Never never say never

… and amidst Our failing to be unequivocally better at being a coherent Us, something struck me.

On Our last day with Dr Ruth, we touched on the issue of sex. The thundering mammoth in the room. We barely scratched the surface.
No … it was less even that that. We only really acknowledged that there was a surface to be scratched.

On holiday, after the first couple of days, as we bickered on an almost daily basis, I found myself realising

Holiday black and blues

For the last few years, family holidays have been fraught situations. Take us, as a family, out of our usual territory, increase the time we have to spend with each other, and the cracks start to show.

So when my Wife and I successfully managed to book a holiday together, hope was surely high that this might be the summer holiday that broke the mould.

Before we left home,

Difficult

Anyone who blogs about personal stuff will know that writing about difficult situations can be … well … difficult.
This has been a difficult post to write, to the extent that this is my fourth, fifth, maybe sixth attempt. All previous versions have been trashed.
The last 6 weeks have been difficult.
But to cut a long story short …

Since spending three days with Dr Ruth, there have been

A harmless assumption

All men masturbate and most men watch porn.

They were bold assertions, and I’m sure Dr Ruth could quote data to back them up (possibly Kinsey or Janus or NATSAL). And whilst I’m a great believer that broad, loosely statistical statements are pretty meaningless without context, these two are not without benefit to me.

My Wife and I have

No one said it would be easy

One post-Dr-Ruth conversation that was positive. The next two, far from it. We have a long way to go.

Trust
Accept
Assert

It turns out none of these are easy.

I’m going to

She can use me, but not use me.

I had felt like She had used Me as a punch bag.
I had assumed She’d had a bad day and was taking it out on Me.
I was wrong, but even if I had been right …

It’s not OK for Her to use me as a punch bag.

There is, however, a paradox.

I am

Imago – definition

I have mentioned Imago a couple of times and it will crop up again. From the little I have read about it, I suspect We have just been introduced to a subset of the technique, but it is the label We have been given, and so is a convenient shorthand.
In terms of the tool Dr Ruth suggested, Imago works roughly as follows: