Today, the avoidant, terrified-of-conflict sunny jumped headlong into conflict with another person. In fact, I initiated the interaction and kept us on track to stick with it and see it through. I didn't let the other person withdraw. And I gave him a lot of space to be heard. I can't believe I did all this. We worked through our difficulties and then went on to our "business" for that day.

In another thread, someone asked, what have you learned from therapy? Today I realized how much I have learned, such as if you don't discuss a relationship or communication problem with the other person, the problem won't get solved. As we began trying to sort things through, the other person began to withdraw from me and disengage. I told him, "we need to find a way through this, not withdraw. Withdrawing won't solve anything. We will still have this between us, and I don't want that." He explained that he withdrew because he could tell I was hurt and he wanted to avoid hurting me anymore. But he agreed withdrawing wouldn't solve our issues. I told him that his withdrawing was also hurtful to me and the message I got by it was "I don't want to deal with you," not, "I don't want to hurt you." So we sorted out this little miscommunication and then went on to the bigger fish. It was very intense and lasted 45 minutes. I felt like it was having a couples session without my T there, and with a person other than my H! It was kind of crazy, but cool too, that we did this. This just isn't like me at all. Wow, who was that person today?