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.  

Psychoanalysis

 As the time since my husband's death has rolled on, I have noticed a range of emotions. Sometimes, I am functioning quite well, but other times I notice a cascade of emotions. I wouldn't say that they topple me over. I don't lie in bed or find I can't cope with the many challenges that I have inherited. I get on with it.

Yet, I do notice that I am going through some sort of change, or transformation, or growth, or maybe it's regression. Whatever it is, it's undeniable. 

I found myself tangoing with the hypnotherapist I have used, sort of banging on his door seeing if he had a fix, and he doesn't have a fix. It's far too existential for hypnotherapy. It's not a structural sort of problem - like, add exercise to your life, or find a new man using this particular dating site. That stuff is well intended but it's not for now.

For now, is dealing with big emotions and violent dreams and thoughts that feel very true and unexpressed, and that don't have a loving or accepting component at all.

In fact, I have found myself wrestling with a thought. It's this: I worked ultra hard to give what has happened in my life the nicest packaging in every way. The goal was unconditional love, forgiveness, kindness, good intention. All that. 

However, what is really happening under the hood is much more vehemently judgmental, unforgiving, and carries the sentiment of 'What the f**k just happened?'

In that state, you can only move on so fast. It's not the time to date since I found that I was just so disappointed in the men I was dating. I had so little patience with them. I didn't express that. They didn't know until I said, 'thank you, but no thank you' but under the hood, I was thinking, 'There's no way I am listening to this shit for the rest of my life.' I was and am just so picky about it all, far preferring my own company.

So, hypnotherapy and hypnosis were no good for now. It was too...prescriptive. I don't want a prescription, somebody else's version of the 'solution'. 

I read a bit and located a psychoanalyst. Ahhhh, exactly right. I wanted to talk and I wanted someone to listen as their job. Perfecto. That, I am happy to pay for.

Bring me your dreams, your daydreams, the thoughts you don't speak, she says. Brilliant. That's exactly what I want to do.

I have never felt before in my whole life this urgent need to express myself so freely and I am going to enjoy every second of this process.

The story goes that eventually the patient runs out of things to say and it's what they say after that to fill the silence, something that can't be rehearsed, where the real juice is. Right now, I don't know what that is, but I am sure it is sitting in the subconscious awaiting it's turn.

Oh, thank you Lacan. Thank you for your invention. At last. Let the chips roll where they may.

Dating apps

 A couple of months ago I dated an older man. We had eight dates until, frustrated, I explained that I didn't think we had a romantic future together. He was an extremely polite and respectful person, and on one level I enjoyed his company and conversation, but it was impossible to not notice that his greeting and goodbye kiss was more like a peck. 

I think it was the third date when he asked me if I liked to hold hands and we started doing that. However, it got weird. Not only did he want to hold hands at times when it was comfortable to do so, but pretty much all the time. What this seemed to do was act as a shield against further intimacy. You can't go in for a hug or to wrap yourself around someone on the couch if you are sitting side by side holding hands. I would think in my head about what to do in moments, but nothing felt like it would be generously received. It felt like we were two islands and the mass of water between us would keep us that way.

I was sure that he wasn't sure about me because when I tried to bring up my needs as a woman, to be in the presence of a man who liked to assert control for our mutual benefit, he completely closed down. This was definitely off putting to him. An academic all his life, I think he was living almost entirely in his head. 

It gets worse. His wife had died suddenly 14 years ago, and he was devoted to her memory. She had most certainly achieved sainthood in his mind. After that, he married and that failed and he almost married but lived with another woman, and she left. My nail lady told me to run. It was impossible to compete with a dead wife who had died young.

All well and good. However, he wanted very much to stay friends and at the time it seemed a harmless request. For the last two months, he would wish me good morning and sometimes say something that prompted a little conversation. That seemed fine.

I had met him on a platform where I could see he often went, even when he was dating me, so I recently said 'goodbye' on that platform. He asked why I did that. Well, I explained, we text.

Then, he started to tell me about this new "lady" he was seeing for coffee and gallery dates, like we used to do. And then it felt weird. He was trying to set up a time to see a play together or have lunch as friends and supposedly he would tell me about this new lady and so on.

A little alarm bell went off. I don't mean to downplay all the horrors that are happening to people right now, but I haven't had wonderful things happen in my life lately and I have a responsibility to take care of myself. This friendship wasn't doing me any favours.

I suggested via text that he allowed this new relationship to blossom and that our friendship was secondary to that, but he argued for his continuance. I really didn't want that. I am trying here to do things that are right for me rather than right for someone else. I am trying not to let abundant empathy stand in the way of good sense. I wrestled with the thoughts for at least a minute until I texted, 'Why don't you check in in a couple of weeks?' This, I felt, was better than his reliance on me to interact on a daily basis.

So, what's this all about, I ask myself. He makes me feel weird. He makes me feel like there is something wrong with me that I want intimacy, that I would like to feel some (gentle and not so gentle) control. 

I think I have been on the wrong dating app. If that's your proclivity that app is not where you are going to go looking for a submissive. Yes, I have strong tendencies towards independence but in the hands of a dominant man, that tends to take a back seat. I want that.

Healthy relationships

 Over time, if you keep track of your behaviour, patterns may emerge. In my case, I have tended towards attachments that simply were not in my Highest Good. Something made them feel good at times and at other times, they felt quite toxic. I was often off balance.

