love

I love you because I choose to. There is nothing you can do to make me love you more and nothing about you that can make me love you less. I love you. It is my gift…a piece of me that washes out from me. I put myself in such a place to be able to give love to you and this is to love like God loves.

Why is it that we love? I look at my spouse and see the words forming in slow motion on her lips. Everything is silent and I hear in my mind her words one at a time. Why…do…you…love…me..?

She seems genuine. In fact, I wade through this dome in my mind looking up at those big purple words that just hang there, formed form the huge lips of the dome and I know by now she must be waiting for an answer. It is a very important question. She must be hurting now, wondering if I don’t have a reason. Will she feel unloved if I can’t come up with a reason?

Why do I love? I can tell her all the things that are good about her, but those things really don’t justify this feeling that seems to go deeper than me. This feeling was borne before I ever existed. It reaches through me to her and connects me to her, but there is nothing about her that could change the reason for it’s existence.

Did I always love her?

How is it possible to love someone I do not know? Do I have to know someone to love them and if by knowing more of them and more about them I grow to love them more, then is not my love based upon those things and not pure?

Do I love Jen because of what she does for me? I could say I love what she does for me, but that is not the same as loving her. No, the more I dig, the more the answer sifts away from me…It’s almost like the question doesn’t even make sense. I’ve felt this feeling before…right before I figure out that I don’t understand the nature of something and therefore cannot define it with questions based on my old perspective.

Why doesn’t the sphere stand up? The sphere has neither top nor bottom, but is one eternal round and once I understand that, the question becomes a silly question. The nebulous answers make sense. The sphere is never standing up and always standing up.

She must still be waiting for my answer. But the question is not legitimate with my shallow perspective. Love does not have a why. Unconditional love permeates and moves us with no reason. We love because of who we are…not because of who the other person is. We love. Love is a function of the person who loves, not the object that is receiving love. The reason I love is I. God loves. Why does he love us? Because he is our father…not because we are his children or because we are cute or because we are needy. No….He loves us because of Him and when I love Jen, I think I love her because of who I am. I wonder if she is still waiting.

But I still don’t have the answer. The poets argue: I love you because of your soft skin, because of how you make me feel, because of what you do to me, for me and the other poets respond—nothing could make me stop loving you when wrinkles come and winter closes over us, when you leave me and hurt me, I still love you. But they argue what they do not understand…for love is from the lover and needs no muse.

I love her because I am one who loves. I love her because I am the type of man that wants her happiness, who cares for her life for her comfort, for her joy…for her. I think of telling her that I love her because that is the kind of man I am. I am the lover, but why? Why am I that kind of being? Why do I love? What is it about me that allows me to pour out this gift? Who am I that I have access to feel this way for some other person? I am God’s son…but is my spiritual pedigree enough to grant me access to stand in the channel of this energy that I call love? The devils were sons of God. No, it must be a choice to participate in love. I love you because I choose to.

I Love you Jen, because I choose to.

I’ll let you know how it goes…I’m scared that I will still just never be good enough for Jen. I am tiring of trying. I want to just feel ok to live.

Maybe that’s best done alone…how weak I am with her.

bleh

My heart and soul are both hurting right now in my chest because I want so badly to qualify for your love and I keep feeling rejected. My excitement and sacrifice and hope and effort…my listening and hearing and my displays of affection…my service, my fatherhood, my core desires to bring us happiness…rejected.

Maybe you could someday grow to love how I …rejected.

I want to reconnect. I want to grow and love and be together…I am sick with yearning to be a husband who is not…

yours truly,

Rejected

Interesting.

painful,

hope it helps.

Love is tough. and learning to love is fraught with peril and risk and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain.

Is it still worth it? yes.

Here is the plan I wrote to my wife yesterday…
Purpose of this plan:

To start living my life with you and our kids in a manner which brings us all joy. I realize that our marriage has been painful for such a long time and we need change. I want to instigate this change by acknowledging where we have been and by laying out a prayerful foundation for where we can go and how I see that happening. This plan is recognition of where we have been—what I have done—it is a reckoning. And it is a resolution. It is repentance and an attempt at honest, humble progress. There is a spiritual creation before a physical creation and this is my spiritual creation of the new life that I hope to live with you. The physical creation of this work will show in my actions, conversations, and interactions. I know there will be mistakes in the future. I will address those as well. It has helped me to pray and stay in contact with myself and Heavenly Father as I have written this. I want us to grow closer to Him and closer to each other. I hope this plan can help us to develop a celestial marriage.

Where we have been

My part

This part is difficult and freeing at the same time. It is ugly. I am taking most of this from the work I have done in step 4 in the big book. I understand that my actions and decisions have caused a tremendous amount of pain and destruction. I hope this list can show you that I have seen your pain and seen at least some of the impact of my decisions.

I have belittled you. I have used mocking words to try and make you feel small. I have called you your mother’s name. I have threatened you. I have yelled at you. I have screamed at you and used profanity. I have called you atrocious names and acted hatefully towards you. I have thrown things in my rage. I have attacked your character. I have broken down doors and scared you. I have emotionally bullied you. I have blamed you and shamed you. I have foisted responsibility for my actions on you. I have accused you of lying when I knew you were telling the truth. I have lied to you. I have hidden things from you. I have sought the imagined comfort of other women by having looked at pornography and masturbated. I have brought filth into our home through the internet. I have put our children in a situation to be exposed to this filth by leaving it on our hard-drive. I have not coped well. I have been so prideful. I have been arrogant. I have put you down to justify my own sins. I have been stubborn. I have denied my sins so many times. I have rationalized away responsibility. I have ignored you. I have refused to open up to you. I have rejected your attempts at friendship. I have interpreted you to be mean and hateful. I have worn colored perceptions of you that have driven us apart. I have refused intimacy with you. I have accused you falsely. I have diminished your efforts. I have been thoughtless and lacked charity. I have been stubborn. I have been judgmental. I have been unsupportive of you. I have insulted you. I have set a poor example for my sons for how to treat you.

