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Post by desire2bme on Jun 13, 2014 6:29:06 GMT 10
My husband and I watched a movie last night and it brought up this God awful place in me of what I have pressed down all through the years, giving my body up to being screwed all the while I did not want any part of it but believing it was my duty...what I believed my part was in exchange for being a wife at home not bringing home a paycheck. It's what a woman is for is my base line emotional belief even though I'd like to believe with my mind that I really don't have that belief system yet flowing through my veins.
The last year within my own marriage, we have lived more honestly talking about the use/abuse of sex as I have come more awake to feeling how I really feel. As a result, we have none (which started with the fact that my body will not physically cooperate). I would have to say that since we agreed to take sex off of the table, it has moved both of us deeper into our own issues that have always surrounded and motivated us in this area of our marriage.
It feels like the place where I have died a thousand deaths...this place where I felt obligated and that there was something very wrong with me if I didn't want it...a LOT of pain in here.
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Post by wesley on Jun 13, 2014 8:57:03 GMT 10
Hi Desire2bme how were you feeling writing about this? My wife and I came to this very point in our relationship. So hard to give a man true feelings in regards to sex. Giving the go a head to him to explore other women. Only a man regarding yours and his feelings would he truly understand how brave that is to say how obligated you felt. And being at home is more work than a man's occupation as my wife showed me. Oh the non feeling fantasy world of a man tearing the heart out of the women. It seems that your husband is open to his feelings. I thought it would be challenge to honor my wife's concerns but that wasn't the case. Since doing my healing our relationship too became much deeper. It doesn't take a strong man to understand you but one who honors your FEELINGS.
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 13, 2014 13:14:07 GMT 10
Wes, I felt safe in this atmosphere to say these things on this topic. James' writings about his own very personal issues set the tone for me to be able to bring this up.
There is such an innocence in learning to come to know one another that has a chance to return when both choose to leave sex out of the picture to promote true emotional connection and healing of repressed crap. I had to become willing to lose the marriage and be completely misunderstood or almost worse, that we would stay married but that he would feel so hurt that he would close himself off and shut me all the way out. He has his standards coming from a real strict background surrounding sex, so my saying that I wanted to work through this area of our marriage by stopping would not send him out seeking other women. I knew that by taking this step, it would be best for the both of us...if sex was more important than beginning to communicate with words and feelings, then I wanted him to have full rights to forgo what he didn't want and make that choice.
There is something about him being able to feel into my own heart motivations surrounding this whole thing. In the past, I was so angry at times and was not taking responsibility for any of the anger between us being about my repressed baggage. The more that I have come to really own and desire to keep owning all that I find coming up, it seems the less he takes what surfaces in me personally. There is coming more and more safe space between us to learn to know each other and more importantly ourselves for the first time in our lives.
I have been asking for help to come to grips with the guilt, shame, feelings of obligation, etc. around sex so when this movie helped some of it surface, my husband noticed and made comment that I seemed distant. It gave us a chance to talk a bit about what I was feeling after the movie was over. Our conversation the other day here on the forum about not being able to just speak up about what we really want or don't want and to stay true to that was also used to help this surface. I am glad, Wes, that you shared with me that you also came to this point.
I remember feeling so sad that I wasn't good enough to be known or spent time with unless we had had sex during the week. Even if we did, it didn't open up communication, there was just a little less anger between us...he got his "fix" and it would get him by until the next time. There is SO much that goes unspoken when we just keep going through the motions, "helping" each other just "get by." No one wins and we just keep on adding another layer of pain on top of pain. I continue to pray to learn the whole truth about my own personal life in this area and am grateful for this small window of opportunity that came through this movie.
Thank you so much for these words.
