Self Congratulation

Coming up – a bit of patting myself on the back – not something that comes naturally, but……

This picture of the St George’s Cross that appears in the banner of my blog is a picture I took at a castle on the east coast of England last summer, as is the picture of the knight’s helmet I sometimes use as an avatar for my comments on other people’s blogs.  Both these pictures have multiple meanings to me, but simply I am proud of both those pictures for the way they look – not something I would normally crow about, but slowly I am seeing my positives and learning to appreciate them.

That’s all.

Adjusting

I am still adjusting back to family life. My wife is still ill so taking alot of support.  My kids are still demanding of me (and I am still delighted to give myself to them).  The difference right now is that my wife is giving alot of enrgy to me (or at least what little energy she has between being ill and being asleep). Part of me enjoys it, but part of me feels that in 3 months time when she is no longer a “patient”, I will be relegated to a bit part again.

I am trying hard to get the difficult balance between being supportive and caring but also living for myself, but it is difficult when there is the pressure of an ill adult to think about in addition to two small children (not to mention myself!!).

It could be worse………..

Inspired by others

Inspired by others that have recently returned to posting, I am back after a 6 month break (I hope some others are still out there and holding on). Coincidentally, my last post was about a friend (J.) and her knowing my most painful secret – I spent the weekend with J. last week (completely as friends); she has become a very good family friend over the last six months.

Things have seesawed for me.  In the last 3 months my wife has become so ill (as a result of a long term condition) that she had some major surgery 4 weeks ago and is now a mainly housebound patient waiting to recover.  She has leaned on me heavily over the last 3 months to help her through, and continues to do so.  I am finding alot of things difficult as we have two you children that need caring for, in addition to looking after my wife and trying to get my career back on track after a year of intensely diverting emotional turmoil.  The most difficult thing to come to terms with is that 18 months ago my wife was telling me that not only was I completely unnecessary in her life, but also she would be better off without me. Now, she tells me every day that she loves me and is so grateful I am around to care for her and look after her.  I don’t want the love of a desperate patient, I want the desire of an adoring wife.

To be honest, the phrase “if we didn’t have children” has never meant more to me than in the last year. It has taken me along time to come to terms with how valuable my relationship with my kids is, and I am prepared to work very hard to get my relationship with my wife back where it should be so I can have the family unit that my heart really desires. I am being tested right now though, as I am now having to care completely for someone who nearly discarded me last year and has been the cause of me missing significant time with my children over the last 5 weeks.

There is much to do, but I have the dream in my mind of where I would like to get to and, though it is not a dream of Olympic proportions, I am determined to get there.

Ego Tripping

On Weds I went out with J.  She is friend of both my wife and I, and part of our general social scene.  She tells me that she went to a party on Saturday up north, and (ultimately no surprise by now) the guy that slept with my wife was there.  I made no comment to her on this, as I don’t really want everyone to know my business.

On Thursday, my wife goes out with J. for the evening.

On Friday, I tell my wife that I know who J. saw on Saturday, and I have no doubt that J. told my wife.  She did.  My wife capped that though by telling me that J. was encouraging him to come down and go out with us all.  My wife then tells me that she tells J. that she slept with him and that she really does not want him around.

For the right reasons I am sure.

But I don’t want everyone to know my business.

I know it was right to tell J. to stop her encouraging him to come down to our area.  She won’t encourage him now, and hopefully he won’t come.   But I liked having a group of friends that only know me, not that my wife fucked someone else this time last year.  I am not a pretender, and don’t act differently to who I am, but I liked not having to deal with people that know that I have put up with my wife sleeping with someone else. This is now not the case.  Ego tripping or something else, I am not happy.

A Quickie!

