The importance of "shtill" - don't analyze when speaking to your wife. Just listen and respond.

 061223 Monday 6/12/2023 Lori Therapy Meeting

In this morning's therapy meeting, we focused on how my wife does not feel like I am listening to her. She thinks my responses to her are mechanical and unemotional, and so our conversations die a horrible death.

My frustration when communicating - no "stated" emotions to grasp onto.

On my end, I am feeling frustrated that I am unable to get anything tangible from her emotionally -- words -- that I can grasp onto, analyze, and properly respond to. As a result, I have no idea how to respond to her or to know what follow-up questions to ask in order to keep the conversation going. So they end, and I feel unfulfilled because "nothing happened" in our conversation, and I got nothing out of it that could help me to get closer to my wife.

The exercise - "Just Listening and Responding"

The therapist did an exercise where I just closed my eyes and listened to her. I listened, and just responded. When my wife said that she felt disappointed that something didn't go the way she hoped it would be, I responded, "sorry, that must be frustrating... or, that must have sucked." But I didn't add in anything of my own thoughts.

I didn't try to add in any "pearls of wisdom," nor did I try to elicit further how the experience made her feel (which is ordinarily what I would do in a conversation from her -- I would try to find out how what she is telling me affected her, at which she gets frustrated that I am not hearing her, she gets angry at me, and the conversation dies a terrible death, and I am left confused and frustrated.

Rather, if I just listen and respond naturally, WITHOUT trying to elicit her emotions or to see how something effected her -- if I just respond and say nothing -- then she could feel that I am hearing and sharing her emotions, and that I am actually hearing her rather than pushing away the emotions that are "all there laid out in front of me," by trying to have her give a name to her emotions so that I can properly respond to them.

Today's Lesson - Be Quiet, Don't Analyze, Just Listen and Respond.

So the lesson for today is shtill (in English, "be quiet.") Just be quiet when speaking to your wife. Just listen, respond with, "oh, that must have felt X," or "oh, that's terrible" and say NOTHING MORE. Maybe then she'll feel like you are actually understanding her feelings.

My thoughts? My wife seemed very interested in this idea, so maybe we're on to something. Me? I don't think this will work. I don't think we'll get the opportunity to have these interactions because I'm concerned that she won't share with me her thoughts or her feelings. But let's see. I'll try this.

Reflection: How analyzing words blocks my ability to just listen.  Presence.

The Mindsera AI (link) had an interesting question -- it was asking me, "how might your desire to analyze and respond to your wife's emotions be impacting your ability to truly listen to her and be present in the conversation?"

I think that [at least for myself], by always searching for the emotion -- for always seeking to see not some event as it is, but the event as how it has an affect on the person experiencing it, I am taking myself "out of the conversation," and instead of being present for her so that she can feel like I am actually listening to her, I am in my analytical head trying to figure out how she is feeling and how I can help her feel better, more supported, etc. But instead of doing this, I am literally emotionally abandoning her by not staying with her and her emotions when she shares them with me.

Thinking Forward -- Going Deeper!?!?

That's an interesting insight. Do you think her and I can "go deeper together" by just meeting her here at the surface? I wonder what that could mean, what that could feel, what that could do for our closeness, etc. Can this actually help our marriage? Is this really "a thing"?!

061123 "The Keystone" and "The Black & Grey Globs" (Blocking Emotions)

 061123 June 5, 2023 Therapy Session with Lori (Continued) -

I keep procrastinating on this topic, so I have no doubt it is important. Lori (our therapist) thinks that while I might be in tune with my emotions, she observed that they are not coming through in my facial expressions or my body language.

She had me do an "eyes closed" visualization, which I enthusiastically participated in. I thought it was a "parts therapy" kind of exercise, but she gave me the name for it (something else), but the name eluded me.

With my eyes closed, she asked whether there was any part of me which was stopping me from experiencing my emotions.

YES there was -- "The Keystone."

Visualization: The Keystone:

The Keystone was a child's wooden block toy shaped in the shape of a bridge. It was straight on the top and sides, but it was a semicircle on the bottom. It called itself the "Keystone" because without it, all the other pieces of the bridge fall apart into pieces.