Jen, I do not seek to justify the wrongs I have done you. They are wrongs and are justified only through repentance and Christ’s atonement. I am sorry. Heavenly Father knows my heart and I know it will be so hard for anyone having gone through this much pain at my hands to ever see me in a favorable light. I know that God can do anything and I hope that He can give us another chance. I beg for your forgiveness. I want you to know that I can name specific instances of these and although my memories and perceptions will always be different from yours that I have been able to go outside myself and identify with your position and your pain and your perspective. And this is what brings the sorrow. This is why I can mean that I am sorry. I feel compassion for you at the pain that was brought on by my decisions.

In the past it has been very difficult for me to apologize, Jen. I thought that if I did something wrong and admitted it, that it defined my core soul. I believed that if I admitted to lying then I was a liar. Forever. In my life, I have been through traumas and formed coping strategies or personality paradigms of life that have kept me from emotionally collapsing during those traumas.
Ironically these parts of me have caused tremendous pain as they have been misapplied in situations throughout my life. During the times that I caused you pain and was brutal and ugly and sinning, I allowed these parts to make decisions for me. I was flailing…refusing to be in control of myself. My core self did not know what to do and made terrible decisions to let these parts of me take over and the results of those decisions hurt you and hurt us and hurt me. For my part, I am sorry.

The Dynamic

The decisions I made impacted you. They put you in a situation where you had to now deal with pain from me. I’m not sure how much of the dynamic was caused by my instigating pain and how much was from just being 2 different people with coping inadequacies that we both bring into the marriage, I’m sure it was much of both. While the blame may not help us, an honest look at the result can take us forward. At the end of the day, we developed a terrible dynamic of blame and hurt and defensive isolation. Our communication has felt scary and torturous to both of us. We started seeing anything the other person was doing as a function of that pain. Mark helped highlight this for me when he dissected some of our conversations when we were seeing him together. You would say something that I misinterpreted and I would use this misinterpretation as proof to myself that you were meaning me harm, when what you really were asking for was understanding and love. “James why aren’t you listening?” really means “James, it is important to me that you and I connect. I want to be closer to you. I want you to be closer to me and understand each other and connect.” I have taken such statements using my incorrect perception of your intent to mean “James, you aren’t listening and it’s your fault that we can’t communicate and you are a bad person because of it.” And this works both ways. After months and years of this, I have become mired in the incorrect perception that you hate me and that you think only ill of me and that makes it hard for me to hear the true you coming through. I am certain we both have developed a perception of the other that is very far from the truth. I often feel like you don’t know me and you have expressed how little I seem to understand you. Eventually this degenerates to the point where when I say “ I am really hurt ing right now” you hear “Jen, you are the cause of all my pain and it’s your fault that I am failing.”

However we got here, I am realizing that we are both wrong. The True Jen is not like the Jen I have imagined when I have been defensive. And the True James is very different than the monster you see when you feel attacked by me. This dynamic is stopping our progression as a family. I cannot reconcile my perception of you with the times that I see you vulnerable and soft. I know you are a great person. I have been so hurt by this false perception and you have too. And we have. As part of honesty, we must strip away the fearful lies and redefine each other and choose to see the truth of nobility that each of us has and put in perspective the mistakes and flaws.

Where our family is now

Broken. Neither one of us feel much support from the other one. Both feel threatened and alone. Our children feel sad and unsure of how a family should be. We live separately. Partnership is not daily utilized. Our communication is often marred by pain and hopelessness. We have very little openness and feel the need to protect and distance just to maintain our own safety. Our family is broken. To take an honest inventory of how our family is functioning right now is a hard thing for me to do and yet the recognition of the truth allows us to make decisions that will impact that truth and set us free to determine the new future. I do not see the hopelessness of our current situation as a protagonist but rather as a call to change. I think that both of us are ready to not be victims of the present any more and that puts us at a uniquely powerful crossroads in the decision of our lives.

It needs to be noted that the items which previously helped cause so much pain have been addressed in a way that they can now be managed.

-

I have been clean form porn for almost 10 months. I have been clean from masturbation for more than 6 months. The sexual addiction is in remission. The addict is being managed daily and the results witnessed and assessed by professional counselors and by God. The solution came in learning appropriate ways to cope and discovering the emotions that highlight the coping need.

The paradigms that I have had my entire life about my own inadequacies which developed into narcissistic attitudes and overcompensation have been addressed using EMDR with great success. Much of this work and pain and the solution centered around my relationship with my mother and my trauma with the children’s hospital. I was able to root out the cause and re-decide my perspective of me and perhaps more importantly of how I relate to others.

The chemical depression that sent me back into destructive behaviors repeatedly throughout my life has been managed with medicine. Finally we have a dosage and prescription which has allowed me to function at normal responsive levels. I am committed to continuing this throughout my entire life.

