a very personal share

The last few days have been challenging for our relationship.

I have been away for three weeks and we both had a sense of a new beginning brewing, and a desire to do things differently, starting from a blank slate. 

We missed each other so much, we were yearning for each other’s smell and warmth.

We came back together with a sort of naivety: That we could spend hours fucking and loving each other; that all those things we missed while away, we were going to slowly enjoy, piece by piece, indulging in each other’s bodies and presence. Talk for hours uninterrupted, bask in the slowness of time.

Yet the reality was (is) different: we have a thousand things to do, a toddler with low sleep needs hanging around us 24/7, I am pregnant, we are low on money and our little daughter needs support with adjusting back to home life. 

What the fuck? Where is the time for the sex and quality time we crave!?

Something interesting started to happen.

Tom started asking for attention (I felt it even if he wasn’t saying it outloud), feeling sad, unseen, and disappointed when he came to bed filled with anticipation to find me asleep at 8pm (instead of using those two hours before 10pm to be together child free…!)

I took that disappointment as a request to give more than what I am already giving. 

I felt he is complaining about me, he isn’t happy with me. 

I mean… It is very hard not to take it personally when I am the protagonist of his suffering. Right?

We had a long conversation one night. Loads of tears came every time we peeled a layer deeper into what was really going on under the surface here. 

Where are all these feelings of not good enough, fear of disappointment, not feeling seen and understood actually coming from?

The image suddenly became so clear and visible that it was impossible not to see it. When we unraveled the truth behind it all… I thought “wow, who comes up with this shit?” I meant, I was and still am amazingly surprised at my unconscious behaviours and the hidden patterns and fears that make me act and feel in certain ways. 

You know what I have discovered about myself?

I discovered a coping mechanism that has been working wonders for me. 

But even if it works wonders.. It is still there to help me cope which means it cannot be all good.

Let me break this down to you: 

It is SO painful to desire freedom and time alone with the love of my life while realising that the price to have THOSE things is too high a price to pay… (gentle parent here)

The cruel reality of young parents: the desire to go away for a weekend, to go out dancing till late, to have sex for a whole day, to go sailing, to be present with each other…

 … met by the reality that we have a young child (and another one on the way) who is not ready for a sleep-over yet, who due to a lack of involvement of her family she doesn’t feel safe to spend hours with them yet. The reality that my own family is a continent away. The reality of this hyper individualised society we live in.

The thought of freedom and of maiden years comes.. Then the reality hits immediately after: it is not possible (grief). I feel no other option but to surrender to what I have now and can do now. I block all the grief out. 

Because feeling happy about what I have here and now is safer than recognising how hard it is.

I put myself in a happy bubble to COPE.

This impacts my partner terribly.

I leave him alone in his suffering, in this reality. 

I got myself to safety by denying the truth of our reality. 

By denying the truth I am denying his feelings. He doesn’t feel seen by me.

He feels lonely because he is alone in feeling frustrated by the lack of quality time we get.

A metaphor came to me then: I had been trying to “coach” Tom from the outskirts of the field, all while he was playing this game in the mud alone. I am looking at him trying to support him by coaching him out of the problem, rather than getting in there myself, side by side, feeling the struggle together.

I feel sorry for this, I have been since. I can empathise with him. 

And that brings us closer together. 

Him witnessing me crying in deep grief that I wish we could just be a couple more often, is healing for both of us. 

I am suddenly welcoming a part of me that I had left outside, neglected and ignored, all the grief bottled up.

I am suddenly showing him that I am with him, that I feel the same. 

That he isn’t “needy” and I am “all figured it out”.

That he doesn’t need more than what I need.

Why am I sharing this with you all?

This is very personal to me and I don’t even remember when was (IF there was one) the last time I shared something so real and personal publicly, and I feel called to because I didn’t know this was a coping mechanism of mine. 

I truly didn’t realise this was happening under the surface.

Before this was clear to me, I perceived Tom as constantly asking for more of me.

I thought he was asking too much.

I thought he didn’t understand how hard it is to be a mum, feeling needed all the time.

I thought he was insensitive to my needs, that he thought of his libido more than my wellbeing.

I thought I was so happy and coping so well with parenting because I was meant for this, that this is truly the happiest time in my life.

Consciously ignoring the nudges of frustration I felt every time a kid-less person said they were going to do something it isn’t possible to do with a 2 year old. Or the anger I felt when someone said they’ve slept in, or they go to the gym every day. 

Now I know I had been ignoring it for a reason.

There is a big freedom that comes from accepting the dichotomy of every given moment. Being able to hold both good and bad, happy and sad, within myself has been both a challenge and a blessing.

Love and Light serves an illusion only, it draws a shadow on to the whole reality of being human.

It is a great coping mechanism, it works wonders because ultimately you are feeling good while you are executing it.

However, it goes against one of nature’s rules: there is life and there is death. And those two are equally important. 

There is love and there is hate. There is joy and there is pain. And they are equally IMPORTANT to be felt and acknowledged. 

These feelings and forces are co-existing moment by moment.

Only when I am able to welcome it all, feel it all, without needing them to be mutually exclusive…

…only then I feel fully present, clear and transcendental. 

I feel the strongest, unbreakable. I feel real. 

I am sharing this because there is a lesson here, a sort of wisdom. 

How often our “otherness” or lack of empathy for someone’s pain is actually a coping mechanism? A fear of actually letting yourself feel the grief? A hiding away? 

AND, when you hide from it, what are the consequences on those around you?