Has he explained to you why he said, did what he said, did? Like really down to it? Does he know so himself or does he only think he knows? Perhaps he think he knows because he only knows one layer but the truth of the matter is that the answer is then on level 3 maybe?
It can take time to figure out why one says, does what one says, does. In order to be able to feel him you have to be able to put your own strong emotions, thoughts, perspective away as it may block you from feeling him and also stagnate yourself in the process. (God, I am laughing at myself right now because I know how much emotions I can have and how strong I can get in those, but please if you can don't be like me, hi hi.)
I am not saying what he said or did was right, but I think for me I need to understand why someone has said, done what they did as it brings me a feeling of safety and then I know what I am working on. It is a step in the process.
I have yet another one of my humiliating real life stories to share and I think I have written parts of it here before so if I have I apologize, then just skip this part (or you will be bored out of your mind), but I do actually have a point at it, please still excuse me that I write so much, and I hope I will not have lost you along the way.
Ok. So Humiliating story - here we go. So this one I have never even told family and friends and nobody in my real life about, as to me it is shameful (So I hope nobody recognize me in real life):
I thought me and my luv had the perfect relationship, I was head over heels in love with him and by those who met us during this time thought we had been a couple longer than we had as we seemed to close. I got very sure on him very fast. So very much in love I was. Physically speaking he also gave me everything I wanted and more. He would show me physical tenderness in our every day life together and I wouldn't even think of it, it was that natural and that special. I had no gloves on, I had no shield around me, I would reach out and hold his hand. I know the people in his life that got around us around this time would tell him later on, and me too, that we seemed to be so in love and it wonderful for this person to see my boyfriend like that. So we were pretty much in a bubble of our own.
And so came the time when we were going to a different city that I had not been in before I think to meet up with his side of the family and his friends I think it was. So nobody on my side. We got to the hotel. He parked. We changed into different set of clothes. He held my hand on my way to this huge restaurant (as we used to do). We met some people outside the restaurant. I was a little nervous I suppose. I noticed he would let go of my hand. I would again try to hold his hand, again he would sort of squeeze his hand out of mine while talking to them but not looking at me and not saying anything to me. I still did not fully understand. I tried to be as social as I could. He knew all these people. I didn't. I wanted to make a good impression.
We got in to the restaurant. At some point he took me aside, away from the people he knew and straight away, very sharp, told me to stop touching him. That it was too much. That he did not want me to touch him. That he did not think it was right that we would brag about our love and overdoing it by physically touching like that. That had I not noticed that nobody else was doing that? I could not speak. I think at most what got out of my mouth was OK. He made me feel suddenly as if I had done something wrong, that I should be ashamed of myself. I had not pinched his butt or given him a tounge kiss. I had not made a mess of his hair with my passionate hands. At most I had merely tried to reach my hand into his because his hand made me feel more safe. i was nervous. I was trying to hide that i was nervous. I think I must have also gently touched ever so slightly my hand on his shoulder. This all before he did, said what he did.
We went back there, to this big table with these other people. The shock was starting to wear off by now. He had the car keys. I was in a strange city. I did not quite know how I had even gotten to this restaurant. I could not look at him. I tried to listen in to what other people, his people, were talking about and somewhat follow. I tried to act as if everything was the way it should have been. But something inside me broke.
I could only feel the feelings. I could not sort out the mess of all the feelings, and they came in layers too. This was on a weekend, so the restaurant was packed with all sorts of people, and people caught in a romance, couples looking at each other just so, touching each other even if ever so gently. Connected. I myself I think felt for the first time til then a little afraid of him. Even if I would not dream of trying to reach out my hand to hold his, it still hurt me in a way I could not explain, it was multi layers of this.
So after the evening was done with we came back to the hotel. What followed was quite something. I remember on the way back my whole body wanted to keep as far away from his as I could. I would sit on my own hands or keep them together.
