Mellowing Out

Things are better. I haven’t snapped anybody’s head off over the past 24 hours or so. Just kidding, I didn’t really snap at anybody much before, I just wanted to. What a wonderful thing to be able to welcome back a bit of serenity. That Welbutrin was not the drug for me! The customers even seem better and, of course, I wonder if that’s because the Welbutrin is out of my system or if they really were just nicer today. Maybe it was a little bit of each. Heaven knows I gripe enough when they’re a pain in the butt, I figured I’d better mention when I’ve had a pretty good day with the customers as well.

So I had therapy yesterday and again we talked about intimacy and why I find it so difficult to open myself up to my husband. We’ve been married for sixteen years and they’ve been pretty good ones! I’m really glad I’m married to him and I wouldn’t change it even if I could just go back and press a button and have it all go away… so I wonder why I find it so difficult to trust him. Well, it’s really not trust. I do trust him. It’s something else, it’s like making myself vulnerable to him. I don’t like to make myself vulnerable.

In relationships throughout the past I’ve often pretended to be vulnerable. I guess that way I can just keep on going if anything negative happens in the relationship. But I didn’t care back then if it was real or fake. I just wanted a certain outcome or had an agenda for the relationship, so that was my focus.

When I was married to my first husband, there were moments when I let myself be vulnerable to him. And when we separated, we parted on extremely ammicable terms. We were still the best of friends. He was military and stationed in Germany and I moved back to the states. When he got a leave he came to stay with me during his time off and there were no problems. Following Germany he was stationed in Ft.Knox. He used to show up sometimes unexpectedly for a week-end and I’d let him stay. I’d buy him liquor, fix him up with girlfriends, invite him to accompany us anywhere we were going. I trusted him more than my own parents. I never thought he’d let me down. I didn’t love him as a husband or lover, but I cared very much for him as a person and tried to show that in every way. He was very bad about birthday presents and cards as well as Christmas so I always got presents for the girls and said they were from him.

Then, all of the sudden, he asked for the girls to come visit him over a labor day week-end. Prior to that time he had always come to our place (mostly because I think he was looking for some social life rather than interaction with the kids. Once when he came unexpectedly, he had the option of going to the movies with my then-boyfriend and me, or staying home with the girls instead of the babysitter. He chose the movies.) He never brought the girls back after that week-end. I had to go get them and I had to sue for custody as well as divorce (until then we had just been separated). I won custody of course, but it was a very traumatic experience. It was like the person I trusted most in the world did the worst thing to me that anyone could ever do. He tried to part me from my kids.

Anybody that knows me or has ever known me knows/knew that my kids were/are number one to me! When I was seeing my current husband I told him right off the bat, my kids are the most important thing to me and will always be, so you need to be able to accept that. My current husband has never had a problem with it.

But I think that traumatic experience of my girls being kidnapped left me with a damaged heart and belief system. I think that contributes to the problems I have today.

I also think there are other contributing facts from my past, but those will have to go later. I’m too sleepy now.