I have been having problems with my partner, again.
I guess there isn't anything unusual about having problems, but what worries me is that it seems to be the same kind of problem. It makes me feel stuck.
The basic problems I think is that I do not feel cared for in the way that I want.
I feel that a part of me, my inner child one could sat, is not being heard.
My partner seems to avoid emotions. He doesn't like dealing with them.
It has happened in the past that we have been talking about how I find it difficult to feel loved, that I feel lonely many times, that I feel pathetic for wanting to be loved.
In the middles of the conversation, which took place in bed, I have needed to go to the toilet just to find him getting dressed and talking about breakfast when I got back.
I have been shut down in a variety of ways. Silence being one of them. I talk about something and he just goes silent, there is no comments, no questions nothing. In many cases after a very long time in silence I have asked "what are you thinking?" and then be told he is thinking about work, or some random thing that he has read, but not about what I have tried to explain.
I feel very much abandoned in a sense.
He is very supportive in many respects, but when it comes to deep emotional issues, he completely shuts down, and shuts me out.
We have had many arguments about this. I tend to get angry about it, not every time. It is more a matter of accumulation.
While we were going to couple counselling things between us got better, and he was a bit more receptive. Even if it wasn't having the opportunity to talk about it in the session would normally make things better for me. There he would listen, and despite the uneasiness he would not run away, physically or emotionally. The counsellor have that effect.
The way things have developed since we stop going to counselling (because we moved) has resulted on me finding myself reverting to old ways of coping and behaving.
Ways that are not good. Because he becomes more distant if I bring charged topics up, or I find myself not doing it. Particularly when I am feeling more vulnerable and more needy, when my issues are more pressing to me, since this is precisely the time I more want affection.
I am re_learning what i have worked so hard to unlearn, that I have to be someone different in order to be loved. That my inner child, has to remain hidden, that I am not to talk about the abuse or its consequences, that I am not to discuss things about us that are "too emotional". This is the price to pay for affection, and attention.
Therefore I think it is not strange that I do not feel loved, I feel he loves someone else, that feel differently than I do, has different needs.
It all goes very well with the old feeling that wanting affection, love, is dangerous, is weak, pathetic even.
It is what led me to not remove myself from a situation where I was being hurt, and I have this deep believe that I can never really shake, that I got what I deserved because I didn't stop it. I kept going back to it, maybe expecting that it would be different, but surely knowing that it would probably not be.
Now I am burying myself in order to have affection, but the care doesn't touch me, because it doesn't go where it is needed.
I feel utterly rejected and hurt.
Eventually we argue, because I "explode", and he says he really wants to know about all those things, and he thinks about it sometimes, but he feels that is not his place to ask questions. He doesn't want to bring something painful up when I seem to not be thinking about it.
There is also his baggage, coming from a family that didn't talk about emotions, and having spent most of his childhood trying not to show any, and learning that his role was to be "good" so as not to upset anyone.
I can understand how he as developed this coping mechanisms, and why he would withdraw so much. But this rational understanding doesn't go a long way in softening how I feel.
We both knew about this differences between us form the beginning. But he said he wanted to change. He had chosen an emotional, fairly outspoken person in me, and he thought it was because he wanted access to that world.
Change however is not coming, or came for a while and then left, and I don't know what to do now.
Don't know if it is sensible to wait for things to change when I am making this very costly trade fro affection and feeding all these old demons.
It feels as if the real me is unlovable, and I wonder if this "poisoned" love would make that believe even deeper. Maybe by the time, if ever, that things change my perception of myself will so entrenched that I can not love myself. Maybe I will bury myself so deeply I won't be able to find me.
Living in a state of numbness is not life. I have been there. And I have revisited those experiences lately when trying to decide what to do.
Life seems like a big fruitless effort, not worth doing.
Something needs to change.
Shall I pack and go? or shall I give it another chance?
Do people change?
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