The Keystone also had the shape of a black-and-white triangular antenna. It said it was hundreds of years old, and that it joined me when I was born. It later told me that I created it which contradicted its initial statement, but to me, it seemed like an angel (a malach).

Lori was asking questions to get me doubt whether I really wanted it around. It seemed like she wanted me to realize that it might have served a helpful purpose at one point in my life -- like the "Framework" which came to me in an earlier visualization that I built up and around a blackened-soot-and-angry childlike version of me -- but I actually enjoyed the presence of The Keystone.

The Keystone genuinely desired to help me and to protect me "from the wooden spikes that would shoot out of my heart and injure me deeply." (Funny how it was a wooden toy, and the spikes were from the same wooden toy set - I wonder if there is something there latent in my memories with that set.)

I imagined that maybe it was evil (and I visualized it as possibly evil), but it really radiated a warmth and a protective comfort. I didn't want to kick it out of my psyche -- rather, I wanted to hug it and thank it for protecting me all these years. It was quite tired from all the hard work, but it was willing to persist for as long as I needed it. It did this out of a sense of loyalty and duty to keep me safe. This seemed to be it's reason for being inside me.

Lori had me show it around to my "adult" life -- my wife, my home, my shul, my kids. I think she was trying to have me ask it if still thought it was needed in my life or not. It asked me this, and I answered that I do still need it in my life, and I appreciate all the help and safety it continues to give me from the spikes shooting out of my heart.

Lori wanted me to ask it if it was willing to step aside, and it was willing to, but it was concerned I would be injured [not killed, but badly hurt] by the spikes from my heart.

The AI from Mindsera.com (link) wants me to answer, "What would it feel like to fully embrace and express your emotions without the presence of "The Keystone"?"

Funny, it thinks The Keystone prevents me from expressing my emotions.

Lori also had me visualize this. Without The Keystone, I would get injured by painful emotions that my heart is ejecting out of it, but I would live. I realized that The Keystone could be bypassed by asking it to be transparent. It is still there if I do this, but I deactivate its function, and it is willing to let me do this.

I don't think I get positive benefits from this, because it appears to me as if the job of The Keystone was only to prevent me from getting hit by the spikes because they can badly hurt and injure me. I have not thought much about what the spikes actually are (although I have imagined a few times that they remind me only about the COVID spikes, but these are actually like thin wooden sharp cylinders which are so thin they are thick, but needle-like.

Without The Keystone, I would still not be able to feel my emotions because... I noticed that there are two other characters also protecting me.

Visualization: The Black & Grey Globs

At first I thought it was one large, thick, black, slippery but rubberlike glob that was covering over my heart ("The Black Glob"), but then I realized that there were two of these (the second one was more grey'ish, and it looked the same, but it said it shared a different function) ("The Greyish Glob").

What was interesting to me is that The Black Glob did not want me knowing it was there. As soon as I noticed it, it caused me to forget what it looked like. The Grey Glob did this too (made me not be able to see it), but it seemed busy doing its work while The Black Glob was more concerned about me seeing it.

I thought it was silly that The Black Glob thought I wouldn't be able to remember what it looked like because I had a short term memory of what it looked like. However, I was impressed and a bit surprised as how effective it was at causing me to be unable to see it, as if it didn't turn itself invisible, but rather, it literally blinded me as to its existence.

I still, however, was aware of its presence even when I couldn't see it anymore, but I knew it was still listening to me and it would respond to my questions.

The Black and Grey Glob each were pretty focused on its mission. I do not know what the grey one was doing -- it seemed busy during my visualization -- but the Black Glob's job was literally to thickly cover over the bright red radiance of my heart, specifically to absorb the wooden spikes that shoot out of it quite frequently.

When I spoke to it in Lori's visualization, it too seemed to have good motives, namely, it was there called by me to protect me from the spikes. However, the Black Glob seemed more intent on doing its job with a serious intensity which I found to be interesting.

Lori had me show these Globs my adult home, my wife, my family, etc., but the Globs didn't seem interested in stepping aside. It seemed they were unimpressed, and more focused on their mission rather than communicating with me to do my will or my bidding.

The Keystone had Self-Awareness; the Globs were Machines.

While the Keystone seemed to have its own consciousness or benevolence to it, the Globs seemed like they were task-oriented entities, like a fireman putting out a fire, or a vacuum cleaner seeking out the mess that spilled.

