Energy Redistribution

After our first couples therapy session, ever, we argued the rest of the day and did not stop for five days - it got worse and more uncompromising than ever. I felt very hard and dry inside with my heels firmly dug in the earth. I was ready to write to the therapist to cancel the next appointment - it seemed pointless. His interpretation of what was said during the session is so different from mine.
I just give up... but I have not stopped working on myself, and I now make myself aware of being grateful for even the bad things that are happening, because they show me so clearly what I don't want or can't live with. Within my heart I really feel like I am in a good place, amazingly - it does not always feel like it on the outside, but when i quietly go within, I am happy and at peace.
My Heart made me aware of a startling situation (my Head freaked when it heard this!):

I am tired of working on this relationship. I want to use all that energy for something else now. I feel as if I have been working on it for 22 years - really hard - and now I am tired of doing it anymore. A while back I told him I had 'let go' of our relationship. He did not understand this terminology, but to me it meant not having any attachment to it, so that it could flow and develop into something new - some new form of relationship (friendship, companionship, whatever). But even then, and until now, I still felt the responsibility to do the best I could for it. Now I am just tired. It is a very hard thing for me to admit this - it is so ingrained in me that one has to constantly WORK on a relationship, and not to is almost sinful. (my husband would term it 'against your vows').

This is not representative of how it has always been - and this is probably the reason why people in my situation don't just run for the hills, when it seems to anyone looking on to be intolerable. It is intolerable NOW - and it reached a crescendo this year, and I have such a strong drive to 'find myself' - (it sounds so clichéd! no wonder my husband ridicules it if I mention it)  - that even if I cannot clearly see the outcome, I cannot resist the pull.

The reason we cannot go BACK to where we were at ANY point in the relationship, is because, one of the reasons the relationship was working (from my side) is that I chose to agree to go along with the restrictions and conditions surrounding the relationship. I cannot agree to doing that again - therefore we cannot go BACK to the old relationship. We CAN go forward to something new and FUN. Something exciting and innovative.
I changed - my Dad died, I probably hit menopause, we retired in a big way, his personality became extreme... whatever. I had to work at it every day with every choice: either Us, or, You and I -
I chose us.
I am now at a point where I can no longer tolerate being in-authentic. I would rather live alone than in the same situation where I have to deny my interests in order to fit in with what works for the relationship. When the relationship was "working" - pick a date, 5... 10... 13... 15... 19... 22.. years ago -  it was, amongst other reasons, because I was choosing to live within the boundaries of what He wanted, (a major one being to only do something which we can SHARE), and suppress my desires or individual interests that may upset Him, or make him feel threatened that maybe he would lose me!
I can no longer tolerate living incomplete. Sorry.
If the roles had been reversed, and He had came to me and said he had not done something for all this time and now really wanted to pursue it, I would tell him "Go for it! Do not delay! Do it NOW!" - I would rejoice in watching him.
If He came to me and said he had put up with living with something about me that really went against the grain, but did so in order to sustain the relationship, I would say - "I understand. How can we live so that you do not have to put up with it any longer?".

I lived with His dominance, control and judgements and deciding for me what I thought, felt or wanted - out of choice. Every day I had to decide. Now, I can no longer tolerate this inauthenticity.
I had hoped we could create a new relationship, one I have no idea about, nor know anyone who lives like this. However, I am tired. I am close to throwing in the towel. It may just be too difficult. How can we envision this new relationship? Do we need to define it? label it?

Once I put these thoughts across to hubby, he seemed to hear me for the first time. Things almost immediately got better - I felt like he was treating me as another individual, rather than an appendage of his, perhaps for the first time ever in our relationship. I don't know how long this will last: Is this an Ending, or a Beginning, or Both?

...Read the next post for more of this Soul Searching: The Awakening
...Read the post that preceded this one, go here: Heart to Head

...Start at the Beginning of the exposure of my soul, go here: The Exposed Me