Couples - Fourth Session

Tough session today.

My wife did articulate that she doesn't want to, "lose me" but also that she'll likely be unable to ever reconcile that with my being in love with her BFF. So...impasse? Either way, I'm trying to take everything with a grain of salt until the requisite six weeks have passed for acclimation with the new meds. Not because I think she'll change her mind, rather my hope is she'll be able to better express herself where we can engage in meaningful discourse. We can certainly revisit this topic then.

When the therapist asked what each of us was willing to do as a compromise to alleviate the other's concerns, I admitted that I assumed my love for the BFF would surely lessen over time, because let's face it, it's been 18-months of non-reciprocal affection. One might think that would be enough. But that hasn't happened. At all. Hey, I'm just as surprised as you are. So while I'm no longer controlled by the flood of emotions which wrecked havoc upon my body, I'm also very much still in love with her, which of course my wife sees as the root of her distress, and the roadblock to her impasse. And just between us, dear reader, I have no idea why I'm not discouraged by her lack of affection toward me, nor what that means in my continued pursuit of her. I may need to re-read Wuthering Heights. Of course this is only a problem because my wife feels, "less than" because I love her BFF, even if there were zero changes in my behavior. So I still need to wrap my head around that.

As for me, processing the parallel grief-cycles seemed to contain a hint of finality to them, something which was weighing heavily upon me, until I started explaining to the therapist how grief is the opposite of NRE. Suddenly, it dawned on me that if NRE can be experienced over and over when the relationship itself changes then surely the inverse is also true! This removes the finality of grief and replaces it with the hope that - if the relationship with my wife improves enough through medication and therapy - perhaps that will halt the grief-cycle. So while I'm still grieving over the loss of my former relationship with her (and the irrationality of simultaneously losing Cass), I am no longer beholden to it being a foregone conclusion.

Mind you, this doesn't actually solve anything, but it helps smooth over the feelings of dread in the interim :D