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Post by James on Jun 13, 2014 18:54:42 GMT 10
Desire, although you did do this in reply to Wes, still I want to say how much I value and appreciate your gutsy ‘putting it out there’, and would love you to please write more of all you feel about it; it’s a very important subject and no doubt will be insightful to a lot of people. For women to be able to stand up and say no to sex, and to know why within themselves they feel that way, and to be able to accept all the pain of being untrue themselves by making themselves have it, will be a big step to take. It will also help us men a lot to understand things from a woman’s point of view in this often all too taboo area of our lives.
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 15, 2014 4:57:31 GMT 10
Yes, I am in for the long haul...I want to get down to the bottom of what has always been taboo to deal with. I just really appreciate your lead, James in writing about how you have taken this area of life into your own hands and how you shared you emotions as you did.
As I was preparing lunch today for myself and my husband, I began to hear the word "nurturer". The conversation I was hearing inside was about how we as women have tried to nurture our husbands with food...serving them food in order to satisfy them. How do you satisfy a man? Show up naked with food....that is a joke I heard once, but take a really hard look at the truth in that and see who it is that is to take on the role of satisfying the "needs" of the man. The more repressed emotionally the man is, the more he will seek out his "mother nurturing" through the woman of his choosing. And she will feel this and feel responsible especially when she is also living repressed. Seems we either try to fill the need (and we seem to be able to by the response of the husband, albeit ONLY temporarily) or we say to hell with you, I'll go find my partner in a woman...she won't put this shit expectation on me.
Why do we play like we are "grown ups" in the area of sex when we are screwed up in this area as much as every place else because of our lack of true nurturing by our mothers? The powerful under currents of "You HAVE to do this for him" are so twisted and as women, unless we see that without our true Mother, Mary who teaches us to take responsibility for processing our own mother wounds we must hold the bag as THE Nurturer for our partners...it's just how the lies play themselves out. When we say, "NO, I will not put out for you anymore" it's like taking the favorite stuffed toy or blanket away when we were little that provided us a sense of comfort. For the men in our lives not to be allowed to go through their "I HATE YOU I HATE YOU's" when we take their false comforts away we then keep on shutting down their need to feel through their addiction that temporarily makes them feel "loved." Women often times leave/divorce men right at this point, but the women who can see through the I HATE YOU's to understand these words belong to the mother who was never there to satisfy and provide love for their little boy can stand by their man.
Because we as women also have these wounds with our mothers, when we are depended upon to be the "fix" for our partners in this area, we unconsciously believe it is our duty to provide this satisfaction and comfort and completely bury ourselves, losing any last bit of anything we saved that was the real us from our childhoods. With divorce being less of a taboo in our society, we see more women leaving and a lot of these women that I see never re-marry...even if it means becoming more like a man to climb the ladders of the work world on their own and struggling. It is a deep wound we have tried to provide the fix for...all the while Mother Mary stands waiting for us all to ask for Her Love and assistance to learn how to feel through this mother wound.
The other thing I talked to my husband about today was what it is like to be a woman in a world full of emotionally repressed men who haven't gotten their fuck for the day. "That would be most men" he said. It feels like you are an animal who is being hunted down. What we women do with the attention can promote even more of the same prowling around and pouncing...I guess some women get off on it. It all depends on how we as women keep our own wounds with our father's suppressed. For me, growing up within a home where an older sister was having to deal with my older brother molesting her, this very ICKY and SCARY feeling is the main one I go back to when feeling my husband wanting his fuck. So to just say NO to sex, at least until there is a mutual sense of safety and the reality of each one in the marriage actually finding their way to Mother Mary to unwind out of the pain of not being nurtured and satisfied...what other option do we have?
I remember the day when I finally stopped getting up to prepare breakfast for my husband before he'd go off to work. I felt so guilty for doing what I didn't want do and I knew he was going to take it as "She doesn't love me enough to do this for me, yet I can't just choose to stop going to work just because I don't feel like it. After all I do for us, and she can't get up and feed me!" And yes, this was the result in a nutshell...him feeling so very very unloved by me when I chose to stay in bed. The emotional beliefs we have about how a woman shows that she really loves you in a marriage are so messed up. Ultimately, if we want to continue living without Mother Mary's help, nurturing and guidance, we women must either keep on trying to take her place OR pick up and leave the marriage dance all together never to want to be with a man again. I instead go for the third option...not to leave, not to try to fill Mother Mary's shoes, and to allow the shit to hit the fan...both of our emotional bags of seemingly endless shit that comes from not being loved and nurtured by our mothers.
