Well, probably the most honest and revealing thing you could have said would have been "I am ashamed that I allowed my feelings of lust and my desire for intimacy cause me to break my pledge because I want to be a man who keeps his word. I am also sorry that I made a pledge that honored a wish that I do not respect." not anything that implies "I am sorry I frightened you with my semi-rapist ways." or "I respect your desire to keep your breasts to yourself within our marriage." because it is not true that you believe yourself to be a semi-rapist and you do not respect her desire to keep her breasts to herself within a committed sexual relationship.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Maybe the fact that y'all had a good time on vacation made her afraid (subconsciously) that she was "going soft" on you, so she had to redraw the line in the sand with automatic weapons fire.
I think we all understand that you disrespected her wish by doing what you did. So okay, you may owe her an apology. BUT she vastly overreacted to what you did. Let's not overlook that. She could have easily moved your hand aside and said, "Remember, you agreed not to do that." But her reaction was way overboard. Kind of like The Pudding Incident.
To me, THAT'S the issue here. Not that you went against her wishes, but that she treated it like the Crime of the Century.
Yes, you disrespected her, but that doesn't make you a criminal.
And I think she also scared herself when she asked you to move out of the bedroom, and THAT'S why she was willing to talk later. Her righteousness depends on having you there to kick around. You are essential to her dance.
"You have a pattern where you do something that you know is damaging to the relationship, then you just start acting like everything is fine and, when I don't act the same way you get all, 'look who's so grouchy today' and set me up as the bad guy. I was pleased that you wanted to talk about it, rather than ignore it."
So do you? Or is this her take on it. Notice that she is blaming you for any failings in the R. you do something you know is damaging to the relationship
How about witholding sex - is that not damaging to the R? And is she not acting as though it's all fine? Setting you up as the bad guy.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
Okay, I get what you're saying but it's kind of depressing, right? I hope/plan to have passion and intimacy in my next LTR.
Maybe we’re talking about two different things… not sure. When I say “a workable marriage does not HAVE to be completely healthy and functional” I mean that both people don’t have to be fully differentiated or have to maintain perfect boundaries or what ever criteria we use as an “ideal.” I think there are plenty of happy couples who have a good amount of enmeshment but have found a way to make it work.
I even see your point about how having a strong partner might help but I think the help is more found in mirroring or bouncing off the strength rather than being soothed or rescued.
No, I’m including the soothing and rescuing too. I suspect a lot of why working through trauma recovery succeeds better with a partner is the validation that the partner provides. I think Johnson even mentions this, that the validation from the partner legitimizes the trauma and makes it easier for the victim to process.
This is where I really started to question the value of striving for too much differentiation, especially in people who simply are not ready to handle it yet. It also explained to me why that interracial couple on the Schnarch Dateline TV show failed to reconcile. The W could not/would not validate the H’s issues and left him to hold onto himself alone. He could not do it so they split. Seems like a wasted opportunity to me.
Hairdog, I think there's a difference between rendering up an apology when *you* see the need to apologize and when *your partner* wants you to apologize.
In this case, you saw the need to apologize because you more-or-less deliberately did something you agreed not to do. Fair enough, and good for you.
That's completely different from when your partner expects/demands an apology from you for (say) defending a boundary/standing your ground. To produce an insincere apology under those circumstances just to placate them/keep the peace is both inauthentic and counterproductive and usually leads to massive resentment on your part because you allowed them to pressure you into letting *yourself* down. As an alternative to such bogus apologies, that's when "You felt threatened and disrespected. That was not my intent." or like statements can come in useful. IMHO.
FWIW, it does tweak my radar that she is still defending her turf so vigorously by her "victim" and "damaging to the relationship" comments. But the fact that you were able to (sounds like) have a calm and extensive discussion must be a plus.
Cobra, I don't think it's any more helpful to view his wife as "a vulnerable child who wants and needs compassion" than it is to view her as "a cold hard enemy". Both are just constructs, projections. Mrs. HD is a mature, complex, successful professional woman with, apparently, lots of bad habits and baggage in her emotional life. To infantilize her may be a shortcut to compassion ... but it's ultimately disrespectful to her, IMHO.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
To infantilize her may be a shortcut to compassion ... but it's ultimately disrespectful to her, IMHO.
Then you completely miss the point of this way of viewing MrsHD. It is not meant in any way to get a one up position, to gain some level of control or to disrespect her. The whole point of viewing MrsHD is for HD’s perspective, to allow him a way to detach from her emotional outbursts and not be hurt by then, to weather the storm and still remain empathic to her hurts.
When a child is hurt or traumatized, emotional growth can stop at that time as the child shuts down and goes into self protect mode. So in this way MrsHD is still very much a child on an emotional level. That is why her actions seem so crazy. They are crazy from an adult perspective but they are not from that of a child.
Go read this website on Steve Stosny and his book “You Don’t Have to Take it Anymore.” I have the book and HIGHLY recommend it (I also have his new book but haven’t read it yet). Stosny describes very well why compassion is so critical in break out of the logjam so many couples get in and gives a way to do it.
I am *all* for compassion. I just feel it should be the compassion of one flawed adult to another, with the attendent expectations that things can and should improve. I'm sure the "damaged child" viewpoint is not *intended* to "get a one up position, to gain some level of control or to disrespect her". It's the unintended consequences of this paradigm that concern me. Maybe it's just semantics. I can see taking into consideration the traumas of "the child she was" .... but that seems different from interacting with her from the position of "poor dear, she's just a scared little girl who needs love". That still seems unavoidably demeaning.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
.... but that seems different from interacting with her from the position of "poor dear, she's just a scared little girl who needs love".
No, this should not be done or she falls right into victim mode. MrsHD is already in that role and needs to get out of it. But it is two different things to play and victim and to be emotionally hurt. Playing victim is a form of manipulation. The NMMNG book explains that well, and it applies to women as well as men.
The wounded child concept is different. The point of this is for the hurt person to realize that much of what they feel is a result of injury, that they are not bad, but they need to accept this hurt and process it. The steps to work through this are the same as the AA 12 step method. This is not the same is playing a victim. I think you are confusing the two.