Trying to Switch them Off

Without the Keystone and the Globs, I believe I would experience more emotions without them accidentally filtering and in some cases with the Globs, accidentally blocking them entirely in their attempts to contain the spikes which would damage and injure me.

I tried to imagine they were all transparent (meaning, switched off), so the spikes and everything else would express my heart's feelings to me, but noticing that I was squeezing my eyes and feeling sadness and pain in my heart, I am concerned that there is a lot of this that is being covered up also.

That was all I wanted to cover. I shared this with my wife and she was impressed that I had such visualizations with Lori, but she didn't have any other comment.

Poison in the Heart

Personally, I think this trio helps me to manage an otherwise raw and inflamed heart. I think there is an inflammation of the heart, and it is shooting the spikes to eject the poison from my heart. These spikes might be feelings of sadness or pain, they could also be anger.  Intuition tells me this is cortisol.

The problem is that I don't think I am in a healthy emotional place, especially if I am visualizing a raw and aggravated heart which is pumping and shooting out poison just to survive. I think I am poisoning it with my pain, and my heart is just trying to survive.

I imagined what would happen to me if I were hit with the spikes, but I don't know the answer. I think they would stick in me, but my immune system would be knocked out and I would get sick. 

I would really love to stop feeding my heart poison -- these are clearly my emotional stresses and sadness and pain, just as they are the additional stress I carry from trying so hard to manage my ADHD while at the same time keeping myself deceptively productive and normal (not showing that I am struggling to keep my executive functions at "normal" levels) just so that I do not "annoy" those around me with my stupidities.

061123 Sunday Afternoon, No Love For You.

Okay, so after a few brief interludes of pushing myself to share with my wife that I am genuinely interested in going as deep as possible with her, a few minutes ago, I came out of my office, and with humor, hiked up my pants to emulate my kids in jest (my daughter came downstairs expecting to go out wearing almost nothing), so I too exposed my body parts to show how silly it looks to have so much exposed.

I told my wife that I am in my office working, but if she gets overwhelmed -- even with her superhuman ability to have the kids all jump on her -- just come into my office and I will stop what I am doing and I will come out and give her some slack. I do have work to do, but I am not doing anything that needs a response this minute.

She came into my office and shared excitedly that she is taking our oldest daughter to sushi tonight, and that she felt that she is getting through to her. Honestly, I didn't hear what she said because I was so excited that she was joining me in my office that I thought that finally, we are starting to act like a couple again.

After we spoke, instead of sitting back and returning to my work as I would have done in the past, I took a chance and I pulled her lovingly towards me -- her standing, me sitting on a chair -- and I was going to give her a hug.

Instead, her eyes widened and she said, "no - you don't get that yet. I'm still upset with you for what you did to me." (Or honestly, something of the sort.) I am so overwhelmed with sadness and confusion by this rejection - yet again, a perfect running streak of rejections where my gestures of love are not accepted by her - that while I should I totally have seen the rejection coming, I stupidly thought that maybe she had forgiven me, and that maybe we were taking a first step to healing our broken marriage.

So, let's do this emotional audit thing. I'm paying $14.99/mo for it here with Mindsera.com (here's a referral link) so let's see what comes of it.

1. What kind of sensations do you feel in your body right now?

I feel sadness in my heart. My face is scrunched up in a ball, my eyes are squinting because I am feeling emotional pain and I am either trying not to cry, or I really do want to cry. No idea.

My lips are curled in a frown - at first I thought this was disgust, especially because I feel the anger of my teeth behind my lips exerting themselves, and because my jaw is tight and my teeth are clenched, but really, the lips are in a frown of sadness.

I also have a foggy headache, as if I cannot believe that just happened... again.

My heartrate is elevated, and I can feel a tightness in my chest from the sadness. I am also slouched over and I really want to just crawl into a ball and cry.

2. What kind of thoughts do you have right now?

I am thinking that I can't believe that I got rejected yet again. I feel so stupid that I misread the situation yet again. I am so upset with myself that I thought hopefully that maybe... MAYBE... she was over her anger and her disgust for me, and that she was finally willing to forgive me for whatever she still believes I did to her (or specifically, that I neglected to dig deeper into her three experiences last week), and that maybe we were going to resume having a loving and connected relationship that actually involves us not standing six feet apart from one another. Nope.

