You're right, Open Eyes, there are probably an infinity of personal situations. I guess we can only learn from each other in small bits at a time. This small piece is relevant to me, that piece isn't. All marriages, all relationships are really different when you get down to specifics. And I'm sure yours is different from mine, though I do hope that in some way what I write about my situation can help you and perhaps even others.

I think you're absolutely right. Almost everyone grows up feeling that the way their family lives and relates together is "right." Is "normal." Though, of course, it may be absolutely wrong and abnormal or just plain pathological. I would think that we all try to adapt to our families, sad to say. That's how (to me, at least) pathology can be passed on from generation to generation.

My own problems with intimacy stem from my early childhood and not from an adult-life situation such as you describe. Personally, I've found it very valuable indeed to try continually to separate out (1) what I learned as a child about how family members interact, and (2) the real, actual personality and formative experiences of my wife and the way she operates as a thinking, feeling adult person. One starts out in almost all cases, I'd guess, blending the two together; applying lessons learned from childhood to an adult situation to which they may not really relate. At some point of personal insight, whether in therapy or by oneself, one has to say to one's-self the old mantra: "That was then, this is now."

History isn't something any of us can just erase. We can sometimes change our understanding of it, see it from a different point of view, learn more facts about it that alter what we think, but get rid of it? Never. And feelings? I think feelings are about as set in stone as the Pyramids of Egypt, as resistant to alteration as geometric proofs. Sometimes the feelings permit us to continue a relationship, sometimes not. But the same qualifications exist as with history: if we learn more and really absorb our new learning, if we turn a corner and suddenly see a view from a different perspective, those things can have a serious effect on our feelings. In the early years of our marriage, I thought (and felt) with some frequency that my wife was grossly unfair to me, breaking all our agreements, forcing me to do things I really didn't want to do. But we both came from families in which husbands and wives had figured out how to overcome such things and move ahead together. None of this was conscious, but we took advantage of it and stayed together. And in the end obtained so much insight about ourselves and each other that staying together wasn't so bad. Is this something you could do?

Diagnoses! Sometimes I think they're the worst thing in the world. I do frankly believe that people can and do get fixated on diagnoses, permitting diagnoses to rule their whole lives, preventing them from changing themselves as much as they in reality can. And I do believe strongly that psychologists and psychiatrists, or at least many of them, share my views and put off as far as they can any definitive diagnoses to be disclosed to patients themselves. More people are more fluid than they'd like to believe. I think fluidity, the capacity to change and be different, the real possibility of moving on and transforming one's-self is threatening and scary. Which is a terrible, terrible shame and a loss, a very great loss to all concerned. And diagnoses make "not changing" a whole lot easier and more attractive.

Take care, Open Eyes, take care and be well. Ygrec