The three things at my control that have wreaked the most pain in our marriage have been addressed. They will require continued vigilant management. But I am committed and now I am armed with the healing tools that make this possible.

What Next?

When I am in doubt in my life, I have turned to the words of God and they have never failed me. When I think about what to do next, I am directed to the Family Proclamation. This is the model for our family plan. This is the goal. My notes are added in blue.
rear their children in love and righteousness,
to provide for their physical and spiritual needs,
to teach them to love and serve one another, this can be best accomplished by example how we treat one another.
to observe the commandments of God …Jen, it is my personal goal to do this daily.
to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live.

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children…Parents have a sacred duty to

Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations. I feel held accountable every day. This is something important for me today, not a nebulous threat to fear on some future judgment day.

The family is ordained of God.
Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. I need ‘Us’ to meet my potential.
Children are entitled to
birth within the bonds of matrimony, and
to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. This includes a commitment to emotional connectedness and refusal of any substitute. This means emotional intimacy to me.

Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of
faith, listed first. It is this faith that motivates me to write this plan of action and that allows us to try again if that’s what you want as well.
prayer, couple prayer, personal prayer, ongoing pleading throughout the hours for guidance and peaceful listening.
repentance, this is necessary as a step to the next pieces. And will be a necessary staple ongoing.
forgiveness, this must happen before respect and love and compassion as well. For ourselves and each other.
respect, we both will need this in order to have any communication.
love, I don’t understand very much about this, but I see it as sacrificing my pride for your welfare.
compassion, this is a blessing that comes from asking and listening. I need this. I need to give this.
work, and
wholesome recreational activities.

By divine design, fathers are to
preside over their families in love and righteousness and are
responsible to provide the necessities of life and
protection for their families.

Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.

In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.” Equal partners may not mean the number of hours spent in each department, but rather the investment each of us has in the others’ success.

This is what I want next.

I want us to actually follow the proclamation to the family. I want to take my spot at the head of the household and lead worthily. I want to listen and do the things that I know are right. I want you to enjoy life with me. I want to enjoy life with you. I want to stop trying to get joy my own way and start listening to God and start following what I am hearing.

-

How will we get there?

I recognize that the disparity in where we are and my plan for where I want to be is overwhelming. I need a plan for how to get there. You have expressed many times some of the things you want to see to start on this path and I have incorporated this into the plan. I believe that we both can do this.

Boundaries

In order for growth to happen, we must first find stable ground to work from. This place must be safe for each of us and we will use these boundaries to determine the risks of the next step. Boundaries not only define us, they help us to see how the other person has respect for that self-definition. As we both come together, there may be some self-defining expectations that conflict with each other. We can compromise and accommodate in order to show that the other person is important to us. I realize that because of the decisions I have made in the past that what you want in order to feel safe now may have grown. Boundaries are basically a way that we determine if the other person respects our desires and wants to help us.

Here are the boundaries you have expressed that you want.

To feel our children are safe
No vulgar sexual talk around the kids
Stop destroying items around the house
Drive safely with the kids in the car

To feel personally safe
No throwing things
No destroying things
No shouting in anger
No swearing
See me manage my mood when I feel rejected by you.
No large purchases without consensus

To feel supported
Address oversleeping
To see me pitch in with the house/kids/cleaning/meals
Temple-worthiness
Checking out curtailed (gaming)
Starting the day when the kids wake up
Keeping a sleep schedule that let’s you get your rest

To have ongoing safety plans when any of these boundaries are crossed
Consequences for specific violations
See me attending Group
Ongoing accountability (access to therapists, email, etc)
See Rationalizations stop

I want you to feel respected by me. I want you to feel like you matter to me. Many times I have taken your assertion of boundaries as an attempt to control me, when more accurately, you may have wanted to feel respected, to feel heard by me and important to me. Some of the ways which you asserted your boundaries have been a stumbling block to me hearing this message. For example, when addressing oversleeping, speaking over me to say “you are a lazy, selfish man” doesn’t carry the message of “Please show me that I matter to you” very effectively; especially if you compound it with my own skewed perspective of you as someone who hates me or wants to shame me. Many times that I crossed your boundaries, I did not understand that you saw it as a violation of your safety or sign of disrespect. Some of the times I did and just made poor decisions.

Here are my boundaries – these things help me feel respected and important.
%{color:green}1. I want to not have my past sins thrown in my face
2. I want not be cut-off when I am speaking
3. I want to not be spoken over or raised a voice to.
4. I want to not be dissected verbally (diagnosed by you—IE, “James, that is the narcissist speaking” or “that is the addict lying”)
5. I want to not be mocked
6. I want to not be sworn around
7. I want to not be criticized or disdained in front of our sons.
8. I want to be trusted with small decisions (i.e. when to come home, how to manage my time, small purchases etc)%

There are other things that I really want that would help us develop love and intimacy, but this part of the plan calls for basic respect and these are the things that will help me see that you do care about my feelings and that you do respect me.

Respect

What I want is a way for you to express your feelings and boundaries in a way I can hear. I need a way that I can show you when I fail that I did not intend to hurt your feelings or cross your boundaries and if we can believe each other, we have the start of respect. I need a way that I can express my boundaries to you and express my feelings to you when you cross them without you feeling like I am criticizing you or attacking you.