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Post by James on Jun 15, 2014 18:54:54 GMT 10
“I remember the day when I finally stopped getting up to prepare breakfast for my husband before he'd go off to work. I felt so guilty for doing what I didn't want do...”
Gee that brings back a lot of memories of the early days in Marion’s and my healing when our relationship started to become based around it. One thing after another Marion felt she no longer wanted to do, and if she didn’t do them - then who would?!! So gradually I’ve taken over doing so many of the domestic things from making all the meals to doing the washing and housework, even when I worked. But it’s been great for me as I wasn’t included in it at home, I had chores but nothing too much, and although I can’t say I relish doing the vacuuming, still it now gives me a sense and feeling of it being my life, my house, I am the one to look after it, something I never felt at home, always feeling more like I was only a guest, and one who had to always behave for fear of being thrown out. And at the same time it’s allowed Marion to say no to all she was forced to do, and to keep going saying no right to the end of her nos all to see if she ever feels a yes. We all have to find out how we really are, what we really feel we want to do and how we feel we want to be, and as most of us have never had a go at this, even those people who do have such ‘freedom’ power and control, it’s good to be stripped back to the raw basics eventually being able to feel - Hey, this is me! This is what I like to do and don’t like doing.
And along the sex lines, I used to think I was an affectionate person, but in allowing myself to actually truly feel how I feel about it, I’ve discovered that I am not, it was only touching and groping in sex that made me want to touch another person, and all for my own selfish desires, and nothing about love. Now I cringe when I think back to being with my early girlfriends and remembering how I believed I should say ‘I love you’ when in the thick of ‘good sex’, but it was alway so hard, so forced to say it, so contrived. What a charlatan I was, a fraud, I didn’t love them, shit I had no idea about what love was. I sure was an emotionally repressed man only intent on getting his root for the day. It was the only thing that gave my any good ‘feeling’, so I wanted to indulge in it, doing all day long if I could.
It’s so hard not to write so much. You cover so much in your posts, there’s a feast of psychology in them. I loved what you said about the I HATE YOU’S, god have Marion and I poured it out over each at times, and I’m still gaining confidence in doing it. But oh gee it feels so good being able to really go for it and dump all that repressed vile hated on someone else, just to spew it all out all over them, to really go for the jugular with the intent to kill with it all, but all the while knowing the other person is up for it, wants you to bring it all out, and even if they get angry too, but to still be there when it’s all over. And being willing to talk about it all, all so the truth of such terrible feelings can be revealed. And then to feel so much better for it, and in our relationship.
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 17, 2014 4:16:46 GMT 10
As I read these words, I saw one of my fears...coming to the end of my No's. It's like letting go of the whole identity that has been erected in order to get by from day to day and also to be depended upon for something...even if I really don't want to do that something. Doing what I don't want to do avoids me feeling into all of the pain pockets emotionally charged with being the fulfillment of being "good for NOTHING." What use are you???!!!
Initially, it was also very difficult for me to allow myself to feel resented and hated for not following the rules established early on in our marriage if I would say No. As I have allowed the times of anger and resentments from my husband to sink into my bones asking for the truth, I now understand why we need to feel these places that mirror our significant carers in increments. To have been resented and hated as a child for existing and not supplying anything in return is a harsh pill to swallow. To now allow myself to unravel out of all of the Yes's I say in order to feel how unloved I was for just being without doing is my desire...and to be a bit fearful of this place makes sense.
