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