make_your_move (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
make_your_move) wrote2006-07-13 10:08 am
make_your_move) wrote2006-07-13 10:08 am
Entry tags:
What we've discovered so far
Last night we
This time with a different counselor. Our last appointment with the first counselor left us both in a 'thumbs neutral' post review. She is very nice, but her style didn't really resonate with us. She was helpful and brought up some salient points, but neither of us was rushing back to see her. Last night we saw a different counselor and both our immediate reviews left us much more comfortable with her, and we're both wanting to get back to her for more sessions. We'll have to see how it works into our budget - personally I'd like to see her every week, but our insurance doesn't cover any of it, so it would be a bit more than we can handle financially *sigh*
The downside is, for all the talking we did last night, I left more depressed than hopeful. Q and I seem to be on entirely different pages -- hell, we seem to be on entirely different continents on some issues. We're both listening, and acknowledging what the other is saying, but I don't think we're actually *getting* it. Funny, I thought if we could do the first two, the third would just come naturally. Problem is, we can see the other viewpoint from an academic side, acknowledge it's valid to the person feeling it, but since my needs are not needs that he has, he just doesn't grok it on an emotional level. I'd like to write more on this, but I am having a really hard time articulating the mish-mash going on in my own head, so at the moment I'll just leave it lie.
We both want things to be better, we both want things to not be broken, but neither of us know how to get from here to there anymore. If you can't get a core need met from your partner, what do you do?
This time with a different counselor. Our last appointment with the first counselor left us both in a 'thumbs neutral' post review. She is very nice, but her style didn't really resonate with us. She was helpful and brought up some salient points, but neither of us was rushing back to see her. Last night we saw a different counselor and both our immediate reviews left us much more comfortable with her, and we're both wanting to get back to her for more sessions. We'll have to see how it works into our budget - personally I'd like to see her every week, but our insurance doesn't cover any of it, so it would be a bit more than we can handle financially *sigh*
The downside is, for all the talking we did last night, I left more depressed than hopeful. Q and I seem to be on entirely different pages -- hell, we seem to be on entirely different continents on some issues. We're both listening, and acknowledging what the other is saying, but I don't think we're actually *getting* it. Funny, I thought if we could do the first two, the third would just come naturally. Problem is, we can see the other viewpoint from an academic side, acknowledge it's valid to the person feeling it, but since my needs are not needs that he has, he just doesn't grok it on an emotional level. I'd like to write more on this, but I am having a really hard time articulating the mish-mash going on in my own head, so at the moment I'll just leave it lie.
We both want things to be better, we both want things to not be broken, but neither of us know how to get from here to there anymore. If you can't get a core need met from your partner, what do you do?
no subject
Worse: Not being on the same page AND not knowing it
*hug*
As indicated above, a key question here is 'What does *getting* it' look like. You said, "he just doesn't grok it on an emotional level.". To me that sounds like, "I told him it's important me to me, he understands it's important to me and what it is. But he doesn't want it like I want it."
Put another way, when you tell Q about your needs what do you expect him to do with that information? What is the purpose, for you, to tell him the needs?
Long ramble that focuses too much on myself
The way I understood this may be colored by my personal experiences, but it sounds like something I have run into in several relationships, including familial. It's not a matter of what I want them to do, but a matter of them accepting and understanding the validity and strength of my desires. Someone knows that I value something, they don't get why no matter how much I explain because they are either 1) coming from such a different place that the need is not something they can empathize with or 2) They can't understand that I am allowed to be a different person than they are, with different views and ways of expressing myself.
An example of #1 is my siblings and parents. They do not value education, they value money. My parents wouldn't pay for my college education when I was a teenager and, let me tell you, "financial aid is for students whose parents are poor, not for students whose parents are assholes" is one of my favorite movie quotes. My family was very well off and could pay for college without noticing the effect on their finances. I was valedictorian of my high school class(350 students) and that was just a minor achievement. I attended college at night for 2 years during high school (paid for it myself by holding down a job), played an instrument (first chair), was in a concert band as well as a marching band, 4-H, and raised and trained a guide dog for the blind. I got very little sleep back then. My SATs were through the roof. But even given all the evidence that I was a success in the academic world, that I was motivated to work hard for that success with little or no acknowledgment of my achievements by the people around me, my family saw no reason why I would want to go to college. They never wanted to go. Not one of them. And they reinforced this view in each other. If none of us want to go than not wanting to go is normal and right. Getting a degree is a waste of time and money. They could see my strong desire to be educated, but they couldn't accept that my desire had any weight to it, any real value. They wanted me to change my desires and recognize that conformity and material wealth was the key to happiness. They really expected it to happen at any moment. For several decades. You should have seen them at my Ph.D. hooding ceremony. Totally confounded about what was going on and why everyone else was making a big deal out of it. They only wanted to know what job I was training for and how much I would make. They can't see education as a different thing from vocational training. They can't see that medical research IS a job. I realize now that they will never be able to see things from my viewpoint well enough to really grok me and my values, and I can accept this and love them even when communication is strained.
As for #2, I know someone who believes that I should suppress all of my emotions, deny them, and look at life in a purely logical way because I would get hurt less. They cannot understand that I have the choice to live my life as I wish and that I choose to live how I do. That I do not agree with them is incomprehensible, that they should respect my decisions and not try to change things in my life and environment to what they perceive as best for me (i.e. save me from myself) beyond their keen. They will forever think of me as a small child (and specifically their child) when neither is true and they never even knew me as a child. Surprisingly, it is easier to get though to this person than my actual family. Perhaps because there is more love and respect in this relationship and more effort to work things out when we reach an impasse. The family has written me off as defective and stopped trying to be close. That is OK, because loving them from a long distance is easier.
I've strayed a bit far from what I started to write, but hopefully this will shed a bit of light on how some people deal with not understanding each others desires, and perhaps trigger new thoughts that could be helpful.
Cheers!