Here is what I will do. When I cross a boundary that makes you feel violated, I want you to say, “Jamie, I feel hurt or disrespected and I wonder if you were trying to do that.” I chose those words because tone is extremely important to me. I will instantly stop. I will apologize. Since I honestly do not want you to feel hurt, I really hope you can feel my sincerity in those moments. I want this to happen. I will go back to this list mentally to see which boundary I crossed so that I can express to you that you are important and if I can’t instantly correct, I will take a time out to straighten myself out and reconnect to the True James which has the perspective of this plan.

I want you to commit to do the same things.

When I feel violated, I will say “Jenny, I feel hurt and I wonder if you were trying to do that.” I want you to immediately stop and apologize. I want you to see if there was a reason listed here that caused me to feel disrespected or violated. I want you to do this so you can express that I am important to you and if you can’t instantly repair, I want you to say “I need a time out” and straighten yourself out and reconnect to the Jenny that doesn’t believe all the awful things about me.

Commitment

This is beyond controlling each other. This is now about building a foundation that can only be built by two people who are committed. The purpose for this is that we stop the cycle of blame and misperception. That we get out of ourselves and into the others’ shoes.

I realize this is a very scary thing to try again since all the previous tries have led to more pain. There have been some successes where we were growing with Mark but that was before I addressed the core self-esteem/sabotage narcissism with EMDR. I want you to feel as safe as you can taking the step back into growth if that’s what you choose.

I am committing to attend an SA group weekly.
I am committing to going to bed before midnight.
I am committing to sleep on the couch if I swear around you.
I am committing to remain active in church.
I am committing to read and pray daily.

Living apart is not helping us build a celestial family. I want to see movement on this by Sunday. I am asking you to be committed to us by living with me. I am asking you to put yourself in a place to be married to me and to risk so that we can have the rewards that have come from years of pain and hard work.

-

Deciding to stay separated is a clear message to me that you do not want to try again. We have been separated before. This last separation started as a 3-week cooling off period to give both of us time to decide if we wanted a divorce or not. 3 weeks has come and gone and I am glad that I had the extra time to work with Dr Wayland and manage the huge piece of emotional disease that had hurt us so much. The decision still needs to be made. If you decide to keep working on the marriage, I will come home and we can continue. If you decide that you do not want to try again with me, I can understand that as well. That will really hurt, but Heavenly Father will help me do the next right thing. Staying separated indefinitely is not alright with me. It does not allow me to pursue my responsibilities of a husband and father. Please try and understand that I so want us to have an eternal family.

-

I am praying as I write this that you can feel the sincerity of my soul and that you can determine what God wants for us in a way that will lend you the conviction that is needed to do what He would have us do.

Love

I imagine that after respect, love will grow. That with risk, comes rewards and that with emotional intimacy comes love. Both of us have a lot to learn about ourselves before we can fully appreciate and experience what we want, and yet, I am hopeful that love will grow on the journey.

I am humbled at how little I know about love. I know that I want it though and that I want it with you and that it needs to be part of the plan for our marriage. I hope to add more to this part of the plan with you.

Daily Plan

My daily plan for our marriage will include more time with the kids.

I plan on waking with them and helping as I can in the mornings. I plan on reading scriptures with you and alone. I plan on having family prayers each morning and each night.

These things need to happen to grow our family.

My daily plan includes exercise for me. Exercise has helped me to manage many physiological stresses and hormones and has helped clear my head and remind myself who I am. It has enlivened me and invigorated me.

My daily plan includes plenty of mistakes with you. I know I will make mistakes, but for every mistake, my plan includes another try. I need continual repentance to stay right with god and I imagine that part of the ugly dynamic between us was caused by my lack of continual repentance to stay right with you.

My daily plan includes risking communication with you each day. It includes you risking with me each day and both of us learning how to balance our own wants and needs with the perspective of our spouse. This seems nebulous, but it really is very practical. Without setting us up for judgment and failure, I want our daily plan to include service for each other.

Weekly Plan

My weekly plan for our family includes Family home evening.

I have missed it. It is a part of the plan that Heavenly Father has for us.

My weekly plan includes time for you and I to get to know each other without the kids and do something fun and date-like. This is important to me. You are important to me. We are important to me.

My weekly plan includes doing inventory. This means that Sunday during the kids’ afternoon naps, you and I will sit down and get out this plan and review our progress. We will discuss each other and our children. We will fearlessly and humbly communicate towards moving this family in the direction we feel it should go. This is the time to express needs and wants that need addressing. This is a time for me to lead our family.

My weekly plan includes communicating schedules like we have been doing via email. I like that I know what you have coming up and I feel like its good for you to know what you can expect around my work schedule.

My weekly plan includes touching base about the bills. It will grow in the future to include more financial planning but for now, my plan here is incomplete. I know that at the minimum we need to have weekly conversations about how much money there is and where it is going.

My weekly Plan includes making family memories outside the house at least 1time/week.

Mid-range plan

In the next 6 months, I believe much will change.
My career will shift.
I have received several answers to prayers and will need to finish my degree.
I will explore the field of education and define a career path for the next decade.
You have expressed that you want to begin a new career in teaching.
Both of us want to leave Dallas.
We will need to continue our individual and marriage counseling. I believe that it is provident that the counselors we are involved with now are not area-dependant.

We will need to maintain flexibility in how we manage the demands on our time and money with regards to these goals while still fulfilling our parental responsibilities and growth in our marriage.

This part of my plan needs more shape. It also needs your input. We can better determine this together so I will leave this portion unfinished until I hear from you.