I feel stupid that I have no idea what she was thinking when she came in here. What did she want from me then if not my emotional support, comfort, affirmation, and love? Why did she jump back in horror when I reached out to pull her in by her hips to hug her and share that I love her? Why is she always so oppositional to gestures of love and intimacy?

I am feeling hurt in my heart that I will never have a loving relationship with her. I am feeling that she no longer loves me and that she just wants me around so that she can get past the parenting stage of our life so that she can plan her exit. I feel rejected. I feel sad. I feel despondent, I feel like a loser, I feel unloved, I feel tricked, I feel manipulated, I feel used.

3. Do you feel overstimulated?

Well no, I didn't feel overstimulated when I started writing, but the more that I focused on the sadness, the confusion, and the anger from being rejected yet again -- yeah, I'm feeling a bit overstimulated from my own emotions, and I feel the need to just shut them down and distract myself from them so that I can go back to some more "productive" journaling.

I guess I could go for a walk now, or I could go out to get some fresh air, but I find that sitting with a journal and outpouring my feelings is probably also a healthy option (although I acknowledge the value of a walk right about now). But then the journal won't happen and I'll get distracted with something else.

4. If you would need to name the emotion, what would you call it?

I would call the emotion "hurt," "disappointment," "hope unfulfilled," even "rejected," "anger," "even seething disgust for manipulating me again and leading me on," or something like that. I would have rather that you (wife) left me alone and let me think rather than further drive a nail or a wedge deeper between us.

5. When did you start to feel that way, and what caused it?

The rejection? Easy. When I went to hug her thinking that FINALLY, we emotionally connected, and then her eyes widened and then boom, rejection. I felt stupid and annoyed at myself for even trying.

So what was the trigger? Reaching out physically, touching her, and then experiencing that she recoils away from me yet again in disgust.

6. Is it something life-threatening?

Honestly? Am I going to die right now because she rejected me yet again? No. I'm a big boy and I know how to handle my emotions.

Am I going to die eventually of not being touched? Yes.

Am I over-dramatizing my feelings because I am emotional about being rejected? Not really. I don't expect much from her, and I had no intention of her reaching back out to me and hugging me back, chos v'sholom, nor did I expect a loving response, a kiss, or any kind of intimate response. What I did expect was that she would enjoy being touched and that she would enjoy that her husband reached out lovingly towards her and pulled her into him so that he can push his chest against her stomach and lay his head in her bosom.

I was hoping to just spend a moment sharing my emotions with her and loving her. I was hoping that she would experience that I love her, and that whatever her emotional turmoil that caused her to come into my office for support, I hoped that in addition to good advice, good listening, good reflective speaking, a smile, and some encouragement, I thought she would also enjoy a bit a physical connection too.  Nope, that was just me.

Looking back to just now a few minutes or weeks from now? What just happened was inconsequential. It will have no affect on our future, and it is just yet one more rejected attempt to reach out and touch.

7. Is there anything about that emotion that you don't understand?

I don't remember what emotion I was feeling, because I have already calmed myself down and moved on. Being rejected by her is nothing new. Honestly, 99% of the time, I don't even try to have any physical contact with her because she will almost 100% of the time reject it. So, why should just now have been any different?

Usually I just give her space, but after what we just went through these past few days (where she completely had a hissy fit of rage and anger over putting thoughts into my head I was not thinking), I thought perhaps this was an "I'm sorry" from her, or at least an attempt at a reconciliation so that we can have a better marriage.

What don't I understand about MY emotion? I don't know why I keep reaching out to her. I don't know why I keep trying. I don't know why I have endless optimism that perhaps this time things will be different. Things are never different. She doesn't love me. She thinks I am a selfish bastard.

8. What can you learn from this experience?

What can I learn from this? To keep my f*n hands to myself. To stop seeing her as my wife, and to start seeing her as someone who has already disconnected herself from me.

