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Old Jul 15, 2010, 09:26 PM
Anonymous29412
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Oh ((((((((((WePow)))))))))))))))

I have honestly been just where you are at. It was so so so so scary to take those steps to make myself really, truly trusting and vulnerable - to admit my needs, to ask T to meet them, all of that. And more than once during that process, I left a session feeling like "wow, this is IT, finally, someone I can trust", and it was almost immediately followed up by some disappointment - T not responding to an e-mail, or saying the "wrong" thing, or whatever.

T leaves me a voice mail after every session, and I remember that in the session where I really told him the hugest part of my story, he didn't leave a message that night until after 10pm (he always leaves them in the late afternoon on his way home from work). it took everything I had to go in there with that story, and the session was amazing in some ways, and then it was like - bam! immediate disappointment. I felt unimportant and untouchable and unwanted and all kinds of icky things. Ugh!

Now that I've been with T for almost 3 years - twice a week - the fear of trusting him is almost gone, and things feel really different. Now, I can be vulnerable with T, and ask to have needs met, and sometimes he really gets it just right and sometimes he still doesn't - but I still have this underlying knowledge that it's OKAY. When he is slow to respond or says something dumb or whatever, it doesn't change that fact that he DOES care for me and I CAN trust him. It can ALL be true at the same time - T can love me and be slow to e-mail me and I can trust him and he can say stupid things and I can have needs and he can meet those needs or he can totally drop the ball and my needs can still be okay.

It's SO messy, there's no clear black/white, right/wrong. It can ALL be true at the same time.

I know how hard it is to not make up a story around the e-mail - that T didn't mean what he said, or that your needs aren't okay, or whatever. I do that all the time, and now I tell the stories to T: "when you didn't e-mail me, here's the story I made up". And he hears my story and he tells me as much as he can about what actually happened, and we both learn something.

Don't give up, WePow. All of this fighting to learn to connect is part of the process - the hardest part of the process in a lot of ways - but it is totally worth it. You are doing really good work.

Thanks for this!
WePow