It isn't all that complicated at the heart of the matter. My parents being busy, self-absorbed, loving but at a distance, led me to chase love, but in all the wrong places because we tend to repeat these patterns unwittingly.

This blended with an early private life where my mind had co-mingled love with strict discipline, perhaps a scene in a movie I had watched, or a book I had read. Who knows.

This meant, in practical terms, that when I was in touch with someone who gave me intermittent reinforcement together with access to that dynamic in my fantasies, this became a 'hook' for my desire to feel love and to be pleasing; for the slot machine to throw out a random symbolic gold coin or two; to feel affection.

A situation where one is in a trauma bond with someone sometimes feels abusive but often not. The mind has a way of rationalizing things, especially if the coins were given out early. The mind says, 'it happened once, that means it can happen again'. I have written about it before in the sense of the fly being caught in the spider's web and when I wrote that, it felt erotic, whereas what I write about today isn't in the least erotic. Rather, it feels like shame.

Shame is the trickiest emotion I think I have experienced. There's a part of the brain working hard to protect you from shame until, in my case, I came head on to the feeling and registered it as just that. It started with a feeling of disgust when listening to a podcast hosted by a Dominant and then the deepest and most uncomfortable feeling of shame overtook me. What the hell had happened to me to have had any other feeling than this deeply uncomfortable feeling when listening to comments about submissive women that sounded harsh?

Even since then, my brain still asks me to use certain dark fantasies as a way to relax. I am well aware of the dichotomy of these two experiences. I do not berate myself for that but rather offer myself a great deal of self-compassion. My brain is wired now in a certain way and only time and effort will rewire it.

I can only speak for myself, and as had happened once before, when the drama and hurt of the association flooded me as it did when listening to this podcast, the decision to remove myself entirely was made quickly and almost effortlessly.  

I don't want to use jargon, but it felt like the Protector that was not allowing me to feel the shame, felt I was ready to withstand the emotional pain of that and stood back. The truth was revealed to me. I needed to move on now with self-compassion and I needed to ensure that any future associations, friendships, therapists or lovers were entirely healthy relationships for me. 

I needed to choose with full awareness, and I needed to note that healthy relationships don't always, or maybe never, have the zing of something that could light up the part of the brain that responds to intermittent reinforcement, or a power dynamic that isn't based on love and respect and taking into account the high likelihood that someone with childhood trauma could be retraumatised. Anyone less than a person academically highly trained to understand the effects of childhood trauma, attachment styes and a propensity to be susceptible to intermittent reinforcement could potentially do more harm.

I think I will have to look out for this for the rest of my days. There's a bit of post trauma sitting in the wiring of the brain and some susceptibility to a trauma bond, but also, I have grown older and wiser, and I am my own best friend now. I do not foresee this happening again.

Here Comes the Sun

 A few months after my husband's death, on a lonely night, I joined a dating site. To be honest, I brought into the hype that it was free, wrote a profile in minutes, selected some photos and didn't think much more about it. I only actually realized that it was 'up' when a few men sent me a message and/or 'like'. I couldn't read the messages until I paid, and I guess curiosity got to me, as they no doubt hoped it would, and I paid the fees to join.

I went on a few dates. I am not sure what was pushing me forward like this, but I wasn't really afraid, or shy, or uncomfortable. You could say I was 'discerning'. They all seemed decent people and I had checked that out as best one can with conversation prior to actually meeting them.

The first one was a nice guy but there was absolutely no attraction on my part. His humor actually annoyed me and though he wanted to meet again, I did not. It wasn't an awful first date but there was a radar in my mind telling me not to do things that I didn't want to do. Somehow, I had developed confidence in myself. The way he acted when I said 'thank you, but no thank you' told me my instincts were right.

I met up with another fellow. He was interesting. The conversation flowed easily and we had a couple of drink and dinner dates that led to some intimacy that was not in the least unpleasant. It wasn't the intimacy but rather the way he behaved after the intimacy where my body was giving me signals that that was enough of him. I had developed this radar for detecting what was good for me and what was not. I don't know where it came from, but there was a voice inside, a sense of wisdom that was directing me away from relationships that might cause me distress, or at the least not nurture me, and back to being alone.

Being by myself really didn't bother me and I mean that. I haven't had a moment of loneliness though I have often been alone. I have done a lot of grieving. I still smother myself in a garment my husband wore, but I have not been lonely. Maybe that is because I am still in the house we shared and where we brought up the children and to that extent, it's all familiar.

I met a very nice man and we had eight dates. He was always attentive and polite, very intelligent, but my body was saying that without a sense from his body that we in some vague way 'fit', there was no future. He liked me a lot and I think he had just got to an age, maybe always was that way, where the fitting of two bodies wasn't his thing. Talking, holding hands, that was enough. I ended it and he wanted to be friends. Since we had only ever been friends, it wasn't something unreasonable, and he still wishes me a good morning; occasionally we exchange some words around a topic via text. I am far too empathic to not agree to that.

I was sent a message by a man several years older than me that officially puts him in the old category. However, he didn't look old, something he said his friends said about him, he wrote in his profile. I let it be for a few weeks. He was from a different culture than my own, I was intrigued, but I thought of it more as an interesting 'idea' than a likely match.

