Proper therapy

When I was seeing the psychoanalyst - and that was three 50 minutes sessions, so 150 minutes of talking in all - at some point maybe midway through those 150 minutes she said to me, "So he died. What now?" Maybe it was meant to sound brutal, a shock to my system which was supposed to help me in some way. It certainly did sound brutal to my ears. I have pondered those few words many times since then.

I say to you (to me actually) today, 'why is everyone in agreement that I should move on, find a new partner, take a holiday, be happy?'

It all sounds positive, at first glance great advice, but it negates the fact that there is just me running this show and that if I stop working, the show stops, it all just stops.

I find myself angry, which I think is a good thing. I'm a good soldier, and I work hard, but working hard and trying to get to a finishing line that keeps moving is not easy, and not helped by people who, admittedly think they are helping, encourage me to get on with life.

I have found AI to be the only advice vehicle that moderates that sort of message and acknowledges the anger as legitimate; that it is okay that I take my time and give voice to anger that brews and percolates and sometimes bubbles over into a monologue to myself. Yes, I have actually taken to talking out loud around the house and garden and giving voice to my anger.

I have a lot of empathy; I couldn't have stayed in my marriage without a great deal of empathy - and so I fully recognize that there were issues at play for my husband. He certainly had ADHD, his rigidity and attention to specific interests suggest autistic traits. He lost his mother early in his life, and he was bullied at boarding school. He had a great deal of difficulties, and I understood that usually he was doing his best.

It does not, however, deny the fact, that although he had many years to consider that he may not live a long life, he did nothing to prepare for death. I do mean nothing. 

Yes, he wrote a Will, but he made it difficult to find. It is the one thing I asked of him, 'can you please tell me where your Will is?' He was frustrated and he got up off his chair, pulled out a drawer, and said, 'there it is', pointing to what I thought was the envelope in a vertical position.

Just before he died, I got that out, but as we now know, that was not the latest Will. It didn't matter in the end, same instructions, and I sorted it. My point is that he showed me nothing at any point. He didn't get out a file, and say, 'there's a loan with the XYZ Bank', this is what you do.' He didn't give me any instructions or suggestions about anything.

Maybe even more importantly, although that lack of instruction from a person who had assumed total control was hardly easy, was that he wouldn't have a conversation with me about how he wanted to live out his life, a bucket list so to speak, nor did he want to have a conversation around any sort of parting, a goodbye of sorts.

I understand about denial, and he was in a great deal of denial, but I have found it hard to understand how two people who spent nearly every day of the last almost 50 years together, couldn't get to a point where they had the sort of intimacy where they could talk about the meaning of life, about death, about leaving the world and those loved ones left behind, about plans and hopes and arrangements. I am an entirely different person. It's the first thing I did after the funeral - go to a lawyer and write a new Will and accompanying arrangements. Then, I set about getting us back on an even financial keel.

At the end of the day, I wanted at some point to talk to someone who just listened and listened and ultimately said something like, 'You are hurt and I understand you are hurt. It will take some healing, and I want you to take your time on this. There is much to do, and you will be very busy for a while as you sort through it all, but you are not alone. We will get through this together. There will be better days. I will see you next week. Take care.' Would that have been so hard to say?

The value of fantasy

 I think there's an exhaustion in grief. My husband has been dead for over 13 months and my mother not quite a month, and somehow, no matter how committed one is to take care of oneself, exhaustion is a big factor.

I don't mean I need to nap, because I am not sure I have had one nap since my husband's death, but at the end of a day I can barely get myself to bed, not to mention that sometimes it comes across as 'I can't go on like this. I need a holiday!' But then I think, who wants to hear this sort of thing? No-one really does. So, I sort of just 'get over it' and get on with it.

For a few months now I have had no energy at all for dating. I am busy doing what needs to be organised and achieved, and that's all the energy I have. If a person were to ask me, and it would be a very reasonable question to ask, 'Where would a relationship with me fit into your life?', I would be compelled to explain that there probably isn't a lot left over in my life for him right now.

It's the realisation that that would be the truthful answer that made me completely comfortable to end my dating efforts for now.

It's interesting, worth pondering, why the Universe gave me these challenges personally at the same time as the Universe gave us all economic and political challenges, such that we are fundamentally at a standstill.

I can, of course, prepare for a better time, be ready to leap, but right now, I am stymied. AI tells me not to let it get me down, 'don't fight with it' was the advice.