Eternal goals

It is only fair as you make this decision for you to know what my eternal goals are. I believe that both of us want the same things, but I will express to you what my goals are for this lifetime and you can determine for yourself if you think they are close enough to your goals to join our paths together.

Personal goals

Return again to live with Heavenly Father
Learn the meanings and integration of faith, hope, and charity.
Influence as many people as possible for as much good as possible. Be a light.
Live in a manner of honor and uprightness so that I can stand tall in the presence of God and myself
Be a great father
Be a great husband
Learn constantly

Family Goals

Lead my family back to heavenly Father
Help my wife accomplish her goals
Teach my children right from wrong
Teach my children to look to God
Teach my children to contribute to society
To foster health
Love

Are we going the same direction?
Are you willing to continue on with me?

Have any of you heard of EMDR? Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I am a skeptical person…very skeptical…but at least I know it. I went into the office of a world-renowned specialist who excused his formal dress because he had meetings and said he prefers jeans. He was a bearded therapist. I couldn’t help thinking that bearded men have something to hide (Freud). His office was plush and his mannerisms quirky and informal, but he sized me up in 3 minutes. He had an uncanny honesty and succinctness that summed all my pain and problems into a simple phrase: you have been “the problem” for your whole life and you are ready to move past that.

Why was I there?

Well let’s start with my last update. I have been clean from Pornography for 9 months and from masturbation now for 5 months. I am learning to love. But it’s a soul-raking, garbage scraping, disemboweling process…and that’s not even counting how much pain it inflicts on the lovee.

So I overcame the Addictions and was still moping and hard to satiate. I went to a psychiatrist and we re-formulated medication and got me set up on anti-depressants. Whew. Now I am not using coping substitutes and there is less to cope with since depression is physiologically managed. But my fixer is still Jen. Honey, make me happy. I suppose that I really hadn’t beaten all the coping substitutes. There was still the co-dependence. I will do whatever I think you want so that you will make me happy (whatever-I-think-I-want). Well that didn’t work. Duh. So I went to therapy with Mark Bird (see other entries) and we worked out the need for me to take care of my self…and the little pieces of me that I had used to try and deal with life. So now I was working on me. HARD. And yet, Jen would push a TON of buttons for me. Why did she have to be so mean? Why was she always sounding like my mom? Why did I hate her so much? Why did I feel controlled? Why did I hate life around her? Why did I see her as a chore-master? Why was she always being the “responsible one” and me the escaper? I dove into gaming to escape.

Yohoho Puzzle Pirates – free- accessible from work-just don’t ever do it. (but if you do, my character name is Salmonbeard)

We were once again disconnected. I was getting more and more miserable. I wanted out. She was getting more and more abandoned. She would try and make me take the blame…which was partly her stuff and partly fair. I did not want to engage. I hate my mom.

She capped that thought on the day we had an argument about something she said to my sons. I thought she was talking badly about me to my sons (something my mother is famous for—dressing down others in public). It was actually a benign comment. “Daddy is sleeping. He doesn’t want to play with you right now.” but it enraged me. Other comments throughout the day enraged me. I was in my kid. I was little Jamie all over again. And I lashed out. “I want a divorce! That’s it! I’m done!!”

But the grown-up me was telling me…I really don’t want a divorce.

So I looked back. And once I got through the initial wave of fear and terror and shriveling, I realized that I have only 10 memories that I can pull from age 12 and younger. hmmmmm…repressing much? But why? So I asked Mark what to do and Jen was already in motion.

“James, I don’t want to be married to you any more either. You treat me like your mother treated you and you treat me as if I were your mother. I want you out.”

She agreed with my divorce decree.

So here I was, faced with an impending divorce, still living in the home with my demon plastered over my wife’s face and her inadvertently pushing all my buttons while I’m trying to heal this pain from when I was a kid. I felt crushed…overwhelmed.
Scared…and my adult was having a VERY tough time maintaining composure, let alone delving into my past. I called the children’s mental hospital that Mom had checked me into when I was 8 and it nearly killed me with cold fear. Thankfully my records have been destroyed…but I knew I had to face it…and I needed space too.

So now we are separated…for 3 weeks.

She agreed to not decide for sure about the divorce for 3 weeks. In that 3 weeks, I will spend time looking inward. I have beaten the addictions out of the way…at least porn and masturbation. I have faced my co-dependency somewhat and I have managed my depression and after all that, I am still too broken for her to want to be my wife…let alone for her to connect to, to make love to me, to cuddle with. And now, I have to get my mom out of my marriage.

The fixing continues. It’s endless. I am always going to be broken and maybe too broken to be her husband. But I am a lover and a fighter. In all the fixing and hopelessness, I see a purpose if not a means.

And lately, I think I have stumbled across a maybe. This may be accomplished by this self-described miracle worker. EMDR.

There I am in the office and he says he wants to install a safe place. that some of the work we do will be uncomfortable and painful and I need a safe place to go to. I am now fighting the urge to laugh out loud at him…I am giving things like this a shred of faith…just a shred. He’s a good salesman though and describes stories and cites studies. Ok, Eye movement. What is it? You know REM sleep? the type of sleep responsible for our energy replenishment, growth, production of anti-toxins and who knows what else? Well the R.E.M. stands for Rapid Eye Movement. And the theory is that it is the actual movement of the eye and the continual distraction of focusing is what opens up the conduit to these healing powers….the crossing over of information from right brain to left…the processing that requires opening and cross-communication trans-medulla. Interesting. But you’re still a quack. I giggle inside but my face is stone cold serious. After reprimanding myself for being a cynical know-it-all, I say to myself, “James, you’re already paying for the session. Give it a try.”