I should probably just shut down my emotions or learn to express them with other people. Apparently Hashem didn't want me to have a wife. I am a workhorse, not a person. I am a thing to be used and thrown away when she is done with me. I should probably learn to live with that because I'd rather live this life of emotional emptiness and move on once the kids are grown up rather than move on now (already grey) and try to "find love" with all the other divorced men who were smart enough to leave their wives before they started a family together.  I would never destroy my family trying to find my own happiness, especially because there is still the possibility that my wife is right and that I really am the problem here.

Rather, I'll just keep growing, and I'll become a better person whether my wife can see it or not. Then if she still sees me as a piece of garbage she can throw away, by the time we're older, assuming I was unsuccessful in endlessly trying over and over again (I'll never stop) to show her love and support, maybe I'll have come to terms that she was never able to receive love, and I'll find other ways to find connection, tranquility and peace. Maybe I'll take up boxing, and I'll find my source of connection in life getting punched in the face.  It seems that is less painful than being stabbed in the heart.  Realitically, I do realize that there is a strong possibility that I am the cause of my own problems here.

OK, answering honestly. I need to learn from this experience that nobody just forgives another person overnight, and that relationships take time to heal, and I should give our relationship as much time as it needs. After all, I have another 16 years to burn before my kids are grown up and are out of the house. I am hoping that by then I will have fixed the problems here, and if not, maybe I'll have the humility then to love and accept my wife for whoever she is, as she is.  Maybe by then I will have found another way of expressing and feeling love, and we'll be getting along great!

9. What would be one to three things that you can do in the future not to feel that way again?

HAHA how do I not feel rejected again? Stop trying to improve things. Stop trying to reach out to her in love. Learn to read the room and not to let my hopes and my wishes influence the actual vapid unemotional emptiness and abyss of nothing but broken dreams that is probably really in front of me.

So yeah, avoid the trigger. Find my own ways to give myself the hugs I need. Give hugs to the kids, have meaningful relationships with friends and community members, lay under my heavy blanket when I need a hug. Anything but try to get it from someone who can't understand how much I need it.

In the instructions, it says, "other times we need to let go of things, end a negative relationship, or go to therapy." End a negative relationship... that makes me want to cry.

10. What could you do right now to feel better?

I could end this stupid line of questioning which is only leading me further down the thought process of being angry at both myself for thinking something might someday be there when I'm already very worried that she's no longer there emotionally. The therapist says she is starting to reach out, and I'll believe that when I see it. But at this point, I could only keep her happy by doing things for her, watching the baby when she wants me to watch him, take care of the kids and do anything I can to alleviate her from her being a parent, and give her as much freedom as she needs to find ways to fly the coup.

At this point in my old age with my grey'ing beard, I am more than happy to sacrifice my own physical needs for love and touch and intimacy and closeness, and having the kind of relationship I'm pretty sure a Jewish husband and wife are supposed to have together in return for providing for my family with love and being a present and loving father (as much as I can) that brings our children up with good values and moral support. If love is in the card for me, I'll get it when I get it.  I just hope it ends up being with my wife where we have a long, happy marriage together and we die at an old age in each other's arms.

11. How much has your emotional state improved compared to how you felt at the beginning of this session?

I'm actually feeling a bit better about this. I'm feeling more "calm in my head." I have come to terms with my situation, and while I can always be hopeful that things will improve, I won't be stupidly optimistic like I just was. I should always remember who I am dealing with. I don't know what or who broke her and shut her down emotionally, but at least I'll give her a good life and a good parenting experience.  Beyond that, let's hope there is something left between us once our kids leave the home and we are forced to look at our relationship as husband and wife, and not only as father and mother.  

I do have to admit that every rejection, every opening and then rapidly shutting down again, every attempt followed by a certain withdrawal really chips away at me emotionally.  I feel like it deprives me of my humanity, of my sanity, and it leaves me hurt and jaded.  Sometimes I'm so afraid to even try because I really don't want to experience the rejection that is certain to be the result, or the result after whatever pyrrhic victory I might experience in momentarily succeeding in lowering her shield (only to disappoint her immediately afterwards and feel the guillotine of sadness and dejection as soon as her shields come crashing back into place like armor securing her from further perceived hurt or misunderstanding).

In sum, my heart is still racing, and I'm annoyed and a bit angry. I am truly loving, however, the prompts the AI is giving me. It is basically telling me to stop trying to get the intimacy and connection I desire, and find other "outlets" to experience intimacy and connection. Hahaha.