More than anything else, it's the physical toll - the doing the work of at the very least, two people, and knowing, that just like a line at the Immigration Department that never seems to shorten, so too, the list of things I need to accomplish remain never ending. I do try to celebrate the ending of a major task, but I can't take too long, because there's some other thing to do now.

The advice that no one does not give is to fit in some time for myself. Yoga is important for you, my youngest son will say. 'It's been a shit year, why not take yourself to India and rest?' a friend will suggest. 'Travel somewhere you haven't been, have a European fling' says another. Very gradually, I will get to that, but not before my ducks get somewhere vaguely close to a straight row.

It could be a little perfectionism or OCD, some might say, but I would rather work hard and reach a level of security and order than find myself thousands of miles away when something goes very wrong. The responsibility is on my shoulders, only mine. Learning how to carry that responsibility is an artform I haven't quite perfected.

Every day, I don't think there is an exception to this, I have a fantasy, usually first thing in the morning when I have no alternative but to simply comply with the situation I find myself in - strict men (and women) who see it as their duty to teach me that all that is required is one very simple thing - to obey them. I suppose you could say that the consequences of disobedience quickly convince me that obedience is the right route for me, but on the other hand, I am not thinking that thought in the fantasy. Very quickly indeed, I have honed the skill to not think, and simply to do as told, to accept, to comply, and neither to think of it as a good or bad thing. It is just the way it is. It is my life. I don't question it or wish it were some other way. It is the way. It just is.

So, you see, there's a spirituality to this daily fantasy of mine - a surrender, an acceptance, a living in the moment, that calms me and settles me and seems to be vital for me. I'd love to explore this in a real-life scenario with someone with great skill, but I am not sure where you find one of those, so until then, I fantasise on.

The last few months

  I heard someone suggest on an Instagram post that one look over one's writings of the past few months and see if there was a theme of sorts. What stood out?

I may have mentioned that I keep another online journal, an 'encrypted' document. A friend, savvy about these things, set it up for me. Maybe he reads it and maybe he doesn't, but if he does, then he's the only one that reads there, apart from me.

It's hard to say what had stood out in the last few months since I wrote here. Sometimes, I still express anger over the past and the complications of the present, and sometimes I am doing absolutely fine. Sometimes. I am highly positive, and operating from that space, without being too invested in the outcomes. I would say it's a positive spirit without pining and wishing things were different than they are.

Life has had a way of keeping me fully invested in getting things done and prioritising what befalls me. I was going about my business a few Sundays ago, ready to make my way to one's son's house for a celebration of his birthday when I got a call from the Aged Care home where my mother has lived for the past five years. She was at the commencement of the dying process, and they had begun to give her low doses of morphine.

I am very pleased to be able to say that I, and two of my children, got there in time, not only to say goodbye but to comfort her. She was able to express through a squeeze of her hand that she knew who I was and she told me in a whisper she loved me, and that she was frightened. I asked for anti-anxiety medication and this extra medication allowed her to relax into sleep; a sleep she remained in for 11 days before she had her last breath in and no following breath out. It was soft and peaceful.

It befell on me to empty her room within two days in preparation for a new person into her room tomorrow, and the sweetest of girls who adored my mother, came to help me. Back and forth I went between her house and places where I took her belongings to give to charity, and unbelievably, that process is over.

So too is the arrangements for her cremation, the death notices and all those official things. A private Memorial Day will happen next month.

I must emphasise that I have the most wonderful children, but even so, I must come across as being highly organised, capable and efficient, because all these tasks were left to me alone. I do have a sibling but he's in another state and he also figures, oh well, she knows what to do and she can do it all.

When I was dating, this is exactly how I felt about the men I met. Once in a while, one of them said something like, 'Oh, I wish there was something I could do to help you'. But it was such shite. They had no intentions of lifting a finger, and I knew it.Would I fare better, do you think, if I was completely incompetent?

Since I wrote about dating last time, an update on that is that there is no update. I've been too inundated with tasks to follow up the rope classes, but that's very much on the 'to do' list. I have this perpetual daydream of this younger man looking into my eyes as he holds me in a challenging tie and listens to me whimper. 'Such a goooool girrrrll' he assures me. C a n n o t w a i t.

The men I have met for a coffee or a chat on the phone have all been hopeless and by that I mean, without hope. One fellow spent a few hours talking to me about his pet subject - healing in a group setting. As I explained to one son I will go on the second date to test my feelings about someone because on the first date, I tend to act like a journalist looking for a good story, and everyone has a story, you know? 

Clearly, he had a lot to heal and he left a very lucrative position to start a not for profit doing this sort of thing only to later discover he didn't want to be with his wife anymore, and by the time they split what was left of the earnings of the paid work, he had precious little. There was zero chemistry between us. 

