Day 629
Ever since I started journaling nearly a year and a half ago, my wife and I have had an agreement about what I write. She is welcome to read — or ask me to read to her — any of these entries that she wants. I try very hard to write what's on my heart, without regard to whether this will be a day that she asks. I'm able to do that 80-90% of the time, and she asks to hear about 40-50% of what I write, so I'm pretty comfortable that my writing is for me, and my addict (who I know always has his eyes and ears on whatever I'm doing or saying). Most of the time, this works out just fine. Yesterday was a day I did not want her to ask, but I had to write what I did because I needed to deal with a slip of my program. She did not ask yesterday, so all was good. However, she asked about today's before I got today's written, so the agreement is that I go back to the most recent unread entry and share that with her, and that would be yesterday's Not About Sex. Yeah, it's a bit of a game, but it seems to work for us. The person I was mad at yesterday was her, so I was perfectly fine avoiding the conflict of that disclosure, especially since I had not even shared yesterday that I was upset. I deflected as much as I could by saying it was not about what she did; it was all about my reaction and devolving into old passive-aggressive habits. That was true-ish but probably does not qualify as undefended honesty. So we talked about what happened. Mostly because of her ability to support me, I was finally able to tell her exactly what happened and why I resisted talking about it. She agreed that we should have talked yesterday, but I think she genuinely understood my struggle with it, at least enough that she was not angry with me. It was a good result, but I was very uncomfortable in that moment of growth, and that is on me. My luck is that she probably will not ask me to share this entry with her. There was a time that it would have bothered me when I would do something that could show her in a positive light, and then she wouldn't notice. I always made sure she did, mostly because my image needed her response. Maybe it's another moment of growth if I can tell people she is amazing without anxiety about whether I get brownie points or not. But, yes, I'm still hoping she asks.
–JR
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