I mentioned that husband and I had serious talks when we were on vacation two weeks ago. One of the conclusions we came to was that we needed to keep talking. He came up with the idea that we set aside a couple of hours once a week to sit and talk. Being the creature of list and schedule that he is, he thought it best to go with the same time and day each week. To me, this seemed a little...forced. But he IS acknowledging the need; it would have been stupid for me to veto his method.
So, Wednesday nights at 6 pm it is. Last week, we just sort of dusted the surface of things. It was pleasant, but we didn't resolve anything, either. Yesterday, I was determined to go deeper. I told him how I felt after losing my job nine years ago, and then running headlong into my sister's illness and death, without ever really having time to deal with the failure of the job. How that started a whole downward trend for me, which lasted years. In fact, I told him, I'm just NOW getting to be able to stand back and look at it as the PAST, and not feel like I'm still in the middle of it. I wanted him to know that I've felt like an emotional basket case much of the time, and I also felt like that's what HE thought I was. I imagined him spending the last five years wanting me to GET OVER IT! And I wanted him to know how hard it's been.
We discovered that, during that time when we were, for all intents and purposes, living apart, when we started having real problems, we stopped talking. It was just too hard, and we didn't see each other enough to make it worth spoiling the time we had together by hashing things out. It was a mistake. Things just got worse, until we became more and more like strangers. And then, five or six years later, we're looking at each other and wondering how we got so far apart.
This stuff is HARD. In the middle of our talk last night, he looked at me and said, "Is this cathartic? Are we making any progress here?" Like a kid in the backseat asking "Are we there yet?" No, not yet...but getting there.
OH my gosh. It's good that you are talking. But some people can't do well when it's forced like that. They feel all uncomfortable with knowing they *have* to talk, and they get more results from talking that comes while doing something else. Raking leaves, riding in the car, working together on a project, etc.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. :-)
Donna--(saw your pic on your journal...cute!) That's exactly what I thought...that it would be too "forced" to talk at the same time every week...but when you get a man to admit talking needs to be done, you can't argue. We've been married so long...and we really are best friends. It hasn't been too bad doing it his way...
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