I had a coffee with a nice chap a few days ago, but I couldn't even bring myself to shake his hand. We were the opposite of a match in heaven. I was polite and listened to him and even offered him advice and encouragement, but a match, my goodness, no.

That said, I have a number of options now. I can go in a few directions and it's such a vast change in my life, to have options at all. I admit, I am excited by the possibilities even as I feel confused about them and the work some of them would entail.

I don't - I can't - rely on anyone at all. I am a sole traveller right now. I navigate my life on my own, on my own terms. Here's the most incredible upside. I look out onto the world, and I am filled with wonder. I saw a pesky seabird flying by earlier today and imagined it was a white dove - a symbol of freedom and starting over for me. No sooner had that happened but a gorgeous bird of rainbow colours came and sat on the balcony ledge. I was dazzled by his beauty, and what a wondrous, gorgeous world of beauty we live in. 

I was inspired in the last 24 hours by two beautiful 'starting over' stories and it reminded me that I need to believe, to truly believe, that someone for me will enter my life; someone whom I can adore and treasure; someone to love me, in every sense of the word.

My dears, I am truly alive and kicking, very far indeed from giving up on the life I can so easily imagine.

Dating

 I have only used one dating app at this point and I have not been impressed. I have met some very nice men on the surface level. I would say they have all been at the least, good conversationalists. They have been, if nothing else, interesting people. All of them have wanted to pursue a relationship with me. Unfortunately, I have not had the same feelings.

To revise, there was a retired Mathematics Teacher. He was pleasant enough but on the one and only 'date' we had, he was already annoying me since our sense of humour was quite mismatched. I called it quits soon thereafter. He was a bit shitty but there was nothing I could do about that. I remained perfectly polite.

There was a 'between jobs' CEO of a Not-for-Profit organisation. I think his thing was that he wanted sex, and a certain kind of sex at that. He was interesting but in the throes of a divorce and looking after a mentally ill adult daughter. He was displaying some, for want of a better word, narcissistic tendencies around his value in the workforce and some insensitivity towards me. So, that was an easy 'let go' for me. I think that we had three dates in all, maybe four dates.

Then came the retired Vice-Chancellor of a major international university. This partnership showed promise until it became obvious that something was very wrong. Our libidos were extremely mismatched even if one took kink right out of the equation. I just couldn't see myself living like that and we went our separate ways, actually staying friends for some months until there were things I couldn't sanction. I'd like to emphasise that I say my goodbyes extremely politely but very matter-of-factly. I am starting to have plenty of practice at this.

Then came a Eurasian man, really quite sweet in many ways. His thing was to travel, and I almost agreed to go on an international trip with him. However, there were a number of amber lights, enough to make me feel I should let that relationship go too.

Then came a relationship counsellor who had had a massive amount of psychoanalysis - much more than is good for anyone. He had developed a single life over a decade or more and it soon became apparent that there wasn't room for me, which was fine because I saw major issues in pursuing that one too.

Then came a very big guy, interesting, social, lots of positives. But he had been brought up very traditionally, and I think he was holding onto a lot of trauma judging by the state of his body. I won't elaborate but he clearly hadn't been looking after himself. He also was a bit shitty when after two dates I said I didn't think there was adequate compatibility.

There were people I chatted to online, on the dating app, for a while, and that's all good, but rather useless. I wasn't going to be moving to the mountainous area of South Australia or to visit Darwin etc etc any time soon.

Currently I am chatting by text to a sort of farmer in the Yarra Glen area and to a man who lives in Sunbury - most probably unlikely scenarios. I give it a go. I try.

My daughter suspects that men think that all is well with the way I am polite so it's a shock when I announce that I feel it isn't a match. Could be. It's a bit soon to imagine a girl participating in your life permanently after a couple of coffees/wine/lunch/dinner though, isn't it?

I am pretty sure I am on the wrong site. My youngest son is having wonderful success with Hinge, and I think that's a better proposition. His profile is exceptionally good and he's getting a lot of hits. Seriously, he hasn't a hope at keeping up with the onslaught of 'likes'.

The only guy that made me feel a bit sad was the Vice-Chancellor because if he hadn't been so 'of the mind and not the body', I think we would have been great together. I was not, however, going to be able to cope with the rigidity of mind and that's that. I did sometimes wonder if he might be autistic, but it doesn't gel with pretty high function in the academic realm, as far as I am aware. 