One day, I decided to send a 'like' back and we had a super brief exchange around the fact that we were both widows that had been in decades long marriages. He in no way hurried me but a message sent to me instead of his nephew suggesting they meet for coffee had me saying to him that even though I was the wrong recipient of the message, why not we meet for coffee too?

After that coffee and in the hours of discussion that ensued, he shared the final days of his wife's life. He had nursed her to her death, mostly alone as COVID required, since she had begged to die at home. He was emotional in telling the story and I comforted him. Some sort of soul connection had been made.

He was scheduled to go interstate, he wanted me to go too, but I said, no, he was going to see his daughter, and it was too soon, it would rattle her. But we met again for an event in his apartment building when he returned and unbeknownst to me, I felt safe enough with him to tell him a story that led to me welling up in tears. It was about my husband's reaction to a meditation we did in Bali in 2024. We were sitting side by side and I put my head on his shoulder and he comforted me.

'I'm sorry', I said softly.

In this quiet, confident, slow drawn-out way he said,

'No, you mustn't say that. Let it out.'

Something felt so right about this. It was so soon and so random, but something felt very right.

I told him a little bit about my predilections, but I chose my words carefully, needing to check in with myself about how they were coming out of my mouth.

'I appreciate polarity. I want my femininity to be met with masculinity.'

He was touching me, rubbing me slowly and sometimes arousing a part of me with a touch as light as a feather.

'I understand. But you don't want to be dominated.'

'No' I said and I meant it. Somehow, I sensed that wasn't what I wanted with this man. This was going to be an exploration of our two entities far more in a Karma Sutra kind of way.

I get the sense he instinctively understands that what I need is to go to places where my mind is at rest, like mantras, and my sense of joy is uplifted.  I had planned to take him to dinner on his birthday shortly, but he changed that to oysters at the Market and buying food to cook me a fancy dinner. 'Of course, I said, whatever you want to do on your birthday.'

It's hard to explain to the children that my soul is reaching out to another soul living here on this Earth, that it feels healing and that I am beginning to feel...happy. I haven't wanted to do that or feel that too soon, a lot of caution in my heart was there, and yet I can also feel myself opening up like a flower. Maybe it's too soon to say but I do dare to think, 'here comes the sun'.

The next chapter of my life

 In my new life on my own, it's busy and involved, but I have made time to explore what my future might look like. I have a plan to simplify life so that I can engage as much as I would like with my family and take up opportunities as they come my way. I am not there yet, very much in the interim stage of sorting that out, but that's the plan. 

I am also committed not to wait for that day on the other side of this work to be happy. I make space every day for what some call 'a pocketful of happiness'. I am rarely triggered and seem to be jogging along in a relatively peaceful place the vast majority of the time.

I am aware of the advice of Peter Crone that we don't know what the future will bring. Will I ever have unconditional love again? Some other form of love again? Something else entirely? I don't know the answer to these questions and there's liberation in letting go of knowing. In other words, I do my best to dwell in the 'now'. I have no idea how I will manage to pull off all that has to be done, it's a truckload of responsibility I have never had before on my own, but I am kind of amazed at my ability to stay strong and centred through this storm.

In terms of embracing my erotic authenticity I have grown in leaps and bounds. It was pointed out to me that there is no specific time to consider a new partner or maybe just an erotic partner. It's not the easiest venture for me but nor is it impossible. I have embraced the fact that I have assets to offer in term of what I can bring to someone's life and that sort of inner confidence feels good.

It's a whole other way to view life. I have had my children; I have been married. I don't need to do that again and that offers up possibilities never thought of before. I am going slow, of course, but it's a nice thought that I might have a 'friend' to explore my inner passions. As I said, it's baby steps for now.

Grief

 My husband passed away in my arms. He had been in hospital for a little over a month. The end was fast and in retrospect, when he understood that he wasn't going to recover, when he lost hope, he was ready to die.

There was no specific conversation around saying 'goodbye' to one another. However, in many ways that goodbye took place in specific moments starting on the Thursday and ending on Sunday evening. I had been in the city and arrived at the hospital on the edge of the city late lunch time. He was asleep and I hovered about the room until he became aware of my presence and opened his eyes.

He immediately, and for the first time, took out of the bed sheets his right arm. He had had a stroke and was paralyzed down the left side of his body. He brought his hand up to meet my hand and together, holding holds, he said, 'I missed you.'

'I won't leave again,' I told him. Later in the evening I told him I was going home by Uber to gather some things, and I would be back in an hour.

When I arrived back, he was asleep but the nurse on duty told me that she had told him where I had gone and that I would be back soon. She had asked him where he was, and he had correctly told her where he was. This was the first time he could do that. Up until then he had been on a plane, in another country, in Indonesia. He had been anywhere and everywhere except that hospital.

In fact, I had slept with him on a mattress on the floor for several days prior to this but I had caught a virus in there and was coughing and very unwell, so I had gone home to sleep in my bed, returning to the hospital each day by tram to spend the day with him.

Now, I was there until the end.

I think it was Friday when I climbed into bed with him. I had to wiggle into the smallest space beside him so that I didn't hurt him. He woke. It was very difficult for him to form words, but I clearly heard him say,

'I love you so much.'

And then he said, 'You are strong'.

Knowing that all he could do at this point was to reassure me that I would be all right on my own, that's what he said. That's my interpretation.