G-d, you make those permissible outlets forbidden, and yet you put me right it the path of sin in order to satisfy my desires for connection while at the same time keeping me from experiencing real love and connection through the "kosher" ways I am supposed to sublimate my desires and channel my love and natural inclinations in a holy and G-dly way. Why don't you just order me to keep kosher while you are at it, but forbid me from eating anything fleishig except pig? Do you really want me to eat nothing at all? Ever? Really? Do you really have that much trust in me to think that I can be that holy?

June 5, 2023 Therapy Session (Why I Block Emotions)

My Therapist says I don't let my emotions out.

The premise of this morning's session was that after so many years of thinking that I was in touch with my emotions (I still think I am), while I might be feeling my emotions, I have been informed that they are not being expressed in my facial expressions or my body language.

I am stoic. I am like a poker player. There is no "tell" as to how I am feeling, and my body language blocks this too.

I always thought that was a good thing, especially since I feel so much loneliness, pain, and sadness each day. Who would want to let something like that out into the world for other people to see? Why let my emotions out? ...AS IF someone would see my sadness and they would feel ANYTHING for me?! AS IF someone would take a moment and share a kind gesture or a bit of non-selfish warmth towards me?

If I cannot get this from the woman I love -- from the most important person in my life -- then why in the world would I dare risk the pain of feeling these crap feelings if there is nobody there to express them to, or to share them with??

I am alone.

I know emotions need to be experienced or they won't go away.

I know, I am only speaking emotionally. It is so important for me to feel my emotions -- all of them, even the painful ones. Without feeling them, they don't just go away; they wait there... lurking... in line waiting for me to be ready to give them the love and attention they deserve. THEN, when I feel them, they feel comfortable leaving me and they are free to be released back into the world.

Loneliness in Marriage

But I don't want to feel these emotions. None of them. I don't want to feel sad, despondent, lonely... like a failure that I made really stupid decisions in my life, and now I am stuck in a relationship that I don't want to leave, but which leaves me unfulfilled, lonely, and alone. "I can fix this!" I say to myself over and over.

The Uphill War for Love

Each time I try, after fighting what feels like a literal war "to get the woman," well, she slips away from me. I might have many weeks of woo'ing, pursuing, showing attention to, and loving with a direct purpose of strengthening the connection between us -- and by extension, the intimicy shared between us as a husband and wife are SUPPOSED to WANT to experience together --, but if that ever happens, the next day it is erased and I must start over again. It is so tiring!

You would think it is the MAN who slips away, out of the bed in the middle of the night; you would think it is the guy who loses interest as soon as he scores his touchdown. Maybe here, I'm not the man, and my female "husband" has no interest in showing any attention to me, and so I remain the masculinely male "wife" in the relationship who wishes that her husband would even glance ONCE at her. I don't wear any fancy negligées, and I do not clip "How to be a better lover" articles from the newspaper -- she wouldn't be interested, and she would find my attempts for closeness to be a burden.

"I am one of the kids" to her, as she says frequently. I am only a burden to her. All I want from her is the limited amount of emotional energy she does not have to share with me; she does not WANT to share with me. I'm still the selfish bastard that hurt her in 2016 with my criticisms and my critiques when we were newly married, but it only gets worse from there [even though I became a more compassionate, thoughtful, and loving husband in 2009, 3 years after trying to make our marriage what I thought we were supposed to be; where we happily played our roles as husband and wife, father and son, provider of the home and provider of the family. Yeah, it got worse.]

Her Trauma is ME.

It's too painful to even share what happened since 2009. I am ashamed, I am humiliated, I am ripped apart with sadness, grief, and agony. Even now, I cannot believe my wife went through what she did, all under my nose, all under my "watchful eye." She experienced trauma for so many years and I did not see it because I was loving, I was caring, but to her, she was stuck in an -- dare I say, from the outside world, imaginary, but to her experience, REAL -- abusive cycle of pain.

OK, so I'm going there. This is really painful for me. [Damn you, privacy.  In respect of my wife's privacy interests so that I do not embarrass her "secrets," I did "go there," but then the next day, I edited out the specifics of what I wrote about below.  Sorry; I believe in honesty, but in this life, I seem to live with a muzzle around my lips always been told not to tell the truth about what is happening around me.]

