Morning JHK,

I’m glad to hear our interactions have helped, your last few posts have seemed calmer for sure.  Good to hear you sorted through the hiccups at work. Hope it continues to work out well for you.

What do you think about what Anita has posted – do you have similar struggles with other people? Whilst happy to help here when I can, there are also much better and easier ways to learn these kinds of social behaviours/meanings so you are better able to interpret for yourself in the future.

Anita. Yes, was aware of the patterns/difficulties, thanks for the input.

The reality therefore is you have simply had an argument, later discussed it and cleared the air. It happens all the time in healthy relationships and is something you need to know how to deal with – without all this anxiety and overthinking on your part.  It is your behaviour now that is the issue, not hers.

Morning Shelby,

Nothing like active baby-sitting to distract you!!  For my 2p worth, I think it’s healthiest to get a balance of the sitting around and the actively distracting yourself. You need both I think, it’s not like you can supercharge through “getting better” just because you sit around and think about it a lot!  Likewise just ignoring it all the time means you just jump into something else without being ready. So dealing with it in bite-size chunks, that seems best way to me.  Enough to progress and deal with it, not too much so you sink down and can’t get out of the pit.  In fact, I used to make damn sure I had something to do at least one night out of the weekend, come hell or high water or whatever!

It’s curious how the pain has got worse in your sad stage – nope, I’m defn not an orthopaedic anything but there’s some interesting research into how stress and physical pain are related, so maybe the bouts will be less severe as time does it’s thing. But I totally get if you are felling physically cr@p it’s way harder not to do the whole “why me” thing.  Hang in there, I know it’s scary – it’ll pass like the other times, it will.

To be honest, I think a dating app would terrify me anytime, let alone when I’m in no shape of mind for anything like that. But ha, cereal shopping, like it – hmm, do I want healthy bran, good for me but dull or perhaps some childish but oh so tasty Frosties or should I go for a nice solid bowl of porridge….decisions, decisions…. seriously though, zero need to do anything you don’t feel ready for, both job/travel and relationship wise. Look at both of them as options you are investigating, when it gets scary – stop! Pick it back up when you are curious again. Try out some of the more inspiring style female travel blogs, they tend to be less about what you ‘should’ be doing, more about people doing something they love.

Hang in there and feel free to rant away. It’s storms down here again so I’ll be stuck inside decorating today and eating a pile of bread ( went on a workshop at the weekend – awesome great fun but have about 10 loaves of bread to get through! Happy neighbours and birds….! )

I think this will help;

http://www.wisemushroom.org/how-to-overcome-emotional-dependency/?site_agreement=yes

It is a good thing because a healthy relationship is good, it helps both people grow, it is something that brings them both happiness. An emotionally dependent one is not good, it stops people from growing.

People often lose trust when hurtful things are said to them. It takes time to trust that you have both learnt from this disagreement and will handle future disagreements better.

Why do you feel you are controlling?

Hey Kat,

It’s great you have a strong relationship apart from the physical side, congrats.  So how long has it been this way? A drop-off from the early days is pretty normal and ‘enough’ is whatever works for both people in the relationship. When you say one-sided, I understand that as it was you always making the advances to start anything and once you stopped that, everything stopped?  Why did you stop – did he stop responding? There are many ways to show affection and attraction, is he demonstrative outside the bedroom, lots of cuddles and the like but platonic?  It just helps to understand more, if you are happy to share further.

It’s normal to want to feel attractive and it relates heavily to feeling wanted, so it’s not surprising you are tempted by other men if you aren’t getting that feeling from your husband. Thing is, feeling attractive is all about how you feel about yourself. So your size is irrelevant, if you feel sexy as you are, the energy you put out is one of someone who knows she is attractive, and so you are found to be attractive.  Do you feel comfortable and sexy?

Since you have a strong relationship, it’s probably a good idea to have a chat with him about in a non-demanding way, see if there’s anything going on that’s stressing him out,  it’s likely just that the two of you have fallen into a rut of comfortableness, he may be missing you just as much!

Hope helps.

Hey JHK,

I would agree with you that she needs her space more than you do. Good decision to stop texting her, I hope you managed it this time?

On your second point, it is hard to tell what she means without knowing the context, the wider conversation.  She may well be trying to build a wall – I would suspect to create some space as so far you haven’t been that good at listening to her and giving her space when she needs it, so she is creating it for herself.

My view on what you should do you know already – work on giving her that space yourself, so she doesn’t feel the need to create it. Continue to stop the texting, the unhelpful conversations. Talk with her only about new things, things you have done that don’t involve her – these will comfort her that she is not your only support, help her know that you are ok and looking after yourself first.

Enjoy your day, back tomorrow.

Hey JHK,

I am assuming that your last texts to her were still light, friendly? She may text back eventually, she may not. Either way it is ok – not all texts need a reply and if it is just that you are texting too much for her, this is her way of telling you to back off, to give her space for a while. Mostly people are just busy, especially on a Friday night! I expect/hope she was out somewhere, enjoying herself, relaxing after a hard week at work. Hopefully you did so too.

What will not help is you texting more or re-opening the old emotional conversations.  I know you still worry about it but this is your problem that you are trying to work on. In reality, there is no problem, you both made mistakes, you talked about it and agreed all was ok. The only reason to feel trust between you two is compromised is if you are still feeling angry at her, if you haven’t really forgiven her even though you said you have?  Feeling that she hasn’t really forgiven you is just your insecurity talking, not reality.

Hope helps.