Everyone came to say goodbye. Of course. My daughter discharged herself early from having her daughter to show the babe to her father. We smothered him with love in every way we knew how. I told him that only good men get this much love.  I never stopped touching him, massaging his neck, holding his hand.

When the children had said their final goodbyes, we were left in the room alone until the nurses came to change his position. He stopped breathing and then he started breathing again and then I held him in my arms.

'I love you, I love you. I love you' I kept saying as he gasped, took his final breath and passed away.

Grief is an extraordinary thing. We gave him the best send off. We all talked about him in the church - me first, his children, his six siblings. It was a glorious send off as the coffin was lifted from the church to the bagpiper playing 'Scotland the Brave'.

At first, I thought I would get through this all right. Feelings were under control, until they weren't, until the loss was felt over the past few days, the enormity of it.

He was my Protector. My love. My life.

I know he would want me to be all right, for us to all be all right. And we shall be. My grief ebbs and flows. Today I am a mess, a sobbing mess, but it feels right to really feel into it. To acknowledge the loss. He was my soulmate by just shy of 50 years and I miss him sorely. This is love. This is what it is to be human.

Denial

 I was never going to be able to influence my husband to do things the way I felt was right. He was always going to attend to his health in his own particular way which is how he approached all the aspects of his life. There was a degree of suspicion about the traditional medical profession that did not always serve him and probably stems from the fact that his mother, all those years ago, died young.

Against medical advice, he did not do surgery, but rather approached an integrative doctor, meditated, juiced. All was fine until it wasn't, and even then, testing was slow and misdiagnosed, until a biopsy determined that the cancer had spread to his bones.

Denial protects, unfortunately, from facing the facts before you, and there was no bucket list, no readjustment of life to incorporate the bad news, just more supplements and various powders and pills, which were never going to do the job.

I fought and raged at times against the process, tried to persuade and convince, but at the end of the day, he was going to do it his way, make his choices, and that was that.

It was only a couple of weeks before his stroke when I found that I had stumbled upon a new landscape, one where I had come to terms with the way things were. It is called 'radical acceptance'. Still, the stroke took me by surprise and with hindsight I wish that I had been more assertive. At the same time,  I was missing parts of the story that would have enabled me to be more assertive. It was a slow moving trainwreck and one over which I had little control.

It is up to me, and my amazing children, to navigate and sort the next chapter. We support him in every way we can, and we await denial letting go of its grip so that this final chapter can be one of peace for him and for us, that we can make the best plans possible, find purpose, and rest in love.

The suitability of love

 I just finished the novel 'Intermezzo' by Sally Rooney. I am missing the characters already so I listened online to a few book club groups sharing their opinions, which were divided, as one would expect. 

What did appear to be consistent was a liking of Margaret, the 36-year-old woman, recently divorced from her alcoholic husband who goes to bed with Ivan, the 23-year-old "on the spectrum" chess player who she has been assigned to drive home to his Airbnb from a tournament.

The two protagonists of the novel are Ivan and his brother Peter, but we get to know Margaret from the inside, and thus, it seems to me, readers relate to Margaret, and not to Naomi and Sylvia so much, because we come to understand Margaret better. There's so much about the other women that remains a mystery. It's missing the point by the way to expect to know them better because they are Peter's girls, and if Peter can't know them better, then neither can we. It's his confusion about the two women in his life, and how they fit, or don't, that is central to the story.

One book club member was lost as to a motive for Margaret having a relationship with the much younger Ivan. Ivan has braces, isn't that sure of himself, but there's something there; a wanting, a desire, and they are both kind, humble people. The sex scenes between them are so beautifully constructed that I would have thought there was no doubt in readers minds that this is irresistibility on both sides. And kindness, which they are both needing.

I think this is either a conscious or unconscious thought on Rooney's mind all the time - that what seems 'suitable' for some people isn't suitable for other people, and maybe these choices aren't even ours, but the conditioning of forces greater than ourselves. The reader leaves the book, I would have thought, wondering about the limitations we set on ourselves about what is suitable; even what 'love' looks like.

I think for many readers it will be a stretch to think that the two women could share Peter in an ongoing way, and that's probably right. Should Peter and Naomi settle down and have a child, the opportunities to see Sylvia may begin to run down, or not. She may be incorporated into the new family in ways, a loving aunt for the child perhaps. The two women genuinely care for one another, and for Peter, and that's the glue.

Monogamy has its place, of course, but what I don't think makes sense, is that it demands that we have no care for other people of the opposite sex. Jealousy has a purpose, to be sure, but it also has this nasty demand that all loving feelings should go to one person, forever.

Honestly, I think this unwritten expectation places demands on a union that are almost unachievable; that one person has to fulfil one's needs for passion, affection, understanding, companionship and so forth, forever and ever. It's sort of bottling oneself up, kind of living in fear of spreading good will around, lest one be judged.

I don't mean that Peter's decisions, and the girls, can be a regular sort of thing, suitable for the masses. It's a particular situation, but maybe not so particular. The times they are a changing.

Anticipatory Grief

 I think about being in a storm, not quite sure where you are or what's the correct direction; what, in fact, to do.

I think about the advice, told in so many ways and by so many people, not to focus on the past or worry about the future, but simply to focus on the present moment.