He had apologized back at the hotel after a fight about it, but it did nothing to help me on how I felt. I know I wanted to leave and never came back. To just finish us. My hurt was so deep. Just so deep. And he could not understand this. I knew very well how to put a shield back on. I knew how to be tough and fun-tough going and I knew how to be ironic. I knew all these things. I knew how to look at him as a guy only. I knew how to close my heart. But inside of me I was heartbroken. But I was more than anything so furious, so hurt that no words could help. I felt so vulnerable. Nothing helped.
I could not believe how he had thought what he said, did to me was alright by any means.
I have later told him that the way I used to feel before this incident when I reached for his hand or him holding mine - I shall never ever feel that
magic feeling with him ever again. Something inside me had shut down. To him maybe, to others, this was no big deal. I was too sensitive. Sex is just sex. touch is just touch. No, not to me. Had I wanted to play it superficial I would not have chosen to have been in a serious relationship which I thought I had chosen. What I was looking for.
To me you STAND UP for those you love. You SHOW the person you love they are just that - LOVED. That you are PROUD of them. You DARE to show that in company of others. It is IMPORTANT. Or else you give the message this could just be a friend. I don't really know her that well. I don't really care for her that much. I felt completely confused at his behavior. Completely. I did not know where my boyfriend had gone at. I was shattered. I did not know what to do with myself. So i had a very strong reaction and it lingered on inside me and would actually do that for years to come. Crazy right?
I was once at a gathering not so long ago and watched this couple that are going to get married btw, and they were standing in line to get some food and in their silence, among all these other people there, the guy took his hand to merely touch her on the side of her waist, and she took her hand to hold his. They did not say anything. There was something
so special about that. I don't know if anyone else noticed it, maybe just me. It was a moment for these two among all these other people.
Here was a guy who dared to show his physical pride and joy, his love for this woman, and they had their special moment and I am sure maybe she too had done what I had done before all that, taken it for granted, but something like that would strengthen the very love and trust and intimacy these two have for each other. I felt like crying. I was happy for them but at the same time I felt I had been robbed these years and something so special - that as long as I was with my luv - I would never feel that way again. I would never dare to feel that way again. I would not know HOW to feel that way again. But there it was - right in front of me. That it wasn't in my head. That these things were REAL. They happened to real couple who dared to be vulnerable and dared to be strong - together.
It has hit me recently that my mom was not someone who quite honestly understood physical tenderness in a way, she would try but she was sort of laim. My dad - WOW - you felt so loved in his embrace. My dad would never reject me. My mom- you bet she would. It was not her language. My dad and I spoke the same language. Who had "rejected" me with my parents split? I thought my dad had (male figure). In a way my mom had rejected me because I don't think she was very much stable after their split and looking at me as if she hated me just because I looked very much like my dad and my dad was a bad man so I was bad. So she too would reject me. I know now this was a deep trauma in me. I had actually lost the one great parent i had had, my dad, with the split up. No contact. No explaination as to why. they all just figured I would forget about him. And a mom - who was like that at the time. Immature. Scared herself. The court left me with her who I had had a less mental, emotional, physical connection too than my dad who understood me, who loved me, who made me feel special just the way I was. He had I only much later found out had gotten "confused" during the trials, perhaps when he realized he as a dad, a male, did not stand a chance against oh god almighty MOM. I was left to think my dad did not love me. That my dad must have thought I was not pretty enough, children make up their own reasons when given nothing and sometimes that is the worst explaination one can think of. Did I speak of this as a child? No. Because children do not speak of things that are that vulnerable to them. They only feel it. It only gets to be a part of their scars, their identity. And it became my identity, and later with 2 parents pointing the blaming finger on each other instead of both of them owning up to their own part in this. til this day I detest how with ease it is spoken of when there are split ups, the grown ups only thinking of supporting the grown ups and hating the other parent, but what about the child? Do anyone care? Or do they only pretend they do to look right? If a dad would have died - they would have felt sorry for the child. The child was to let know how much daddy loved her, how good of a man he was and that the child was made half of this guy, so good too in a way. Would live on in her. What did I get? because there was a split, it was bye bye to daddy and every grown up supporting my mom, and nothing was said or done over the fact that I was suddenly without one parent. one very important parent. That was trauma to me. But they still today don't talk about divorces being traumas to children. Still today it is still about the grown ups and they think the children are doing just fine. They don't know. they just don't know. But if the parent had gone and died - THEN they would know, then they would act differently, then they would see the child. But my mom she came out of this like an angel, all the sympathies in the world and how good she was to take care of me all alone, how strong she was. And she ate it up. She ate it all up.