I have always believed strongly in roles. Women roles, male roles, Rabbi roles, student roles, who is the child, who is the adult, who is the master, who is the servant (bad examples, not relevant to this), and so on.

As a Jewish husband, I understood that it was best for me to give attention to my wife all day, every day, doting on every need, every desire, every wish. "Great!" I thought, I can do that. Even emotionally, I thought I was emotionally present (always working on this one, because there is always room for improvement), giving her attention every day, every week.

What I was not aware of was that while I was trying to make our relationship fine, she was experiencing trauma.  I think she should have confided IN ME about the trauma, but I was the problem.  I was the one that according to her was emotionally closed.  I was the one who couldn't "see" her or the pain she was in.  I was the one who in the early years of our marriage didn't understand yet the importance of keeping criticisms to myself, or better yet, don't even feel criticisms towards your wife.  Just let things slide -- life doesn't need to be the way we were told things would be.  She didn't need to be the wife I thought I was marrying, and I didn't need to be... well, I have no idea what she wanted me to be to her.  She is still not happy and she won't tell me why.

Maybe I'm just an idiot.  Maybe I'm just emotionally closed.  Maybe I'm just so self-involved as she thinks I am, where everything I do -- whether it is spending time with the kids, buying her flowers, or saying hello to her just to see how she is doing -- she interprets each of these things as "he [the selfish bastard] is doing this for himself."

But while I can't defend myself to her because every denial seems to just affirm her suspicions that I am not listening to her, and while I can't defend myself to our marriage counselor because every time I do, I am "being defensive" and I am not hearing her true pain, and I must put my own thoughts aside of how I remember things to be, and I must see things from her perspective, as if every skewed memory is true, every warped understanding of context, or why I did a particular thing I did is false (even though I was the one who remembers what I was thinking when I did something because I was the one who did it)..  But no...  MY REALITY must be put aside, and I must entertain her reality with all of her assumptions and warped way of seeing things that happened, placing into me thoughts I did not have, intentions I did not think... and instead of my reality, I must enter into HER WORLD, HER REALITY so that I can see her as she really is... to see her and the pain she is really experiencing.

Reading that, you probably thought I didn't do that, right?  WRONG.  This therapy session where the therapist suggested that I place "my reality" aside so that I can see "her reality" was more than six months ago, and I immediately understood exactly what she was speaking about, and I was immediately able to jump into her world and see things the way she was seeing things and experiencing them.  It made me feel like crap that "I" (the husband of her internal story that she has been creating for herself) did all those aweful things, and that "I" thought all of those aweful things, and that "I" had all those terrible intentions each time I did something -- whether it was a hug, an inquiry into "hey, you look sad -- how are you doing," or "let's spend some time together," -- all of these things were some evil "me" who hurt her, criticized her, harmed her, hurt her, didn't see the pain that she was feeling.

[YOU KNOW, I totally erased, edited, and danced around what I wrote here the first time.  I was VERY SPECIFIC about something that "real me" did in real life, but that when she saw it through the lens of "evil me," as she did in the stories she told herself, she turned me into a sinister, horrible person -- a person I would never have wanted to live with either.  But to protect her absolute secretive need for privacy from everyone outside the 4 walls of our home, I made the edit after realizing that she wouldn't want her friends to know what she really experienced.]

I almost feel like a convicted criminal for something I know she feels like I did (or neglected to do), but it hurts my heart to have been seen as someone who thinks that way, who acts that way.  Where is my pain for my intentions being so so badly misunderstood and judged so viciously?  I'm editing this post now, so I don't want to mess up the stream of thought I had when I wrote it the first time.

Bottom line, I truly did see that she was sad all of these years.  I could read on her face every time she was upset, and I understood that she was sad, but when I asked her what was bothering her, she denied that she was sad or unhappy.  She made me think that I was imagining what I was clearly seeing on her face so often, so frequently.  There were so many times in our marriage I wanted her to consider taking medicine for what appeared to me to be depression -- and there were times she was so depressed that I couldn't even get a "hello" out of her.  But she told me everything was fine, and so I learned to just listen to her and not push deeper than she wanted me to go.