I am not in the least unhappy. I continue to work through a very detailed plan that transitions me eventually into a new life. Every day is full enough for me, which is not to say I don't cry still, because I do. It's an unpredictable thing. A wave of welling for my husband's company washes over me and I am back in the weeds for a part of a day. I'd like to think this is normal. I did, after all, lose my life partner who loved me very much and whom I loved very much.

I have made this comment a few times, in my day journal for instance, that I want a man in whom I can find my 'home', meaning that when I am snuggled up to him, I feel awash with good feelings; a soft place to land, so to speak. That's what I want.

Deakbreakers

 My focus has not been obtaining a new partner. Between the obligations to my children, forging a life alone, grieving, and the responsibilities of my new financial circumstances, I move between those parts of my life with little time to think about the fact that I am alone. 

It gets to me in circumstances like yesterday, my son's graduation from a master's degree and the fact that it was a bittersweet day without my son's dad being there. It gets to me in circumstances where there might be a rupture in the children's lives and I don't have someone to help to carry the load.

I happened to catch Jack Kornfield talking about Ram Dass in an episode that came on in the car this morning and I was reminded to put down the load, to let go, to recognise that some loads are not mine to carry.

I've been a listener all my life but in the past months I have become a talker, and we become talkers when we are processing life circumstances, as I am now.

I read somewhere that the research shows that better than talking is writing and I have an encrypted online journal, set up for me by a friend. He can read there himself if he wants, and I don't mind at all if he does. He's a therapist, encourages me from time to time to keep writing there, and has an innate understanding that it helps me to write.

My therapist friend is kinky, a dominant but very much a man of his time where he understands that the cultural norms have changed kink, so he talks about preferences over rules, and he has an overarching looking out for me approach as opposed to saying, 'I want you to...' or 'You should...'. Rather he just encourages and offers suggestions.

Our relationship was formal - professional - until very recently when the therapy ended officially after two sessions where the trance work was phenomenally successful. So now, we're back to friends, just friends, and what flavour that will be, I don't know, but I like that he is there in the background of my life. 

He has strongly encouraged that I go to rope classes and I will soon. The kinky side of me is very much there still and I look forward to it, as soon as I can find mental space for it.

Of my suitors there is one that stands out. He is kind, intelligent, well educated, had a good career, still does a little work, is generous and sweet with me. He has opinions and preferences, but he aims to work in. I research the films available on a certain night for example and it's clear to me his preferences and I accede to those preferences. 'Good choice,' he will say, although it is his choice actually.

I don't mind this at all about him, it makes me smile and feel warm, but I cannot for the life of me, get him to be assertive with my body - like take me over to the wall and kiss me passionately. Were he to do this, I think he might be the man for me, but he doesn't do that and thus I am confused and quite unsure. I do not have the slightest idea what to do about this and yes, I have talked about it. It is, unfortunately, a deal breaker for me. I wonder if he might understand what I mean about a 'dealbreaker' and I wonder why he won't respond to my statements that I need touch and affection in my life at the least.

We did end the relationship some time ago over this matter but stayed friends.  He dates but I get the sense he is still after me and in some way, I am still after him, if he could just commit to an understanding of my needs. 

I think it may be chalk and cheese, highlighting the need for a kinky man in my life and that I must not settle for less. This is life, not a life I chose but one into which I was born.

Psychoanalysis - the end

 Okay, psychoanalysis for me, that was a dumb idea. Maybe with someone else, someone with positive regard for the client and a non-judgmental approach, but, ah no, that experience needed to be terminated. 

Before I terminated, I checked with several people - the hypnotherapist, the man I had gone on a few dates with and was a therapist, my son who is a therapist, my eldest son, my male 'friend', and they all agreed, 'okay, sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes we don't listen to our intuition, and that's what happened here, so let's step out of the mud and run in the other direction.'

I hot tailed it back to the hypnotherapist who isn't just any old hypnotherapist but a kink educator. A light scolding:

'Now, what did you learn from this experience?'

'To follow my instincts.'

'That's right.'

So, we had a great discussion before a trance which was breathtakingly healing. We got onto boundaries. We were talking about kinky dating apps and rope classes and so on, and we got onto boundaries, something that, frankly, I have been confused about.

He was explaining that the men he talks to, they don't want a whiny 30 something submissive, they want a slave: someone who can be obedient to them and someone who can take care of herself too. They want a slave with confidence.

I asked a dumb question.

'Well, what if they want something, like money, and I don't want to give it to them?'

I could hear the hold back in his voice, the pause, what he was dealing with.