The difference between a try and an honest try is that the honest try requires a sliver of faith and hope. I mustered it up. Stranger things have happened and if I’m going to give it a try, I will give it my best try. After all…if all I have to show for my 3-week separation is 100,000 extra piratey doubloons, I am screwed. I gave it an honest effort.

But it worked. At least the first part did.

He got out a tripod with this 3’x2”x2” rod-type metal box. The metal stick was a row of miniscule lights…almost like a reader board. He set up the tripod with some difficulty and sat in a chair next to me. He used a remote-control to switch it on. I was now sitting on the couch, facing this eye-level row of lights about 2-feet from my face. another touch from his clicker and the 2 middle lights went off while the 2 lights to their right went on and then faster again until there was a moving green streak bouncing from side to side on this light-stick. Interesting. Almost hypnotic. hey, I thought…that may be why hypnotists use a swinging watch—Rapid Eye Movement…accessing subconscious…hmmm
Dr Wayland’s voice interrupted my wandering.
“Think of a Safe Place where you can be yourself…it can be real or imagined.”
He continued
“What does it look like? See it in your mind”
After 10 seconds the light stopped. He had me describe it and said “ok, good. now touch your right arm and that will be your button. You can access your happy place by touching this spot whenever you want.”
Ohhh-Kay…But I complied. After all, I was giving it a fair shot. The lights came back on…back and forth. “Now back to your safe place, what does it smell like? How does your body feel there?”
Lighter, I thought, like getting out on the last day of school. Hmmm. Funny feeling…I like it. The lights stopped.
“Now take that and put it in your button.” I touched my arm again. After 3 or 4 more solidifying and awakening trips with the moving light, we were done.
“What’s next?” I asked? I was just about ready for anything.

“What’s next is finding a new appointment time for you and settling our fee.” I paid the man 75$ and he told me to try to access my happy place by touching my button in between now and the time we next meet.

Driving home, I thought “was I just had?” I had a ton of stuff at work I should have been doing…waiting on me. UuuuuRGH! And the deadlines! how many emails will I have when I get back to the office? Who will be asking for me? But as I turned right, my left arm with it’s new imaginary button came right in front of my face. In traffic? Why not? and I tried it. Instantly my body felt lighter.

Wow.

I was safe and everything was alright. I was awake and still driving back to work, but with safety. My adult was definitely in charge. The experience itself was worth 75$. But it has worked for me 30+ times since then. Science and Self…

Wow.

Maybe this can help me face my Mom. And maybe it can help me be a man. Who can then be a husband. Love. It’s a hell of a trip. I’ll keep you posted.

Does anybody love me? Please tell me I am good.

I know, pathetic, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to my co-dependant James yet.

quick fix anyone?

She didn’t mean it when she asked me to move out.

Well a part of her did…but not the true self. I feel the urge to report to you all that loving is really hard work. I see it as a core defining emotion. Ok I promise not too much more sap till the good stuff.

When I ask myself what is important to me, Love is and has always been with me the first thing. I agree with all my selves…It has grown in meaning though.

For example when I was a kid, Love was what I wanted.

When I was a teenager Love conquered all and was a conquering thing…and I used it to help me feel better about myself and I got it from girls. It could be coaxed out of people…I was all about love.
But then on my mission (I served as an LDS missionary in northern Cali for 2 years) Love was divine. I think here I gained the most knowledge about the functions and powers and attributes of Love because I was constantly serving others, yearning for their welfare over my own. I was still outwardly focused and didn’t have much character inside or much self-ballast, but I was doing for others as best I could and working and loving for the right reasons…and that resonated in me. It gave me parts of myself to start creating ballast with.

And now, Love is core for me because I love what love can do and how it can heal and motivate and inspire. Anyways, this has been a core for me for a long while…its part of who I am.

Sap over. Now, Why did I just now figure this out? Well, I just now started getting to know me.

Is this guy nuts?
And what does love have to do with your marital problems?
And what does getting to know you have to do with love?

Well lets start with the first question…Am I nuts? I think not and I agree with my selves.

As for what this has to do with marriage, I have learned a new perspective recently that has made sense of why I do destructive things while trying to be loving. I have learned a bit about the problem and art of ‘evil’.

I don’t see myself as an evil person, but when I look back, I can see ways I have acted or things that I have said/done in rage or desperation that must have looked evil to others. I had a really tough trying to convince my wife that I swore at her because I love her.

Inside, I believe that I am an honest guy who will pursue rightness and love and goodness beyond my death and yet here were these things I was doing that weren’t helping me. I was the only one responsible. And they were hurting my loved ones.

Again, Mark (our professional marriage counselor) comes to the rescue: Imagine that your life is a car. In a normal situation where life is smooth and everything’s pretty much alright, your true self is the driver. And as you go through life, you have traumas. Different parts of us develop to help us manage these traumas so when the car starts running off the road, we don’t just crash and die. Because we are little kids and human and mostly desperate when the first traumas start to hit, the parts that we develop usually aren’t the healthiest, but get the job done…for example, when I feel attacked, in order to get myself out of that really uncomfortable situation, I have had success attacking back. I criticize and degrade the attacker to make myself feel supported. Figuratively speaking, my “Critic James” jumps in the driver’s seat and takes over life. If something unrelated were to happen when the critic is in the driver’s seat, the critic would react critically, maintaining his somewhat destructive control in a genuine effort to do the best I can.

