I understand truly how difficult everything you are going through might be for you. Often you may feel intense emotions of disappointment and despair. A lot has fallen on your shoulders (especially in recent years as a tentative shift towards equality takes place), yet you have ended up both working and having to look after the home and care for the children. I understand that your responsibilities are very significant and immense. I also understand how much anger you might feel seeing him failing to step up to his paternal and partner roles. It is as if I am hearing a thought of yours: “I'm doing everything all over again! What misery, what loneliness!”.
Yet I invite you to get in touch with your need for support, with your need not to be alone in all of this. I invite you to get in touch with your need to stop being invisible and to start being seen. And when I say seen, I mean both for your external beauty and your inner beauty, and the richness you bring to your family.
Then, and only then, can everything that sounds frightening, threatening to his image, and critical to him become something like this: “My love, I chose this quiet moment to tell you how important you are to me; if you weren't so important, your absence wouldn't hurt me so much. If you weren't so important in my life, I wouldn't get so angry when I don't have you close to me. You are the one I have chosen to have as my support in life, and that is why I need you near me. It's not about the dishes; I realise that I've missed you, I've missed that connection we used to have back then—whether you were at home or away, deep down I knew you were close to me and that I could lean on you, and that made me feel fulfilled. I realised that anger, shouting, and belittling you deprive me of you. You see, perhaps I too failed to do anything differently from what I learned in my own family. My need is to have you close to me, to lean on you, to be able to rest in your arms and calm down, and for you to listen to me and understand me. You don't necessarily have to find solutions for me; we will find the solutions together. What I want from you is to listen to me, to see me, to tell me “yes, I understand you”, to look me in the eyes, and to make me feel that you are here! Nothing else, it is enough for me and fills me for you to be with me in the here and now and to feel you close to me. This genuine presence of yours near me fulfills me more than anything else. I want you to tell me what you think and how you feel about what I'm telling you, and whether you understand me. If not, I will try again and again until I manage to make myself understood, because our relationship is very important to me. So what do you say? Shall we look at this differently?”
The above way is an example that stems from the following principle: take care of your partner so that they take care of you.
Of course, a fundamental prerequisite is that before you take care of your partner, you have taken care of yourself, or learned how to take care of yourself, and that you are in touch with your needs and desires so that you can put these into words, but in a way that is also nurturing for your partner.
And more specifically, the way you communicate your need is important to:
- It shows understanding and empathy for how the other person feels
- It shows understanding towards yourself
- And it nurtures-takes care of the other person's need (if you call him useless he won't listen, if you call him important the chances of him listening are much greater—provided, of course, he is truly important to you and you honour your choice, the principle of authenticity)
In other words, you don't saw off the legs of the chair you want to sit on!
This is how you will help your relationship break out of the vicious circle.
Self-work:
1) I invite you to read the above words and rehearse them to yourself, to wonder which of them speak about you. If you recognise anything of this within yourself, then that will be enough for a new beginning to take place within you!
2) I also invite you to read the article (message to the man) and wonder how you would feel if you heard these words, perhaps within them you recognise some needs of your own?;