And my dad? Well he was the big bad wolf. I'm not saying this is black and white, right or wrong. I'm not saying my dad was a holy man and my mom Miss Evil.
I had also before my luv a disastrous relationship with a freakin psychopath. And although the psychopath would show up to give me the signals and others too at parties, family gatherings, that I was his, that he was proud of me etc, he actually understood this compared to my luv's incredibly limited understanding, and so did too my first love. I would hope most people get this. It was only a huge disadvantage that my luv did not.
What had happened at the late part of my relationship with the psychopath is that he would humiliate me at the family gatherings, at the parties, and I remember once I was in a pretty dress and I remember I felt as if I stood there in drags. So he would not treat me then the way he had treated me before, that I had gotten accustomed to. Get it?
So ALL of this :
- my dad's rejection the way he had been showing physical tenderness, his pride in that was something I wanted in my life and I wanted it to live on in my own family, with my boyfriend, to me it represented something so good
-My mom's real rejection as she physically was so laim at this (she would say so herself, she was aware of it). At most it would feel as if you were pattered by a dead fish, her hand that is. I'm sorry but that's the truth.
-the way the ex, the psychopath had treated me later on at parties, family gatherings.
But i did not tell my luv this as I was not aware of WHY I had such a powerful strong lasting reaction to all of this. I only knew I had it. I only knew the feeling. And no matter what words I came up with it did not help. Just did not help. I had closed down. Shield on. March on.
And how did I change? I had told him that he had to be the one to reach out to me then if and when he felt like it at such events as he clearly thought I was so stupid that I did not know how to behave in public but that I swore that I would never WANT to reach out and hold his hand again, He did not need to worry about that. I had no desire to do that.
At home strangely enough we were the way we had been before, but as soon as we walked out that door different masks came on.
And where was my luv in all this? Where had he come from? Did I truly take in his perspective? No not really, I was still feeling my hurt, and he was not doing much talking. He would only say he was sorry and that I was right and that he should not put others and what they might think or not think instead of us. I think this was when I back at the hotel had told him that he had given me the message that everyone else was more important than I was. And that I was insecure about what I truly meant to him, and why did he even take me there? To humiliate me? Let me sit there at the table? Had he not thought of my feelings? I did not know these people, he did. He was right at home. I had had NOBODY, and I thought, so stupid of me, that I had had him, and that he was SAFE to me. That he was the one I was to turn to when I was AFRAID. And he had REJECTED ME. And too - where did all his anger come from anyhow? How could he had looked at me with SUCH HATE in his eyes (the same accusing hate my mom would have for me when she would tell me I was like my bad dad because I had a temper). I had had no time to put my shield back on before he had behaved this way to me. I had had my quard down. He had looked at me as if I was FILTHY, that I should be ASHAMED of myself. The man I loved. SO YES it dawm well hurt. He had not prepared me at all. He had not said to me you know when we get there I think we should not touch each other because you know in my family we have a thing about that.... NO, he had told me NOTHING. He took for granted this is how it was. HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSE TO KNOW THAT? And too it would have been up for discussion. I would have said why do you think someone else would mind if we did touch each other? They have just the same right to touch each other, right? Why are they making the rules? Should we not be who we are no matter where we are? Should we be ashamed of showing physical tenderness to one another? It was also this sudden accusation on his part that I did not know how to behave in public, and I did know. I was well raised. I knew. Could I only have gone back in time, I have thought of this before, I would have just said you're not man enough for me, goodbye, I would have walked out the restaurant and out of his life. But I did not because I was in shock. I was without car keys. My mind had not prepared for this.