I remind myself that control is an illusion and that life will play out regardless of my input. I can control all sorts of little outcomes but the big outcomes, other people's decisions, for example, are well beyond my control.

I think the tough part for me is not knowing, are we going backwards or forwards?

For the vast majority of people with cancer, there is a team who supports. The person may not take all the advice offered by them, but overall, there's a strategy in place, often a cocktail of strategies, and thus there is a plan. 

My husband has tended towards being a lone ranger in so many capacities and his cancer journey is no different. He doesn't want me at the appointments with the oncologist - says the guy is too dark and there is no upside in me hearing what he has to say - and thus I don't have the opportunity to hear what he has to offer.

I find myself listening for the bits and pieces of information offered to me, trying to make sense of them, sort of attempting to put them together to see if I can make a tapestry. 

I cannot honestly say if I know or even think, if he is going forwards or backwards because the information I have is too disparate and even contradictory.

I have noticed that I am feeling numb about it all, perhaps I am not sitting with any story that could or would ground me. I mentioned this to AI and the response was that numbness is to be expected, a way of coping. I suppose it is. If you don't have the data what else is there to do?

I think when it 'all falls apart' there's a solace and a strength that comes from a return to meditation and to the sense of equanimity in meditation. When I was guiding meditation groups, I almost always used the imagery of taking two steps back from the mind so you could observe it more clearly. This immediately puts one in the seat of the witness and in that seat the mind quite naturally starts to slow a bit. You can see the thought(s), almost like picking something up in your hand. 

In fact, it occurred to me just now, it's a companionable thing to do too. There's you, the compassionate observer, and there's the mind, dancing not too graciously.

When I was in Bali last year, the love meditation my husband and I did in a group had a very lasting impression on me. If I need comfort I go back to that room in my mind. We were invited to feel into the deepest love we had for another person and then, with the most divine music playing, to take that love and give it to ourselves. This was a magical moment for me and so I repeat it alone as required. I pour the love inside myself, like taking a jug of healing water and pouring it over my body.

It's a strange walk, the cancer experience, both for the person with cancer and the person accompanying the person with cancer. AI called it 'anticipatory grief' and encouraged me to reach out to a group of people going through a similar experience. I will think about it.

Transformation into power exchange

 If I go back two years in time, there was a conversation one day with someone well versed in the BDSM community that didn't make sense to me. I took that to mean, since I am not well versed in the BDSM community, that I must be wrong or ignorant.

He was talking about training submissives, (I admit that that sort of language still has both an appeal and a distaste for me), and I listened along, a bit confused. Eventually, I asked a question.

'I don't understand what you mean exactly,' I said. 'It sounds like you are saying that you can transform a relationship into a D/s dynamic by working on just the submissive, training her.'

Now, I have to paraphrase this conversation according to my recollection obviously, but this is what I remember.

'Think of it like a car... 

(My mind went straight to riding a girl)

...Imagine a guy drives a mini minor. Well, I turn his girl into a BMW.'

I actually went through this sort of 'training', in short form, a big emphasis on 'obedience', but of course this did not create a satisfactory D/s dynamic because what hadn't been satisfactorily sorted were the emotions and subsequent behaviours that had not been addressed and resolved, on both my and my husband's part. On a particular day, he felt rejected by me, and that was enough to blow the newly returned dynamic apart.

Of course, if I could have taken back that day and replayed it, I would. I have reminded myself that if it hadn't happened on that day, it would have happened on another day. It would most certainly have happened because his vulnerabilities and distresses still lay just below the surface. 

What hadn't been accounted for was that we had come out of a difficult period of time where he was spending a great deal of time at his desk trying to resolve business matters. He felt vulnerable about his health. There wasn't enough time spent together, next to no fun; inadequate displays of affection; low priority of our marriage in our lives.

Yet, we were being told we were codependent on one another. We were being encouraged to spend time apart. Yes, I had to come to terms with the fact that I needed to create a life on my own if I were to handle the situation, since he was utterly wedded to his desk, I understood that.  But how exactly was this going to create the connection and passion I craved in my life if he hadn't been 'trained' as well?

By turning me into a BMW and leaving him unable to find space in his mind for anything much than work - in other words, leaving him feeling that the sky would fall if he took his eyes off the business and political scene - or off his health, or that he was in emotional danger of feeling that he could do something 'wrong' in our relationship - the car, albeit traded in for a better model, was still sitting in the garage.

Looking back on it, the best advice would have been like this.

'We need to look at the marriage. Sort through feelings and emotions that have accrued in recent years. We build into it, once the feelings and emotions are expressed and resolved, new behaviours that will prepare the marriage for the next stage. It may take up to a year to prepare the marriage for a power exchange that will last. If you are up for that, let's do it.'

This is what I would advise. Make your relationship the very best it can be, based on evidence such as from research undertaken by the Gottmans. Consider work with a therapist trained in emotions focused therapy. Maybe, at that point, you are happy as clams. Maybe you want more, a power dynamic. Well then, now you're good to go.

Just the two of us

 In just a few days, my husband and I are officially empty nesters. My youngest son moves out to live on campus for his final semester of college. It's a landmark event, one that puts us back where we were 40 years ago, just the two of us.

