and we will be revealed as undeserving of love, admiration, respect, acceptance...
like a pendulum that swings back and forth (that dance cycle) between those two fears...no wonder reacting to our fears feels "natural". Important to my not choosing the pursuer/distancer dance for myself anymore was recognizing my DH's very real pain and fear in his distancing...I got my abandonment fear readily...couldn't fathom his fear of intimacy...just hurt, felt punished, rejected from him acting on his fear.
I figured out what abandonment really meant to me...being wiped out of existence...erased. Bottom line. Fear of intimacy for my DH felt the exact same way...only wiped out from being engulfed, taken over...consumed out of existence.
So when I pursued, I hit that fear in him (pushed that button)...and I was an obsessed pursuer, btw. And when he distanced, he hit my fear dead on, too. Then we both were reacting to our emotions, not acting from our real beliefs.
We cannot be consumed by another.
We cannot be wiped out by another's rejection.
We exist, anyway.
Hard lesson, though...worth learning, understanding, staying aware of and SPEAKING about it...not demonstrating it...no acting out. Hence, standing still.
And I stopped trying to MANAGE my fear, too...all that time and DJs, SDs and AO's that came directly from trying to quell, reduce, remove that fear in me...instead of see the primary belief it was coming from...the big core belief...and to respect my DH's fear was equal to mine...not spend my time measuring it, lost in my shoulds and shouldn'ts...missing out on what is and isn't.
Then I learned that to reach for my DH's hand when I didn't want to...helped to change our dance. And then I would feel relief, acceptance...same for him. In conflict, to physically connect directly from my belief "I may not feel safe and loved right now...I can choose to act from love, anyway." That's standing still. Smack dab in the middle...not each extreme.
When I began to do this, I realized how often I touched him when I wanted him to touch me...giving to get...even after I no longer believed in earning love...and by acting from my belief, how I felt loving to myself, my marriage and to him...NOT based on his response.
SL - hope this helps you, too...being still is being present, aware, open to connection and focused on your own connection...allowing love in...and out.
SC - may I suggest you speak of your triggers as your own? Not him making you...not you making him not talk about his day...he chooses to, anyway or not. His choice. Yours is to say, "I'm triggering right now." That's at the time. He's not to solve you...he's to hear you, acknowledge and understand. That's you and him in recovery together. And later, when he's amorous, you hold yourself to your code of honesty and speak again, "Now I'm triggering again...not sure it stopped. The DJ in my head is that you're wanting SF now, with me, because you were aroused by thoughts of her."
Own your triggers. Talk. When we assume (and keep to ourselves), we cut out other possibilities...and one is that you listened to him talk about his day...you didn't AO over your trigger...you heard him...you met his EN for conversation, acceptance, understanding...which is a TURN ON...easily can bring on the yearning to be closer to you, an expression of appreciation, enjoyment...cherishing you deeply.
Letting love in after an A is really hard...and it was difficult pre-A, too...because we cut out with the LBs a lot of reality. Assumptions kill relationships...sharing with ownership heals old assumptions.
Each time my DH heard me own my trigger...didn't get defensive (because sometimes he did) and acknowledged my trigger, I felt love deposits going into my love bank...and another chunk of trust going into the mortar; and I saw it as taking responsibility--not causing my trigger--for his amends...active, real amends.
Don't cut THAT out of your recovery...you say you want to control him...you don't want him to stop telling you about his day...well, you are manipulating him each time you don't share your trigger, own it...aren't you?
Triggers ease, slow and disappear in relation to the A...takes time...and one-year anniversary time was SOOOO tough for me...like reliving it at surprising points. You're not unreasonable, wrong or bad, SC...you're in recovery...both your personal recovery and your marital one...and you are recovering.
You guys all rock...I love reading your posts seeing the way you are there for each other...the caretaking, bravery, awareness and compassion. Thank you for looking for me, mvg. Sometimes, we need to be found.
LA