What I learned is that he had been brought up to think touching each other, showing physical tenderness in group, among family, among friends were to be ridiculed, to made fun of (this by the narc parent and why did the narc parent do that? Out of envy maybe?). He saw it as something private then. that you only do this in private or at other times. That way you avoid your partner or yourself being mocked. Your love being made fun of. That he did not want attention to him, us. Attention = bad (to my luv). And who was I? I was usually relaxed where ever I went, I did not care who looked and who didn't I would imagine everyone is busy with their own lives anyhow, who cares. That was my attitude.
Then there was also something he was hiding from me, a vulnerability. That vulnerability was that he had social anxiety. He did not like these things, even if it was with his own family and friends, and at this neutral place/the restaurant. But he had difficulty acknoledging it and finding the words for it, he only felt it.
In his mind he would tell me a lot that he thought he had the best partner and that he thought we were a better success than a lot of other couples and so he did not want to show off in consideration of them. To me that sounded pretty strange as who was he to know what was going on in their relationship and if we had it so much better? But in his view he would say nobody could have had it so great that we had. tha the did not want us to show off.
He would again and again try to reach for me physially but when he did I would not respond. I would have shield on when we were in public, out with family , friends. I was emotionally shut off from him. he too would shut down because of his social anxiety but not tell me that. I read that as if he was not interested in being there or interested in being there with me and tha the had ZERO social code capacity to show people we were an actual couple. But instead of being hurt about it any longer I just thought he was ridiculous and focused on everyone and everything else til I k new we got back in the car and he would say he was so relieved now it was over and then reach for my hand (and I would take it). I think I realized to some extent that he could have been shy, and with his shyness everything else just went away, I could just forget about this guy showing up.
It was embarrasing but so true when other couples and other people would not understand that we were a couple even. A family even. They would think I was a friend of so and so, and they thought he was a friend of someone else or part of the family somehow. All the other couples, families, they could guess, but not ours, that is how split up we were. And he was handsome at these events and people would look at him if they thought that, only, and they had no idea he was there with me. He was suppose to take care of me. But he did not get that. He would later on say he would "check in" on me now and then. When? He did not even go to our table. His "check in" would be from distance, as he was in a hurry? . He was everywhere and nowhere. One time I found his head into a dishing washer and I nearly kicked his butt. He was trying to get out of socialising, that was why his head was in the washing machine, instead of out there with me. he was suppose to be a guest - out there. They had people to do the work in the kitchen. But he just had to figure out what was up with that dishing washer, very important. More important than to be out there with me. He would say that I was so relaxed and seeming always to have a lovely time, that he just thought I was doing just fine and that he could hardly have anything to say or do that would improve the situation. He would not for instance tell me that to him so many people looked the same and he could not tell them apart. This was down to his autism that we did not know about at the time.
So today, after all this time, I can say we have lost important years and they will never come back, but we have today and hopefully tomorrow to now make it right. And he always now looks out for me, sit beside me, looks at me, show physical tenderness. At first I thought this is just so staged, so unnatural, but now I am getting more and more used to it, and more and more I dare to feel both vulnerable and strong again. But it took us years to get here. Just insane. One of the things I told him when I had left him before is that it was important to me how you present the person you claim to love among others, among family, among friends and to not be what we had become, but I was the one more stubborn about this, I did not dare to give it one more chance all that time afterwards. I was more safe with my shield on and being more a co parent and a "friend", I did not feel like anything else. I felt cold inside. I could not bring myself to reach out, and when he did and tried to hold my hand even as I would try to get my hand out of his - I felt nothing. I felt numbed holding his hand. I might as well have held a dead fish. Today though it is different, but my God, how long did this take me, us? How close was it not that it would have been all over for us?
Linear Mode