It's going to be quite a thing. We're still in the big family house. We will be 'rattling around' as people like to say. Once upon a time, the people that lived in this house used an intercom system to communicate with one another but that hasn't worked for many years, so I have tended to send a text when dinner is ready, and people appear.

Without a student in the house those long gruelling days of academic writing have, more or less, come to an end. That is to say, I won't be surprised if he returns on certain days to discuss a topic, and I won't be surprised if my days as editor have not entirely come to an end, but he's remarkably talented, so all things being equal, I can hang up my academic assistant boots.

Truthfully, I have considered taking up an academic pursuit of my own, but at the same time, I want to see how it goes for my husband and I to return to a state of 'just the two of us'. I don't know how long he will be well enough for us to share time out and about, so I don't want to compromise the next period of time with distraction. It's a hard choice because there's a big part of me that would like to get qualified and act as a therapist. Maybe two therapists in the family are one too many. Maybe it's my time to slide quietly into activities that provide me with joy. 

When I think about this time, I imagine time carved out for pleasure. I keep banging on that we need to walk every day and now I can turn that into a reality. We can head out the door and, in any direction, we can walk to a coffee shop or a park or a supermarket. We can simply walk the neighbourhood and enjoy the many styles of architecture and beautiful gardens. We can walk to the club we both belong to, and that's on the agenda again too.  A simple lunch or dinner, maybe a sauna or a swim; for me, an exercise class, or for him, some gym time.

Reduced tickets turned up in my inbox yesterday for our town's Symphony Orchestra, so I bought those and booked into the restaurant nearby for an early dinner. We've bought plane tickets for a holiday and started to book accommodation. We are getting into the spirit of this empty nesting, with blind faith that everything will be all right.

We have marked a day in our calendar when we return to the holiday house together and put it back together now that the painters have gone. Together, it won't be so overwhelming. In fact, it will be fun.

In two days, my eldest son arrives with his two sons and wife. Apart from a few hours at the beginning of his life I haven't seen little L and I am excited to hold him again. He's been an angel.

So, maybe, just maybe, we've paid our debts to the Gods of Fire and Fury, and we can enter a time of peace and quietude. Well, mostly, this world rumbles on, the Earth shakes, but seasons come and seasons go, just as they have always done, and maybe we have entered a season where we can take care of one another and find pleasure and purpose in one another's company. We have built a beautiful family together so now maybe we can rest a little on our laurels.

Belief

 Joshua 1:9

Have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

Bonds

 It's impressive that the generation of my children have made the effort to know something about psychology, which is a considerable improvement from my generation where we just got on with life as best we could, clueless about matters such as trauma, and attachment theory, and feelings.

I was with my daughter this week and she told me the story of her close friend who I know well. She's a beautiful girl, very good hearted and kind, a primary school teacher, but she has run into one man after the other with issues.  We thought she may have finally found Mr Right recently, but it turns out not to be the case.

He is a divorced man with two children and to his credit he told K when they first started dating that he needed a good deal of space. She was prepared to work with that until it became obvious that he was avoidant, even to the point of making criticisms of her body that would make any girl think twice about his desire to be in the relationship at all.

These days, K has boundaries and can see red flags and after giving it her best for six months she called the relationship off. She has learned to be happy single rather than unhappy in an unsuitable union. She had little difficulty in letting go, a far cry this time from the 'on and off' relationship she was in a for a few years with a very controlling partner.

There's a silver lining in disappointment in that those situations provide an opportunity to tap into strengths, I am reminded of the novel 'The Women' about an American nurse who went to Vietnam, found herself  after the war let down by the man she loved, but this pushed her to find meaning in her life in a different way; everlasting friendship with women friends, and even a new, much stronger relationship with her parents. No. she didn't have the children she would have cherished but she did find purpose and satisfaction in a different way.

I am an old-fashioned girl who is never happier deeply and securely bonded to an attachment figure - thus the attraction of a D/s dynamic, but I can see there are other ways to live quite satisfactorily.

Dance steps

 One of my sons is a Counsellor. His speciality is children, but through study he has needed to become well versed in various theories. There are the usual suspects, such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Theory. More recently, came Emotion Focused Therapy, both for individuals and couples.

We chat about these topics. I have always been interested in what makes people tick. I found myself reading books and academic papers that took my fancy, and in that reading, I came to see that Sue Johnson of Canada, who created Emotion Focused Therapy, really did have it all figured out.

In a nutshell, she believed, as John Bowlby before her, that we are all, despite our differences, much the same. We are wired for connection and to bond with a few precious people. Our survival as mammals is dependent on that bonding and if that isn't secure, we tend to behave in fairly predictable ways. We either become demanding or we withdraw.

Therein lies the distancer-pursuer dance. It's a clumsy sort of dance that benefits no-one. It needs to come to a halt. New music needs to be chosen. A different sort of dance needs to be learned.

Maybe two years ago now, I was convinced by a relative stranger to try to retrieve a dynamic in my marriage that had, much to my chagrin, fizzled out. I was convinced by someone that I had been talking to, a therapist of sorts, that it was easy enough to reinvigorate that dynamic; that it could be done in no time. I wanted to believe that, and I went along with the plan. It turned out to be two of the most challenging years of my life. In hindsight, I should have trusted my gut.

