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?
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