Being the 11th out of 12 children, I do identify with you James, in wishing I had been given some chores to feel a part of the whole family "functioning". It was a crop and dairy farm where the jobs in the field and with the animals were taken already by the boys and the cleaning and washing the dishes jobs were done by my older sisters. My mom always took on more than was her fair share as far as being a work mule washing the clothes and preparing the meals without asking for help. I found myself doodling a picture the other day of myself crouched under the kitchen table so wanting and wishing to be taught by my mother, but her mode of living rushed to get shit done was dictating her. "It's easier to just do it myself" wasn't something I heard her say often out loud but was what I picked up without her saying a word.
"What the hell am I here for? Why won't you let me be a part? Can I not be trusted for anything?" Round and round in my head these questions went. It is no wonder I groped the rope of care taking others who feel good for nothing and helpless and becoming a hole that my husband can bury his own despair of living this shit life in...at least I can be used for this, giving him some relief...good for at least this. Yes, to let go of being this and having my identity held up by this must take me to the bottom of feeling all of these emotions...useless, good for nothing, not to be trusted for anything...if all you're going to do is sit there. You don't just show up, you show up naked and with food!
My husband and I not being able to have children also was something that made me feel good for nothing as a female. My mother's life was enveloped first by having children and then never letting go of them and then being grandma to all of her grandchildren. I remember when we would go in to town to the grocery store with her (my younger sister and I), that we would be used as the topic of my mother's conversation with anyone she would interact with. Her kids were her identity, her shield she used from feeling how worthless she really felt. I was born from my mom who never wanted any attention given to her personally and from my dad who dealt with his sense of feeling like a no good nothing by wanting center stage, ruling us by his moods. I dealt with it mostly by hiding...staying out of the way and also not wanting at all to ever be the center of attention.
As much as I am at home in the silence of my days at home, being it has been from childhood my own self-soothing comfort zone, it always holds within it this despair of life never being safe to step out into. Why consider what I do want for myself, if emotionally I still believe deeply inside that when I do show up as "me" I will be spurned, hated, resented, not trusted, in other's way, scolded, despised, taking up time and space? What am I here for, who needs me for something...anything?! How painful it is to feel this place of not having a job to do...in order to hear an "atta girl, so glad you're on our team." To be a wife, to live "sacrificing" my desires for my husband...it may not have relieved me from all of these childhood roots of pain, but it has been a bandage for me to cover it all over until I have been ready to look at my inner motivations.
To find my identity as this victim of others whose needs have to be considered before mine or there'll be hell to pay are some words to put on this no-win that I have lived. My own tapes that I play within my own mind that keep on feeding me this garbage of what I will have to feel if I just let go of my martyrdom and be swallowed by feeling I have no purpose (outside of providing a hole for a penis), Yes...even fully letting go of this, I will not die but still exist.
My dearest Bright-eyed child, keep asking Us to Love you. Keep looking to Us to burrow yourself into all the while feeling the truth given you about your life.
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Post by James on Jun 17, 2014 18:46:39 GMT 10
Fantastic Desire! So terribly sad but so good that you see and feel it all so clearly. You write so well, painting the picture of yourself in your family and how it’s been for you in life. And I certainly relate to the feeling of what if I do manage to actually give it all up - then what, because I am nothing without my false self. That terrified the shit out of me, and it still does to some degree, only the Mother and Father have taken me beyond that now in some ways. So what exists when I give up is just me - the hopeless, useless, nothing me, which I’m still coming to accept. But also that that’s okay. I am actually how God wants me to be, and everyone can get fucked. And as much as I hate being so pathetic and nothing, still it’s what I am, and so be it. I’m no longer trying to fight not being it, just accepting more daily how useless and of no account I am. This morning I worked on it more from an experience I had during the night, all of which has helped me see that all that I have become is MIND, and a false fantasy mind at that. That NOTHING of me is real in the context of being true. I had understood this partially through my feelings and intellectually, but now I feel it all through me. I had believed my fantasy mind was a separate part of my mind, off over there somewhere which I was working on giving up. But now I see my WHOLE mind, all I have been, all I am, is one BIG FANTASY MIND. And as much as it scares the shit out of me, really I wish the whole lot would cave in and I’d disappear, just not be here, as I can’t see any other way of existing and I no longer want to be just a false person.