It is extremely hard to go against the grain, to act in a way that is the opposite to how one has, reasonably satisfactorily, survived up to this point. These are reasonably automatic responses and need to be broken down. This will often require the assistance of a trusted and reliable therapist; one who will act as an attachment figure; the model of secure attachment. These automatic responses of ours are so ingrained and often lie below our awareness. I have a reasonable level of intelligence, but it has taken me a long time to bring instinctive reactions to the surface on my own, that is, without help.

Both my husband and I were brought up in a generation by parents who simply had no emotional attunement with their children. It was challenging for them to have anything but well behaved, compliant children, so neither of us learned how to express our emotions in an honest and attuned way. In fact, I would say, emotions equalled danger. 

I have come to realise that my husband has had no capacity to be with my emotions. I've spent the vast majority of our almost 50 years together in a, comparatively speaking, quiet and controlled state. If I bring to him a small amount of distress, that's okay, but anything more, dysregulates him. I recall now the many times I have said, 'I can't talk with you about my distress looking for soothing because what happens is I feel more distressed after we talk'. There was the clue.

There has been something about my being 'emotional' that has triggered in him, instinctively and beyond his ability to do anything about it, danger.

We made great inroads this week when I shared, quietly and calmly, the fact that his massive loss of weight is very difficult for me. I have a muscle memory of where my arms should go, my hands should go, what I will feel when my hands hold him in bed. 

To his great credit, he listened without reacting defensively, and he shared that he feared being rejected by me. 

It has felt for so long that I have a need to get closer and he has a need to withdraw more, whilst all the while we both crave the other's love.

I was sitting outside a Japanese restaurant during the week eating my miso soup and watching people go by. I watched men go in and out of the supermarket next door and a thought popped into my head. Where on earth would I ever find someone to replace my husband? Where would I ever find a suitable Owner? There is so vey much that is right about our union, except for this dumb pursuer-distancer dance.

Sharing our vulnerabilities, that's the first step in choosing new music; feeling into what we feel so that we can transform the feelings into something new and better.

Embracing difference

 One of the thoughts that used to come to mind often was that time mid-morning when one might make a cup of tea or coffee and have a time out. I would try to imagine all the other people doing something similar and that was a pleasant thought - all the people in their homes or out on the site or on the farm brewing themselves a cup of tea. I suppose, I was imagining that the brewing of tea, or coffee, created a connection, an imagined connection.

I have been thinking about the power of imagination lately. I suppose you could call it manifestation, although I don't often have that element of 'this will happen' in it. I simply use my imagination to take a little break from what is happening in front of me. I have always done this. I think another word might be disassociation, I might take myself out of a dull conversation for a few seconds and just think my own thoughts.

I delighted recently in a story Jimmy Fallon told about growing up knowing that he would be on Saturday Night Live. The interviewer asked him, 'what if it hadn't happened?'. He was emphatic. There was just no way it wouldn't have happened in some form, he said. There was no way he wouldn't have made it happen.

My husband said something similar last night over dinner. When he was young, he said, on the farm, he came to have this feeling that he would do something special out in the big world. He wasn't entirely sure quite what, although by the time he was ending his undergraduate degree, he knew it would involve world markets. When he achieved his dream, I think it was the happiest time of his life.

He is very unwell now, but he has this huge belief that he will get better, and seeing how he manifested his dream job, it's hard not to believe him, whilst at the same time, I said to him yesterday, 'Can you please let me take it one step at a time?'

We are very different in this way. I much prefer things to be steady. I like the day to day. I like morning tea. Like that. I like making dinner. I like meeting up with my adult children. I enjoy the beautiful morning sun we are experiencing this winter. I like it when the camelias bloom.

Well, of course, this was the attraction for me, wasn't it? The polar opposite of myself. The guy with adventure in his soul; the dream in his heart. Who else could take me out of myself in this way? Who else could challenge a degree of complacency in my being, the comfort in the day to day?

Man, at times it has been a struggle. My inner being wants to scream, can't things just be normal? But that's the thing, isn't it? What is normal anyway?

You know what though? I think I am at peace with the different perspectives now. I'm curious about it rather than discombobulated about it. I think after nearly 50 years, I am getting used to it.

It is what it is

 I would like to think that the sky is the limit; that two people can get so close that they can reveal themselves, perhaps not in entirety, but close enough.

We keep secrets from one another, don't we? We keep the secrets that we must. We shelter the other not just from parts of ourselves, but from parts of themselves. We understand that complete disclosure wouldn't be in anyone's interests.

What happened in childhood, the attachment issues that may have appeared back then, potentially even in the preverbal stage are enduring.  They leave marks on the psyche. It's territory that should be explored only with a well-trained therapist, not a partner, so sometimes one just adapts and makes allowance for, and compromises with a partner, in the overarching interests of what is.

I do believe that an attachment style is able to be adjusted; that is, that one can go from an insecure attachment style to one that is secure. I am testament to that.

I have taken a test a few times to ascertain my attachment style. It focused on asking me questions about my mother, my father and my husband. I came out as having a disorganized attachment style. In one case, I was said to be 'avoidant' with similar questions. But I noticed just yesterday when I was whiling away time awaiting the cooking of the vegetables that the test score revealed I was actually quite close to the category of secure if you took away the result of the attachment to my mother. It was the result of the relationship with my mother that had statistically reduced my overall score.

