Thank you healingme4me and sophiesmom - I think that kind of understanding and compassion is what I'm really looking for right now. Sophiesmom, I think you hit the nail on the head. He wants me to be happy, but he can only conceive of it the way he feels it. He's a total dreamer, visionary, whatever you want to call it. He wants to plan for the next phase and work towards a goal. But he's so often all in the clouds about it; I'm much more concrete. When he talks about a goal or a dream, I hear it in terms of all the tasks that need to be managed and accomplished in order to make that work. His dreams often work because I help manage the details.

His fear, and it's understandable and frankly something I'm a little afraid of myself, is that one day down the road, I'll wake up and feel empty, like I haven't got anything in our life that feeds me. And that I'll resent him for it, because his dreams are so constant and overwhelming that I don't have the time/space to develop any of my own. I don't think that's an unrealistic fear. I don't want to resent him, but I don't know how to dream the way he does, and it really doesn't feel like there is space in our relationship for two people who dream on that scale.

The weekend was much better. After talking it to death on Friday, he was able to be more relaxed about it all and feel like we'd addressed some core issues. I don't think he gets that while he fears I may someday resent him for not fulfilling my dreams, the reality is that I resent him here and now for what feels like punishing me when my feelings/reactions make him feel upset or concerned. We've had ongoing discussions about how I'm not always honest with him about how I'm feeling - and I brought up on Friday that a 4-hour session during my workday that's completely and utterly emotionally EXHAUSTING does not entice me to share my feelings with him honestly when I'm upset. He really doesn't get that.

And the 4 hours were partially my choice - at one point it was clear I was just done, so he said we could table it while I pull myself together as long as I let him know when I was ready to circle back to it and get some resolution. I just stared at him with my jaw hanging and asked what on earth kind of resolution he was possibly seeking at this point. I told him since I was already completely emotionally distraught, it was the best time to finish whatever he needed. I had no interest in feeling better just to revisit the whole thing again at a later time.

If we went to couples counseling specifically to work on issues of communication and learning how to live with each other's communication style and work with it, does anyone know how long that sort of arrangement takes? I have a therapist that I used to see, and he went with me a couple of times, but he was completely defensive in there, even though he didn't think he was. It's an ongoing theme with him, I think - he WANTS to say/do the right things, but in reality it's hard for him and he makes it so intolerable/ineffective that it's pointless. So he gets to feel good for making the offer to do it and giving it a shot, but I'm the one who realizes it's futile and ends it. Honestly, that's how I feel about the whole 'dreams' conversation, too. It's all well and good until I come up with something that might make him change something he wants; the way he approaches things like that just makes me give up. It's harder to push against him (especially when he thinks he's trying to be accommodating, but is really making it impossible), than it is just to let him steamroll on by. He sort of understands this about himself, but is mostly really not self-aware. I just don't know how to feel about it all...it's like his heart is in the right place, but he doesn't have the capacity to follow through. I'm more of a cynic in general, and I experience it as he wants to say the right things, but they're false/empty offers so that he can say he made the gesture. That's not his nature in his heart, though - it's unconscious on his part.