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A small but important break-through

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  • November 19, 2014 at 6:32 am #68119
    Todzilla
    Participant

    You all may recall that my wife of 19 years and I are going through some real struggles. We’re doing a lot of work, individually and with a couples counselor, to work on things. We’re each looking at Buddhist teachings to help guide us through this as well. We’re recently looking at family of origin issues with an eye toward understanding and forgiveness.

    Last session was intense. Our therapist helped us reveal what I’ve been trying to get out in the open, unsuccessfully, for years. Due to my FoO issues I have an inner child desire to want my feelings heard and acknowledged and feel wrong and wronged when they’re not. I have been fighting this urge for a long time, figuring it was selfish and destructive. My spouse, on the other hand has FoO issues that cause her to view my sharing of my feelings as personal attacks, so she shuts down and/or becomes very defensive, using my revelations of my feelings as a springboard from which to attack me, demonize my feelings and depict my feelings as wrong or destructive.

    This all came out in a beautiful way in our last session. The best part was it came out in a forgiving way – we both acknowledged these tendencies sprung from unresolved childhood issues for which we should feel no shame or blame. It also helped illustrated a significant vector of dysfunction in our marriage – that I believe my feelings are not welcomed, a revelation I think she’s now seeing.

    This helps me view her negative reaction to my feelings with compassion and not anger. I’ve been working in this direction for a while, but seeing her acknowledge the mechanisms behind the dysfunction, and her not feeling like a bad person for realizing it, really sent my heart soaring. I want to see her pain and struggle clearly, so that I can respond to verbal attacks with compassion and not my own pain. That’s easier said than done, but if I can trump shenpa with compassion and equanimity, I’ll be a more peaceful being.

    Thoughts?

    November 20, 2014 at 4:17 am #68158
    Inky
    Participant

    That is a great breakthrough! I hope that it will soon become an instinctive, automatic response in both of you. May it get out of the mental and integrate into your being!

    November 20, 2014 at 11:19 pm #68183
    Vhanon
    Participant

    Hi Todzilla,

    Do you want to understand her pain?
    Imagine you are driving on a country wide road on a warm summer night. All of a sudden a fox jumps out of nowhere. At the sight of your car’s light, she turns and she stops in fear for a second. You quickly turn your car and barely manage to avoid it. You are not very pleased by your own fright. A few miles later another fox jumps on the road. Unfortunately this time there is a tree at the side and the right side mirror of your car is crashed when you move too further to the right. You are not very pleased. A few miles later another fox jumps on the road. This time when you move too further to your right, the right tires go out of the road and you car is caught into the mud. No harm done, but your car gets quite dirty. You are not very pleased. Then you start thinking “This road is full of foxes, it is better I slow down”, and you start driving at a slower speed. And stress builds as you see you are getting late to the party.

    The foxes are your thoughts and feelings that jumps of the road of the plans you and your wife agreed on and indirectly cause pain to your wife.

    Maybe when you are about to express you feelings to you wife, you can make some premises. Tell her that you would like she listened to you, however, you do not want to change the plan you made, you will endure your feelings and just want to share it for a while. She simply needs to hold your hand as you both move forward.

    • This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by Vhanon.
    January 5, 2015 at 10:34 am #68159
    Todzilla
    Participant

    @inky said:
    That is a great breakthrough! I hope that it will soon become an instinctive, automatic response in both of you. May it get out of the mental and integrate into your being!

    Yeah, that’s the easy part.

    8^)

    Just kidding. It takes work and above all else, forgiving ourselves and each other for the inevitable backsliding into old habits.

    Thanks for your support, Inky!

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