I suddenly realized how flawed this logic was. Sure, no doubt, I needed to look after myself as a child whilst, of course, wanting to be nurtured, but should that affect my functioning score now? So, I went elsewhere and immediately noticed that there were no questions about my parents - one dead for over 30 years and the other one at death's door - bur rather lots of questions about my thought patterns and daily patterns now. What do you know, I came out as Secure.

This was delightful news and signified buckets of growth. I have been feeling it, especially recently. It comes down to those few words - It is what it is. Acceptance.

It's really important, I believe, to have plenty of empathy for the people with insecure attachment. Sometimes they are obvious in their presentation but often they are not. Even well trained and highly experienced therapists need months if not years to figure them out, so it's not so much a job for us to figure them out, as it is to accept that there is some trauma there. 

Try your best to stay emotionally regulated yourself. Stay calm. Maintain appropriate boundaries for yourself. When you hit their brick (emotional) wall, and you will feel it when you do - recognize you have gone as far into that neck of the woods as you can today and let that expedition go. Only ever do what you can do without there being harm done. 

No matter what defences a person puts up, we are all fundamentally the same in that we all want to get close. Sometimes, people just don't know how. It just doesn't feel safe. You do what you can do. It's all we can do. There's peace in knowing that.

Flowing

 The last entry was Wednesday, a horrible day. I just read back on that entry which I had written first thing that day. I was motoring along as best I could when I got a call for permissions for my mother to go into palliative care at the nursery home - in other words, no heroics - and I found the double Dutch too much. I heard the word 'infection' which didn't jive with the word 'palliative'. It wasn't until the next morning - yesterday - when a nurse I knew well rang, and by then I was able to have the conversation, a perfectly orderly and reasonable conversation, and we were all on the same page.

It feels like I can have the thought 'just flow with it', that that thought is lodged in mind and body, and then so many minutes later, tears flow, and I am not so good at flowing. It's not in the plan, to fall apart, and then I do, which is what lead me to write now, again, first thing in the morning.

Wednesday was almost mad with the many things and thoughts I dealt with. I ended that day with my son wanting to talk about accepting a place at a college to end out his Masters. This means in so many weeks, he will formally move out of home, my last chicken. Of course, I said he should accept it, he has saved the money to do so, and it will be a good experience for him.

And then, he sort of had a meltdown, wondering what would happen to our dog who we had buried in the garden if I sold the house. I guaranteed him that if and when that time came, we would bury her remains in our garden by the sea. He clearly was feeling vulnerable too, and that was his expression of it. I made a mental note that as soon as possible we needed a dog in our lives. It's the first time we have been without a dog, and we need the commonsense of a dog. Dogs definitely flow.

It makes sense there's a certain amount of processing going on, for both of us. It's not since just before Covid, when all the boys of the family had a European holiday skiing the Alps (and thank God for that) that I have been alone in the house a good deal of the time. Is it some colliding of the stars that I fell two weeks ago and have been tending to a sore knee? Do things simply happen all at once for a reason, I wonder.

Today, we finally pick up my son's car - long story - but it's another reason, his borrowing of my car to get to work and university - that kept me in a contemplative state, a transitional state, a preparation state.

When there was the opportunity, I used to attend a Dharma Dialogues gathering. I am not so inclined now that it is online, it's just not the same for me. I recall Catherine, the host, say that we do this, sit silently and then talk when moved to do so, about life's big all-encompassing thoughts. We do this, she said, gathering strength, flexing the muscle, so that when things do fall apart, we are ready. 

I find myself noticing little things. I think one notices different things at times when they resonate with you. I heard Rachel Ward talk briefly about thinking that the farm they owned wasn't something she could involve herself in, until the kids had gone and it occurred to her, that she did in fact have a place there. It meant she had to learn from scratch, daunting but do-able.

And I heard my husband on a telephone call to me, about a subject he usually handles, say to me, 'you'll work it out'. That's not something he typically says.

It feels a bit like the material I am reading about 'attachment' and healing with attachment modalities. There's that psychoanalytic sort of approach, working with emotions, bringing them up, creating new meaning or strengths or outcomes or solutions that way. Then there is the practical approach, the solutions approach, maybe more the cognitive behaviour approach, addressing dissonant thoughts.

It's a beautiful thing, these new modalities, where the therapist is seen as the guide, to help the client see that all that was needed was actually already there inside the person. Maybe the material of the life story needed to be massaged a bit, like a 'trip' that might lead you to see that, as an example, the man you feared so much in your mind, as a boy, is now no threat to you. Your body can relax.

I wonder if, in a way, I've been doing my own therapy in the past two weeks, spending a lot of time alone, and gently guiding my mind to see things in a new way; gathering creative solutions and feeling into my natural strengths - growing.

I love watching 'Couples Therapy'. I watch it on SMS on Demand, but I think Americans watch it on Showtime?? Anyway, this couple in Season 4 jumped ship. She's a psychoanalyst herself, as bright as a button, but she just couldn't give her husband what he wanted, this elusive sense of 'home'. He was demanding that she come up with the solution, and she just couldn't engineer it. It seemed doomed to fail because it was like asking 'hand over the money' when the money simply didn't exist. Her frustration was palpable.

You have to bend. You have to look squarely at the cards you are dealt, and you have to play your hand with skill and quiet courage. You have to be ready for anything.

I close my eyes. I see the river and take inspiration. Here I go. I flow.