Let me Qualify...

In a quiet moment, my husband felt the need to, what he termed; "pour his heart out to me and tell me how he felt". I was silent and listened for a while - there was nothing new said, but he was obviously in a mood of reasoning, honesty, and what I hoped was a new perspective, and looking at the whole situation with a bit more clarity. I was not planning on reacting or passing any comment - just the opposite, wanting to be silent and listen. I was passionless, and would not be drawn in - the memory of him retracting any niceties just recently has made me unemotional and not 'hooked' by his words - I will not be swayed by too much hope in his words.
But when he started stating untruths on behalf of my side of the story, I told him to stick to his argument and stop putting words in my mouth and asked, "had he not heard me say just the opposite last week?" I felt my blood begin to boil... 'Yes', he said, 'but I had not believed a word of it'. He stormed out angrily vowing never to speak to me ever again, to never say another word to me, if this is how I treat him when he is baring his soul....

I did not go after him. I did not feel remorse at my retort. I felt this was his problem, not mine.

Amazingly the next day he was chatting away with me as if nothing had happened. I asked him what had changed his mind and made him so much more pleasant to be around. He said, oh no, he had not changed his mind - he would never open his heart to me again, ever. Aaahh - the qualification I had not previously picked up on!

The thing is, I don't need him to talk to me from his heart, so I don't feel disappointed in this. Does anybody need someone else to speak their hearts to them? Surely this is just a need for the person them self - the need to share their inner thoughts - rather like I am doing here on this blog... But is there anyone out there who has a need to hear someone else's inner truth?

I get it now - the conditional implications behind my husbands agreements to me doing my own thing, when he says: "you can have everything you want, just go slowly, make sure I am healing from all the past hurt, and show me that you are at least trying". To me these are impossible to live up to - he is the only judge and jury - he can always turn around and say, 'you are going too fast, no, you can't do that yet', or, 'no you are not trying hard enough to show you care, you cannot pursue that interes'... etc - HE IS STILL IN CONTROL! Of course! It is clear now why those were his conditions. He just does not get the unconditional thing yet...

He said to me, for the first time ever, "I'm not preventing you from leaving - you are free to go anytime". I said I was glad to hear this from him - I have wanted him to get to this point where he realised people can agree to disagree, that when one decides to change course and the other cannot agree to it, then there is no need to 'shoot them in the back' - or as he has told me a number of times that he 'will make my life as difficult as he possibly can' ... 'that I will not be able to live in this country' ... 'that he will not agree to divorce and fight me tooth and nail and drag it out as long as possible' ... 'that it will be war'.

So I thought he had now come around to a mature way of thinking - - NOT - - later he qualified this saying he "never said that HE would agree to disagree - that, yes other people might feel like that, but not him".

...And so I wait for him to catch up to my page in the book... but we may be reading different books...

...Read the next post for more soul revelations here: Stepping out of the Ring

...Read the post that preceded this one, go here:  Seeing Eye-to-Eye

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