For example, Jen and I get in an argument. I feel hurt and the critic takes over, I feel attacked all around and have all my bristles up.
Then my four year old asks me “Dad, do you know where my baseball is?” and I say “Why do you think I would know, I’m not the one who lost your stupid baseball.” hmmmm…Not really the message the true me would want conveyed to my innocent boy.

What’s even more important to realize is that even though Jen and I are arguing, not everything she says in the argument may need the solid defense that “Critic James” provides. This part of me is a specialist…he should be seen as a consultant and used sparingly, but when he takes over, “Critic James” takes things Jen might say as an attack-—even if they aren’t.
I.e. “James, I really want you to hear me.”
This statement may mean “James, you are important to me and I want to be connected to you and I desire to feel closer to you by communicating in a meaningful way.”
But “Critic James” hears “You’re a bad listener” and reacts by saying “Well you’re a terrible listener too! Why don’t you show me a bit of respect and then I could hear you!”

Anyways those were drawn out examples, but you get the point: Our different parts take over the driver’s seat and in our genuine effort to do the best thing, we hurt ourselves and those we love.

So what now? I’m a schizophrenic maniac? Ok. Which pill do I take for that? Well actually, it’s very normal (again, according to my counselor).

The trick lies in choosing to not get out of the drivers seat.

But how do I do that?

Well, at first I tried white knuckling it…sheer force of will. I told myself “THE ADDICT SHALL NEVER DRIVE AGAIN!” “ADDICT BEGONE!!” But for me, “The Addict James” has literally been a lifesaver. He is there for a reason.

I believe it’s morally wrong to masturbate and to look at pornography and yet in the times in my life when I have wanted to kill myself, that addict jumps in the driver’s seat and takes over…so I go and get my fix and feel a ton of shame afterwards, but I didn’t know how else to manage whatever it was that I was escaping and the escape worked long enough that whatever pain I was feeling has abated somewhat…so the addict saved me because I am still alive. The imaginings and alternate realities I indulged in were enough for me to numb the pain down to more manageable levels. So the Addict stays, meaning there will always be a part of me that will want to escape to addictions when panic sets in. The neural pathways are there.

But wait a minute. These are extreme circumstances where the addict is valuable…I mean really—aren’t there better ways to cope? I don’t want to be in a situation of such desperation in the first place! Why did I let myself get to that point? Well it just so happens that these different parts of me do what they do for a reason:

a need is not being filled.

I am not listening to myself. I am not self-aware and the further I ignore the need, the more forceful the need becomes.
If, for example, I betray myself and let myself get walked on by others, my “Little Jamie” might cry out and try to tell me “that hurts me” but I shove him down and stuff it. Now he is really hurting. I stop trusting myself. I stop giving feedback to my true self. I silence the inner voices and I feel empty inside. I start making decisions that only fulfill the needs of a certain part of me—building a shell of protection through gruffness or choosing to look at the world in a certain way so I don’t feel so empty.

Rather than saying “What little Jamie? You don’t like getting walked on? It hurts? Ok let’s talk about it…You’re right that wasn’t a very good path to take. Lets go fix that.” I end up with unhealthy Subs jumping into the driver’s seat trying to clean up the mess that the eventual self distrust has created.

I was relieved to discover through my own observations and again, more collusion with professionals what we all do it!

This happens almost invisibly as we are trying our best just to cope with day to day pain and discomfort. Over time we start identifying ourselves by the persona that take over for us. “I am a tough guy” we find some personas work better in certain situations and we try to get into those situations that may utilize our “Tough Guy” or our “self-deprecating humor” or our “victimhood” or our “Co-dependant”<—My personal favorite. And after months and sometimes years of this we find ourselves wondering who we really are…and why do we feel so detached from ourselves?

It may not show up like that…it may show up in questions of “Why can’t I trust anyone?” “Why don’t my relationships work out?” “Why can’t I be happy?” “Why can’t I feel loved?”

Because I have given myself up…I have lost myself to parts of me that were just trying to help; parts of me that I let take over because I didn’t know what was really happening or what was most important at the time.

So now I begin the journey of self-discovery. I try to recognize my guys. I try to recognize the parts of me that most easily take over my emotions; that seem to effortlessly slip into my driver’s seat. But now instead of just allowing it and cleaning up after them, I stop and keep control. I listen to myself. (or I am trying rather)

It’s a new sensation to notice “Hey, I feel yucky.”

James: “Why am I so anxious?”

Non-Confrontational James: “Well James, I’m glad you asked! I am afraid I might lose my job because I am not good at details, so I am going to ignore all my problems and pretend they aren’t here and not confront life.”

James: “Oh. Ok, ‘non-confrontational James’ I think that is a legitimate fear and we can face it together, but I am in the driver’s seat now and I will help you and take care of you. So out you go…now, Why do you feel like this?”

—This is generally where I get stuck and I have to do a lot to figure myself out. But even acknowledging the part of me that is scared has seemed to be enough to convince me that I am fit to drive.

Jen helps a lot and seems to have a knack for ferreting out the real problem. Man I love her for that, not because she does it for me, but because she is teaching me how to do it for myself.
Sometimes I go hours feeling yucky before my light switch goes off and I ask myself “Why do you feel yucky?” and I talk it out with myself, hearing, for the first time, the voices that have been controlling me out of desperation and default.
But by listening, I have begun to trust myself. It’s been easiest to focus on the addict and the situations that he starts to take over, but less and less, I feel the urges and more and more, He grows (I grow) confident in my ability to drive and deal with life instead of just winging it on the excuse that “I am doing the best I can”.