I was just contemplating the things I post on my blog earlier, and I started to wonder if I posted a fair representation of the good stuff that happens, as I tend to come to my blog when I need to work through some issues.  Without doing any statisical analysis, I thought I should raise the postive vs negative post average by posting this:

Yesterday morning I caught my wife off guard and propositioned her whilst she was getting dresssed.  Normally this gets a quick brush off, and I have almost stopped trying as I kind of know when is the right time and when isn’t. To my disbelief, after less than a minute of encourage, she jumped up and locked the door to our bedroom (I added a lock to our bedroom door a couple of months ago to give her the ability to lock the children out and ease her anxiety about being interupted when we are getting intimate).

She then rolled on to the bed and pulled me down on top of her.  15 minutes later and two orgasms (her first and then me) we finished getting dressed and went back to the three toddlers that were playing downstairs.  A quickie in the truest sense of the word but it left me with a big smile on my face and the kids had a very happy Daddy to play with them for the rest the of the day!!

Alot of listening and a little persistence does pay off…..

A breakththrough!!

After a couple of angst-ridden days last week, I have finally laid some demons to rest.  The difficult couple of days last week triggered alot of self-doubt.  I suddenly questioned my own value in most things I did and was therefore unable to accept that my wife felt strongly for me.  This in turn made me doubt our relationship all over again.  However, on the back of this, some very positive things happened.  I tried to deal with my issues with some of the techniques I have learnt over the last few weeks:

1) I tried to put it aside.  I told myself that it was my paranoia and anxiety that was creating the negative feelings and it was nothing to do with anything anyone else was doing to me.  This didn’t work initially (although it almost did!) so I

2) Talked about how I felt.  To my wife rather than my counsellor.  Whilst this did not resolve anything, it allowed to accept that I felt how I felt.  This sounds strange, but telling her what I was feeling was my way of proving that what I was going through was justifiable merely because I was going through it.  We didn’t come to any solutions when we talked, but that was ok because it was more about me telling her how I felt than I either of us doing anything about it right there and then, and me having the faith in her that she would listen just because I wanted to talk and because she cares about me.

3) I blogged.  I wrote out how I was feeling in an attempt to get my thoughts straight.  This helped as it forced me to order alot of my thoughts and put them in black and white.  I find this time consuming, but ultimately worthwhile.  It forced me to acknowledge some things and put them into perspective.

4) I accepted responsibility for how I was feeling.  This was the biggest breakthrough of all, as it allowed me to be free of any resentment that I had towards my wife for how I felt and for her not making me feel better.  This was triggered in a part by the post I read on Rod E. Smith’s column (thanks again Rod, and thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment and for your column).  As it happened, the next day my wife did come up with a way forward that was a win-win solution, so we both felt positive.

5) I reflected on my relationship with my wife and focused on all of the good things.  My habit in the past has been to doubt the positives in our relationship and focus on the negatives.  This time round I dropped the negatives from my thoughts and fully embraced and believed the positives.  I am now putting aside the issues and doubts I have had over our relationship and am accepting that I deserve her love just for being me (warts and all).

6) I decided to trust.  I have now opened myself up fully to her and made the conscious decision to completely trust what I hear her say. I am now confident in asking for clarification where I think I have misunderstood something she has said to me to get to her explain what she meant, rather than what I think she meant.  The ‘trust’ part comes in as in the past I would have been afraid to ask her what she meant in case she reinforced the bad things and instead I am trusting completely that she is with me because she wants to be.  This allows me to question her openly about what she is thinking and get clarity, rather than feed my paranoia by not confronting my worries. Incidentally, this has come about again from something that I read on Rod E. Smith’s blog – it was part of a longer piece that I can’t locate right now, but the phrase that stuck in my mind was “trust more than you should”.  I have taken this to mean ‘trust more than you feel comfortable with” rather than trust blindly. I can already tell that the trust I am giving will allow people into my life that I would have shied away from for fear of being hurt.

