Word, baby, and I'm proud of you for putting it out there. But you didn't even tell us one thing that was in the magic book that immediately in one second turned everything around.
Right. I just sort of said, "Hey, I obsessively think about divorce all the time. Then I started reading a book that seemed to instantly clarify things for me. Now I'm not getting divorced." But no details.
So here's a little more.
The reason Baer's book hit me so hard, in a good way, were his three propositions about why we struggle in marriage:
1) Most of us don't get enough Real Love.
2) So we feel like we're drowning all the time.
3) Then we develop mechanisms to get things that approximate Real Love, or to protect ourselves from the feelings of not having enough Real Love. We'll do anything to stop drowning.
For me, that described me and E.'s problems to a tee. It looked like this for me:
1) I feel lonely, sad, short on cash, overweight, whatever. Lack, scarcity. Or like I have a husband who ignores me, can't communicate, has trouble finding work, etc. Whatever the criticism of the minute is.
2) I desperately want out of these horrible feelings. I eat, shop, or obsess to avoid them. Also, since E. is the "cause" of them, maybe divorce is the solution. But I don't want a divorce.
3) I nag, cajole, manipulate to get E. to do what I want since I'm stuck in the marriage, don't want a divorce, but am not happy.
Such a vicious cycle!
To simplify: I had really gotten in the bad habit of blaming everything on E. and not doing the work of marriage, which for Baer, is admitting all of the "getting and protecting" behaviors we engage in to get what we want or avoid what we don't.
The result: lots and lots of isolation, hard feelings, resentment, anger, sadness, and fear.
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| I look lovely like this when I'm drowning. Don't you? |
The trick, according to Baer, is this:
1) Experience more Real Love. Real Love is basically unconditional love. It can feel tricky to come by and you have to be vulnerable to get it. Holy crap. So hard, until you get the hang of it.
2) To experience Real Love, you have to feel seen and accepted. To feel seen, you must be very, very, very honest about yourself (especially about your shortcomings). Otherwise, what other people are seeing isn't the real you, and then you can't be unconditionally loved. This has been the hardest piece of it for me because I'm such a bad-ass narcissist most of the time. Jesus, I had no idea.
This is very different from just venting, say, at girls' night out about how difficult your husband is. I'm good at that. And I think this is slightly different from being emotionally promiscuous, which both Ang and I are excellent at. Being seen happens at a level deeper than that. I would wager that Ang and I are different with our respective best friends than we are in a group at a party. There's a different level of vulnerability. You lay aside your defense mechanisms to be seen. It's scary.
3) To get accepted, you have to be honest about yourself with wise people, people who can be trusted with who you really are. Some people are wise only some of the time, and that's fine. You may only have one or two wise people in your life, or you may have none. But you need to get some, because they can offer you unconditional love. As long as they can see you when you need to be seen, in small doses here and there, your love jug will get filled on up.
Some of us screw up and trust the wrong people with our vulnerability, and they hurt us, bad. This post isn't about that. I'm assuming that you can pick who to trust a little bit here. If you have trouble picking out the wise people, I strongly recommend therapy, really. It has been so helpful to me and most everyone I know.
4) Once your love jug gets filled up, you can love on the other people better. My love jug was feeling empty a lot, and I have been super stingy with love for E. Paradoxically, loving on other people unconditionally also makes you experience more Real Love.
This is a good cycle. To be contrasted with the shitty cycle above.
There's more to it than this. I'm still working through the book. I read a few pages and then journal my ass off. I do the exercises. I have been talking to E. in bits and pieces about the mistakes I've made and my getting and protecting behaviors. I see now that the things he's "done" to hurt me are a result of the fact that, fundamentally, he feels like he's drowning too. Asking a drowning man to save you when you're drowning isn't going to work.
It is weirdly comforting to know you are both drowning. Much better than thinking someone you love is also trying to drown you. Much better than thinking they are hurting you on purpose [and clearly this blog post doesn't cover when someone is hurting you on purpose, physically or otherwise. Again, different situation].
In any case, little by little we're getting to shore. Things aren't perfect. They haven't been healed over night. But we're getting unstuck, one little stroke at a time.
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