Today was a double whammy for me, containing my monthly visit to my therapist and a day for an ACA meeting. Both experiences were ultimately positive, however there is one aspect of them that is less than joyful, and that is the revisiting of feelings from my past.
The theory is that the pain from trauma long ago tends to urge you toward the maladaptive patterns from which you need to break. But emotions and pains suppressed were so done for a reason. They hurt.
During today's therapy session, quite unexpectedly, we talked about my first relationship in context of the unraveling of my most recent two relationships. And without getting into the specifics of what I did, there were some things I did to hang onto the relationship that I am saddened and mortified that I did.
This issue came full circle in the ACoA meeting, where I described the circumstances under which my most recent relationship ended, which basically appears to have started when I didn't let my ex-girlfriend have her way on something that by all rights should have been mine to decide.
In this case, the counselor and I suspect that my refusal to allow my former girlfriend to have her way on an issue stunned her, that she had gotten so used to getting her way that she did not know what to do with me when that was not going to happen.
In the meeting another person mentioned a similar situation. The conclusion we have come to is that while we did not ask to be overrun by our partners, we made it easy and inviting for them to do so. So now we are trying something different, trying to live up to the words from the song (and the title of the post), which we will do anything for love, but we won't do that (betray ourselves to be in a relationship).
The theory is that the pain from trauma long ago tends to urge you toward the maladaptive patterns from which you need to break. But emotions and pains suppressed were so done for a reason. They hurt.
During today's therapy session, quite unexpectedly, we talked about my first relationship in context of the unraveling of my most recent two relationships. And without getting into the specifics of what I did, there were some things I did to hang onto the relationship that I am saddened and mortified that I did.
This issue came full circle in the ACoA meeting, where I described the circumstances under which my most recent relationship ended, which basically appears to have started when I didn't let my ex-girlfriend have her way on something that by all rights should have been mine to decide.
In this case, the counselor and I suspect that my refusal to allow my former girlfriend to have her way on an issue stunned her, that she had gotten so used to getting her way that she did not know what to do with me when that was not going to happen.
In the meeting another person mentioned a similar situation. The conclusion we have come to is that while we did not ask to be overrun by our partners, we made it easy and inviting for them to do so. So now we are trying something different, trying to live up to the words from the song (and the title of the post), which we will do anything for love, but we won't do that (betray ourselves to be in a relationship).
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