When I catch my parts trying to take over, The ‘best I can’ becomes infinitely better…and maybe even…healthy?

This helps me be there when I want to love. I can love because I want to. I can show that love in the way that Jen can hear it because I am in the driver’s seat. And it’s really really hard to stay in the driver’s seat.

Ironic that in order to be healthy, I must begin listening and talking to myself, don’t you think? Yes I do. Me too. And Me. I’m glad we all agree. Let’s go get a burger.

To love her, I must first love myself…

“What a crock of Bull!—How selfish! Love myself?? Self-love? What is that psycho-babble, red-herring, narcasism?”

Well, says God without uttering a word, Let Me Show You.

I have loved my wife with everything I had to give. I have “been in love with her.” I have put her first and relied upon her for my happiness…but wait. Relied upon her for my happiness? That doesn’t sound like love. What kind of man relies upon another for happiness? And what a burden to place upon someone whom you claim to love! I almost gagged myself once the realization hit me.

I am miserable.

She is miserable with me. She wants a man who takes care of himself. Someone who is steady, stable, confident in himself and not so needy. When I feel down or bored or frustrated, or horny, I go to her to fix me. We have an arrangement see. When I go to her, it’s just like everyone she has ever known love from. It’s comfortable to her. “Fix me: I need you. Ergo you are valuable.” But she knows there has got to be more. What about unconditional love? Unconditional value? All the co-dependants I have ever known including myself have told me that unconditional love is an illusion or that they already had it. I look back and laugh at my pitiable self. I surrounded myself with people who made me feel good and never learned how to do it myself. Now that I am stuck with just one mate and looking elsewhere feels wrong, I must rely on her to make me feel good. And if she tires of this, I feel betrayed, abandoned, unloved.

But she is strong and refuses.

Why am I so miserable? why can’t I pull myself out of it? I try substitutes…Gaming, porn, masturbation, escape…I say whatever she wants to hear to get her to play her role…but eventualy I am forced into the realization that she can’t do it for me.

I look at me inside me, hurting, wanting to be happy, but not knowing where to turn. I think back to all the times little me wanted to be happy and looked to me-the decision maker-to get it done. But me-the-decision-maker in my ignorance refused. I passed the Buck to her…I ignored me and in his desperation, the little me inside turned to expensive substitutes. Gaming, porn, fantasy, and all the while, little me resents me. The decision-maker has failed me. The Decision maker has no love for me. I do not love me and so I have built this shell to survive—this shell of loking outwards for love, looking to her, to friends, to fantasies, and hating myself when they fail, feeling guilt and shame because I have no inner trust, no character.

In the mean time, we have made viscious cycles of trying to get love out of the other. She has felt hurt by me and disappointed. She tells me she didn’t sign up for this and I am way too broken. I take my beating because me-the-decision-maker has atrophied into nothing.

Until lately.

I started flexing…the pain instigated it. I would leave to escape the shame of not satisfying her…not being good enough. I would just leave the house in my car and drive around till I found a place to game. (usually my brother’s house) But at least I was sticking up for myself…starting to protect myself. Then Mark (my counselor) told me to do something different when I left…to ask little me what was wrong and listen. I started sorting myself out…getting to know myself. my little self and I felt better…without even playing computer games! I was learning to cope. I was proud of my decision maker. I still failed myself from time to time, but I began to draw certain little lines. Boundaries where I would choose to defend little James. I would not stand for her to belittle me in front of my sons. I tell her Jen, that hurts me deeply and I leave. Then I deal with that hurt. I have decided to spend more time away from Jen; that way I won’t fall into those neural pathways of relying upon her to make me feel better. I took up whittling. I gave myself permission to play a few games so that I would not let the shame overwhelm me into porn. ..Ironically, these lines hurt Jen. She feels isolated. She feels abandoned. She feels like I don’t love her anymore and it hurts.

She lashes out in her pain…accusing me of being absentee…of never trying. I really want to just show her all my progress and show her what a good guy I am and make her pain all better, so she will stop hurting me but I recognize just in time—that’s the old codependant way. I empathize and tell her that these things have to stay in place for me to learn new coping skills. I tell her that I will be responsible to our counselor and she can ask him how I am doing. I tell her that I feel finally good about myself and am beginning to trust myself.

she doesn’t understand…she may know in her mind it’s the right thing, but in her heart, she feels what we had breaking…and even if it was miserable, it was reliable and did something for her.

Not only this, but now she is forced to sit in her own codependance alone. She has to dwell in her own mess…in her own broken self-talk, outward seeking, non-self-loving crap. And she wants to blame it on me, but our counsleor set up boundaries of things I was to do and I have done them. I have been home to put the kids to bed. I have stayed in my budget. I have picked up my dishes. I have taken my meds.

it must still be my fault she is so miserable…but I will wait.

Today she told me she wants me to move out. I panicked. I have 4 days, but I am calm as a summer morning now. I know in my heart I am doing the right thing. That feeling comes from God. And this tells me that she is getting closer to the breaking point…the point where there is no more counting on others for your own love.

I hope I can be there when she doesn’t need me.

this is love.

You cannot give what you do not have.