Quote:
Originally Posted by Maranara
I was taught from a very young age to not talk....not about anything that really matters, or to show any true emotion. When I tried to tell people and get help when I was little, I was blatantly told "don't ever tell our personal problems to anyone" and was severely punished for my digression. I have known my husband for 30 years, but I've never told him my innermost feelings and the only time he has seen true emotion from me is when it boiled over
I've always been able to write things. I was having a gigantic amount of issues and the emotions were bubbling to the surface but I didn't have the ability to tell him how I felt. I tried, oh how I tried, but it wasn't going to happen.
I finally decided that the only way I could tell him was to write him. I wrote this long diatribe over several weeks. It was very very hard to give it to him but I did. All I asked was that he read it and start talking to me about it. My hope was if he started a conversation, I would be able to slowly but surely contribute and be able to talk. I gave him the letter and asked if we could talk and he said yes. I waited and waited. He never talked to me. I felt totally ignored and invalidated.
I want to break up for this among other reasons..this happened almost 2 years ago. To be fair to him however, I have to tell him why, and I'm once again faced with how. I honestly don't know how, particularly after the result last time when I was in so much pain and did the only thing I knew to do and was ignored.
Does anyone have any suggestions or have an meditation practices or reading material I can read on the subject to make it even the slight bit easier. I'm trying, I really am, but how can you break down a wall that was erected 40 years ago?
Any suggestions at all would be nice. Please, please, please be sensitive to this issue. Don't tell me to just "suck it up" or "get over it". Although I know it needs to be done, it's near impossible to me and by far one of the hardest things for me to do.
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Hello Maranara: Having read your post, I just had to reply. Where to begin... I'm am old bugger. Like you, I was raised in a family where you didn't share family stuff outside of the home. However, the reality was that no one in the family wanted to hear about your problems either. So you just kept them to yourself.
I've lived my entire life as a male. But from my earliest years I always felt that I should have been female. And along with that I have battled major depression & a variety of anxiety disorders all of my life as well. But I learned very early on, I don't know how, that I must never talk to anyone about any of this. And so, I kept the secret, for the most part, for the 1st 60 years of my life.
A little over a year ago, I made my 2nd, & most serious, major attempt to end my life. At that point, I finally decided to "come out of the closet" as the saying goes. I won't go into allot of additional detail about this. But, along the way, I gave my wife a book to read entitled: "True Selves" It is a "primer", so to speak, with regard to transsexuality. It is always recommended as a book to give to relatives & friends to help them understand what being transsexual is all about.
Once my wife told me she had read the book, I asked her if she had any questions. She said no. That was it. I thought: how could a spouse (or parent, etc.) read that book under those circumstances & not have a single question? I still don't know the answer.
I guess I could, perhaps I should, ask her about this. But we've never had that kind of relationship. We've never engaged in heart-to-heart discussions about our feelings, etc. And this is due, I have to admit, at least in part because of my own upbringing. It's still difficult for me to talk about things that really matter.
I wish I had a useful suggestion for you. I don't. I would presume that your husband probably grew up with the same dictum you & I did. And I think that men in particular are especially reticent. Perhaps you just need to tell him of your desire to break up & see if this opens him to the possibility of talking this out. If not, then it may be that he's simply too closed off to reach. Anyway, hopefully my little tale is in some way helpful to you in deciding how to proceed.