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Post by desire2bme on Jun 19, 2014 10:44:42 GMT 10
The more I see that I have created fantasy parents in order to deaden and blot out the pain of being unloved, it does follow that what I also became in reaction to them has been a fantasy...a cocktail of facades used to help me not feel.
Since I have allowed myself to feel this and not fight it...the "you're a worthless, good for nothing, useless person", it's sounds crazy to say it, but I am feeling a sense of relief with it. To completely allow those words to settle into me without having any desire to prove to myself or anyone else that it's not true or even feel any shame connected with it anymore is so different for me. I don't know if this is just one teeny tiny corner of this fantasy being seen through or what. You talk about getting a sense of the whole mind needing to crumble in order to be free of all facade...and that sure sounds like the truth to me.
I have so believed the lie taught me by those without love...that I am nothing worthwhile if I "just exist" and am not here to put them before myself. But when I do do this, (choose to not put any pressure on myself to be what anyone else would like me to be) I am lighter...and lighter for others to be around as well. All the projections I have put upon my husband...the possibility of his complete rejection and dismissal of me should I venture into this territory of just "being" is all my memories of what did happen to me when I couldn't produce in the way my parents wanted and needed me to be for them. Seeing this clearer today, creates a larger foundation now to be able to work through all the emotion associated with this when it comes up...thanks so much for helping this all out of me.
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Post by James on Jun 19, 2014 18:24:24 GMT 10
“Since I have allowed myself to feel this and not fight it...the "you're a worthless, good for nothing, useless person", it's sounds crazy to say it, but I am feeling a sense of relief with it. To completely allow those words to settle into me without having any desire to prove to myself or anyone else that it's not true or even feel any shame connected with it anymore is so different for me. I don't know if this is just one teeny tiny corner of this fantasy being seen through or what.”
What you said Desire is perfect. This is it - what I’ve been trying to say we are to achieve through our healing. “To feel this and not fight it” - just to keep on expressing all you feel about it. Giving in and giving up the fight and falling into and down with all the bad feelings, all the way longing for the truth of them as you accept THIS IS HOW I AM - HOW I AM TRULY FEELING. And all because, IT IS how you feel.
And it might sound crazy to you, but as you accept yourself - as you accept HOW YOU TRULY FEEL, in giving up the fight you are relieved because you’re no longer at war within yourself - which is at war with parents. As our feelings show us, we are to accept how our parents have made us be. Just accept our evilness, our falseness, and see and feel it all for what it is, and not try and do anything to get rid of it - not to fight it trying to make it go away, just FEEL it and all how bad we feel in it and all how we feel about feeling so bad and unloved. That IS our healing - our unconditional self-acceptance. True self-love.
And as we do this, the truth comes to us about what it’s all about, why we are as we are, and that is then our growing and changing ourselves, - the result of our healing.
And gradually we get closer to just allowing ourselves to be useless, miserable, angry, whatever bad feelings; evil, the nothing person we are - all that we’ve been made to be.
And we don’t have to then do anything else. The Mother and Father will see that we are transformed or changed into our true selves when we’ve completely accepted our wrongness, just allowing ourselves to be wrong as we are. We don’t have to do anything to try and make ourselves be right. And any of our trying to make ourselves be right will only be more of the wrongness and our fighting against ourselves.
Oh I’m so pleased that’s how you feel. Because that’s it, that’s how we’re to feel through our healing: “To completely allow those words to settle into me without having any desire to prove to myself or anyone else that it's not true or even feel any shame connected with it anymore is so different for me.” - You’ve said it! Well Done Desire, well done! It’s happening for you.
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