MrFarFromRight
Banned
2 comments:So... Did I hit rock bottom yesterday? I was tired of fighting to feel happy. The last couple weeks have been hard on me. I decided that the easiest thing to do was give in to sadness. I accepted that I was going to be sad, and it felt kind of... nice. Consistency was back. You can always get meds to fix it, right? Besides, poly is about filling holes (hahaha so punny), so Jen could just find somebody to fill anything I can't be. Seemed like a good plan. It was the easiest way to not be hurt, and Jen would be free to do what she wanted.
I got the kids yesterday, and when Jen got up, I was barely looking at her, much less talking. I felt pretty empty at that point [...] I'm feeling better now, but I keep feeling regret. How can I move forward, when all I want to do is go back? That was when I was strong, and happy. Now, I struggle with both at times.
Jen is looking for a counselor that we can go to together. I don't think I can get out of this on my own. Talking doesn't seem to help, and I keep going back to the same negative emotions. Hopefully a professional can help with that.
a) What you were writing about isn't sadness, it's depression: the not wanting to feel at all. Many of us have been through this, and it's not just poly-related. Yeah, sometimes it feels "nice" not to feel pain. But in the long term it really sucks! It hurt to read: "when Jen got up, I was barely looking at her" (partly because I've been there).
b) Good to read about the councelling, BUT. Make sure that it's the right councellor! Don't go for a poly-phobe. I know that you're hurting over this poly thing, but it really isn't going to help the situation if you get someone who says that Jen's wish for another relationship is an immature desire to escape from reality and from her responsibilities of being an adult: wife and mother (bla bla bla).
One of my exes had a therapist who told her that her continued use of a diminuitive as the name she used was a subconscious refusal to assume her maturity. I don't want to reveal her (or my) identity, so I'll use the names Jen (what a coincidence!) and Billy:
The person I'd fallen in love with as Jen comes home from therapy and announces that all this time she's been clinging to immaturity, that from now on - as a realised adult - she wants me to always call her Jennifer. I had no (almost no) problem with that, but when she added: "And from now on, you shouldn't let people call you Billy: your name is William."
Well, I knew that my [official] name is William. But I happen to like "Billy". So although I respected her wishes as far as her own name was concerned (and haven't called her Jen once since then), I am and remain Billy.
Therapists sometimes have their own hang-ups. [In fact, they always do: it's why they choose that job in the first place. TRUE FACT: Do you know the origin of the psychoanalyst's couch? It's because Freud was so uncomfortable looking people in the eye: By having them lie down... and him sitting behind their head, he didn't have to do so! Smart man! But soooo very untogether... Did you know that when he reported that almost all of his female patients had been the victims of sexual abuse (remember that these were women who sought treatment because they needed treatment - something had happened to them!) his colleagues made such fun of him that Freud retracted his report and invented his famous "fantasy" theory: that women invent sexual abuse because they really wish that they'd had sex with their fathers!]