7) I have accepted I might relapse.  Normally, when I look at a problem, I will ignore the solutions that I feel I cannot commit to long term – eg if I change myself in a certain way, it will solve my problem, but I do not feel I have the strength to sustain the change so I do not make the change in the first place for fear of not seeing it through.  I have now accepted that the strength I feel today may not be there next week, but if I relapse that is ok so long as I recognise the relapse and try again.  I have changed a couple of my behaviours in the last few days – I might not be able to sustain them, but I am willing to try and will not beat myself up if I fail; instead I am rewarding myself for achieving the change each day.

As with most things in life, I do not know where these changes will take me, but I am already feeling happier because I feel in control.  Whatever comes my way, I will deal with it the best I can.

Unspecified anxiety serves no useful purpose but to –

I read this on Rod E Smith’s column today and ticked off 7 of the 10 items on the list.  I hope Rod won’t mind that I have reproduced it here, but it describes exactly what I am doing right now, today: allowing my anxiety to destroy my chances of strengthening my relationship and being positive about life: 

Posted on February 6, 2008 by Rod E. Smith, MSMFT

Unspecified anxiety serves no useful purpose but to:

1. Blind you from the real issues you and your family are facing.
2. Distort your thinking either by amplifying or by minimizing the real issues.
3. Make you inordinately suspicious of others and so you create “necessary” enemies.
4. Make you inordinately trusting of a few in whom you place all your trust.
5. Suck all the energy out of you so you can hardly function, or,
6. Shift you into a high gear of over-functioning (doing for sake of doing) until you all but collapse in exhaustion.
7. Make you overly nice (superficially pleasant, kind, or generous) in order to keep people from wondering what is really going on with you.
8. Isolate you from the people who love you so that you are “outside” of the walls of your own helpful, loving community.
9. Keep you up at night so you are rendered too tired to function well during the day.
10. Drive you to temporary relief found in substances, alcohol or unhelpful sexual or damaging religious activity

Judge not, lest ye be judged

So says Matthew 7 verse 1. I suffered from a significant bout of depression this morning that made me question my relationship again. I have just spent a fun weekend with my wife at an event with a massive number of people we know. We even left the kids at home so that we could enjoy ourselves for 3 days straight. It was a fun weekend, although mildly tainted by seeing the person that she had an affair with.

Many of my negative thoughts came from how I see things and the standards I have set myself. I question the drivers behind what my wife does because I question my own motives. I was analysing my previous relationships, looking for patterns that would explain why I feel like I do. I realised that in all of the serious relationships that I had before I met my wife, I cheated. Either that, or I encouraged the person I was with to cheat on their partner – in these cases I didn’t even ask them to leave their boyfriends; I just wanted them to have an affair with me. For one period I had three girlfriends – one knew nothing about the other two, the second knew about the first and the third knew about the other two. I have no idea how I managed to get into that situation, but looking back on it, it is evident that despite that bravado I must have shown to talk these three women into trysts with me, I was desperately looking to them to feed my ego and prop up my chronically low self-esteem.

I have even cheated on my wife – I was going out with someone else when I met her, I slept with someone else within the first few weeks of going out with her, and a few years back spent the night in a hotel room with another girl whilst she was at home with our baby. In all of these cases, there has been nothing wrong with the person I was with, I just wanted the attention and acceptance I got from being with another woman. With regard to my wife, I still want to be with her, yet also want the satisfaction of being found attractive by other women. I even tried to rekindle something with the hotel girl a couple of months back – we are still attracted to each other and the boost I got from spending a few minutes with this girl was immense. Nothing much happened beyond a kiss and the recognition that we are both still into each other, but my low self-esteem lapped this up.

So now when my wife is talking with men that I know find her attractive, I imagine all sorts of scenarios based on what I would do in that situation and it ties me up in knots. Talk about double-standards!!! In addition, I have also discovered that she has had some communications over the last 6 months with the person that she had the affair with in March last year. I believe her when she tells me there is nothing going on with anyone else other than me. I believe her partly because I trust her, but also partly because I am also doing the same thing – I am still in touch with hotel girl and I am even thinking about a social situation coming up in two weeks time that I know she will be at and planning how I could use that to have some time with her (I know, I know – I should avoid seeing her at all costs and I suspect I will not go). But I also know that I still want to be married and still want my family – the reasons for this are the topic for another post – so if I can find myself wanting others and enjoying being wanted and also know that I will not really act on it because I want to keep my marriage, then why can’t I use the same logic for her and accept that she likes attention just as much as me but also wants to stay with me so will not jeopardize it? Probably because I have a history of having affairs and getting away with them, so I expect her to do the same.