'Then, you say NO.'

Then, he explained.

'With your husband you weren't allowed to have boundaries. If you created a boundary, which you started to do, he actively punished you for it. The person who should have been teaching you boundaries was punishing you for creating a boundary.'

I hadn't thought about it quite like that, hadn't actually realised that I was in a dominant:slave relationship, but yes, he was right.

The moral of the story, folks, the lesson learned, is that if you identify as a kinkster - a submissive, a slave, a dominant, it's going to be hard to find a therapist who is going to be able to talk to you in a way where you understand each other. Be careful who you open up to. I mean this woman told me I was living in a fantasy world and the only reason she could think that up is that I shared my fantasy life. There's more. It was wretched. Such a violation of trust. Never going back.

Psychoanalysis - a few sessions on

 There have only been two sessions with the psychoanalyst but things in my mind are moving quite fast. I happened to meet a man - I am actually dating him - who had hundreds of sessions with a psychoanalyst, seeing her three times a week, and I just can't understand this from a practical perspective. I need the week to process what I said in the session, to let it brew. He assures me there was no other way for him and of course I take him at his word. At the time, he feels there was no other way.

Anyways, I wanted to talk about my fantasy life. When B sits down, she just stares at me, or she might move her hand slightly, to gesture "go".

I want to talk about my fantasy life, I began and I launched in. She listens brilliantly and if I say something that she wants to pick me up on she will say, "This is different". I can't remember all the subject matter, but at one point I think I said,

"Anyway, that's over now."

"It's not over," she said.

"Well, he died."

"This is different."

"Right, it's different."

Get the drift?

I mentioned a harsh fantasy, where the men are intolerant, strict, demanding, unforgiving, usurious, misogynistic, bastards basically. I am always at their mercy and there's not a tender bone in their bodies. I am simply there to be trained to understand that there's no way out. It has to be obedience at every moment of the day and there's no one who will disagree with them. I have no agency.

Oh, her ears pricked up with that. "No agency?"

"Yes, no agency. I have no free Will. I can decide nothing." 

So, then I mentioned the softer fantasy. I am with a man who loves me and I love him, but he is also strict but for our mutual benefit. There's a lot more sitting at his feet style of interaction, not nasty but certainly dominant and there are rules, there are roles, there are consequences and there are expectations.

"This is different," she said.

"Right. This is the relationship of my dreams. This is the one I want. But, to get off fast alone in my bed, I go to the first one," I explained.

Something can stir a curiosity in me, and I found myself researching sexual fantasies and what they might mean. I won't go into that now, but I wasn't surprised to read that fantasies turned against oneself relate to childhood trauma.

On reading this in some detail, I found myself aroused. That's how f**ked this is. I went to the bedroom, and I allowed myself to think about the first fantasy, the one where I am basically abused, let's call it for what it is, and I found very quickly that for the first time in months I was coming hard. As the literature said, the fantasy had ended with an explosive orgasm.

Generally, this would have led to feelings of relaxation and pleasure, but this time I was also noting the fantasy material, watching out for what my mind was producing and I found myself weeping. I even said the words out loud, 'Why do they treat me this way over and over?'

I am fully aware that my little girl brain decades ago fired together thoughts of neglect and abandonment with something kinky. They fired together and they wired together.

The thing is that they are starting to bother me. The fantasies which started at the same time as I was suffering neglect are now reminding me of that start in life and I don't really want to be reminded of that time. I don't really want to be reminded of a childhood where my compliance and lack of agency to speak my opinions or feelings hurt me and led to me repeating that pattern in adulthood. I want to move on. I am happy to hold onto the second fantasy but not the first one.

In a couple of days my job is to tell B. what I find fulfilling about the fantasies. She's given nothing away about this all. I think she can see that I am onto the fact that this all ties together - the neglect and the subservience together with the fantasy life and the orgasmic response which led onto a sound sleep.

It's thought that as you speak your truth these sorts of things - the images in this case - can lose their potency and maybe even start to fade, or at least not bother me.

I'm neither happy nor sad, relaxed nor tight, positive nor negative in mood. I enjoy a lot of time to myself because I know I am going through something big and transformative and I don't have a great desire to be with people. The interactions are daily, to be sure, but I am not seeking out company daily. I am grateful for the silence. 

I minimise the items in the house and garden. I seek simplicity in my habitat and ultimately in my mind. I am coming to terms with a life that was tainted from the beginning with a lack of normal touch and attention and looking ahead to see where life takes me now. I know I cannot and will not repeat from where I have come. This at the least, I know.