I learned to trust that when she says she is fine, that she probably is fine.  And, if she is upset, I learned from our first bout of marriage counseling not to take things so personally.  Just because she is upset doesn't mean that it was about me.  So yeah, we've had many years of a rocky relationship, but I trusted her when I noticed she was not happy, and so I inquired about her feelings, and she said things over and over that things were fine.  

But I knew in my heart that everything was NOT FINE. I thought she was lying to me, but I never could put my finger on it where she wasn't being honest with me, because I could always find places I could improve, things I could have done to make her feel more loved, etc.  But every time we were in the same room, it felt like it was only me in the room and I couldn't understand WHY. Now I know -- I was the only one in the room; there was nobody "standing in the closet" with me. She was somewhere else, emotionally "checked-out," experiencing who knows what kind of pain, and I was left alone, confused, wondering why my wife was not emotionally "with me."

The pain I do NOT want to touch.

IF you want to know what kind of pain I myself don't want to touch? It is the pain of fiery sadness, anger, rage, and literally shame and grief because 1) not only was I the stupid, oblivious husband that knew nothing of the agony of what my wife was going through for so many years (again, I wanted to know; I asked over and over again and she kept it from me), but 2) she turned me into the abuser -- a selfish person who did not see her, who did not see the pain she was experiencing. We spent so many months focusing only on her pain in therapy, and rightly so -- she is the one that experienced this.  But do you want to know my pain?!

Do you have ANY idea how that felt for me to be turned into such a horrible selfish person? I feel like a criminal, accused and convicted for something I literally did (I did the things she remembers I did; I said the things she remembers that I said), but how she twisted so much into evil was kept from me. I don't know if I am more sad for her or angry at myself, or angry at HER for letting this happen for so many years!! All that love wasted, all the energy wasted, all that time literally turned into shit and turned from something so beautiful and wonderful into something so demonic, evil, and horrible.

Two Worlds... Both REAL.

I struggle so hard with the two realities -- was I really the abuser she made me into? Or was I really a loving husband but all this trauma was created in her head and was a story she told herself? And, when I know all of the efforts I did over the years -- all the love, all the work, all the sharing, but her reality was that anything that came from me was shit that was worthless and meaningless to her -- how do I reconcile those two realities?  And how today do I stand tall with a smile when I know that she still feels like punishing me for the misdeeds I have done both in the real world and in the stories she told herself?  How do I look her in the eye knowing this is how she spent so many years seeing me, when I too felt real pain in our relationship, but I acknowledged my own flaws and faults, and I worked (and continue to work) to improve myself and to make myself a better person?

So this is my loneliness. This is my pain. In one reality, I am a loving husband who tries as hard as I can to be emotionally present for my family, to work hard to be supportive of our life together, to be a good father to our children and a kind and gentle person to our family. In the other reality, I am that selfish bastard to her that for so many years did not see the struggle and the agony my wife went through, and it was right in front of my face happening under my nose.

Am I a dumb fool?? How could I NOT have seen this? I knew she was in pain all these years, but she never let me see it. Do I defend myself that I tried to see it but that she hid it from me? Or do I accept her reality that I am an abuser that needs to make endless amends and endless "I'm sorry's" for something I didn't do in the first place? ...but I did do it, right? To her, I did it.

So this wasn't my therapy session. This was a piece of my pain, and now I have no emotional energy to continue.

Again, I hate you world for forcing me to hide myself and my true thoughts and feelings.  I hate you world for muzzling me yet again because my wife would be embarrassed if I shared the truth about what happened.  [As if lying to the world for so many years that I wasn't being beaten and abused by my parents and neglected and not fed and forced to live in filth most of my childhood wasn't enough.  Now in my adulthood I am forced to lie again for the "woman in my life," this time the one who would be ashamed if the world knew what she experienced when she was shown judgement and criticism at first in our marriage, but then love and kindness as I grew and developed with so much effort into a better person.]  And I hate you world for putting me in this situation where so many things I have done have been twisted and warped into something ugly and in so many circumstances evil and shameful.  What did I do to deserve this, G-D?  Why was giving up my life to live a life of frumkeit rewarded with a wife who sees me as evil and with so much pain and loneliness I don't know what to do with myself?  Why is this a reward for doing the right thing and making the right decisions in life?!