So what have I learnt from this post?

• I have low self-esteem that I only seem to be able to assuage through female attention
• I don’t really trust myself, and therefore am poisoning our relationship by reflecting that on to her
• I can’t seem to avoid judging her my standards, and my standards are dissappointingly low

Most importantly, my level of dissatisfaction with myself is the biggest issue. If I could gain satisfaction and pride in my life through having a successful career, being an excellent father and believing that I am a worthy husband I would no longer be racked with doubt about myself and need constant affirmation that I am someone that my wife is proud to be with.

A Virtuous Circle

My wife and I have been listening to each other alot recently.  Not really sitting down and having deep and meaningful conversations, but when one of us makes a comment in passing about how they feel or what they want in our relationship, the other has listened and acted on it.  This has had a great effect.  The most recent issue we have been having has been over sex – the usual man wants sex / girl doesn’t thing.  This came to a head though because my wife wanted to give me what she thought I wanted (sex) but went about it as a task that she needed to “get ticked off the list”.  This led to a couple of unenjoyable sex sessions, but many more aborted attempts at sex.

By ‘aborted’ I mean that she would act like she was up for it, give me all the signals and literally lead me to the bedroom.  Once there, though, she would say “I can’t do this” in quite a nasty way (eg “You are not turning me on”, “Nothing you could do will turn me on”, “I just don’t feel anything sexually for you”).  After these bad experiences, I would feel a whole lot worse than if I just wasn’t getting any sex at all.  What this made me realise, and I eventually was able to explain to her, was that it wasn’t sex that I wanted, it was intimacy and closeness, and I could get this without sex through kind words and loving acts.

For her, the anxiety about needing to give me sex (honest – that is how it felt) and her ultimate inability to force herself to do it, made her feel inadequate and defensive, so she started to get nasty to me to put me off wanting it (these are her words).  When I relayed back to her the week where she pretty much avoided being near me, she realised what she was doing. During the following weeks, I dropped into conversation the little things that would give me the intimacy I am looking – making me feel welcome when I get home instead of saying”hi” from the sofa then carrying on watching the TV, or taking time out from what she is doing in the evening to focus on and talk to me.  Basically to show me what she actually already thinks about me.  She has been doing this over the past two weeks and it made a huge difference between us, as I get what I am looking for from a relationship and she is not anxious about sex all the time.  We have also formed a kind of virtuous circle – because she is not so anxious she is happier around me and outwardly more loving.  Because of this I am feeling wanted in the relationship, so I am happier.  Because I am happier she wants to be around me.  And so it cycles round.

As an aside, I took the day of last Tuesday, and while the kids were at school, we spent the afternoon together.  I made every effort to treat the afternoon as just time together.  We ended up talking and laughing together for about an hour.  Then, because of this relaxed atmosphere with no children, the clothes came off and we made fantastic love, talked some more and then made love again.  Probably the best sex we have had for years because everything felt so right.

Daleks

Some days I feel like a Dalek-variant, as I spend hours on end subconsciously repeating the word “Procrastinate”.  Today is one of them – I have a load of work to get done but I can’t bring myself to start it.  I have some ideas of what is behind this work avoidance, but any realisations that I have had have not helped me to break out of this mania malaise.

It is something I need to address, as this is a major cause for unhappiness within myself as it really inhibits my chances of succeeding both in my career and personal life.  I then bring that unhappiness to all those around me, lowering my view of my own self-worth.  What a depressingly viscious cycle.  This is a good topic for counselling next week.