It’s so liberating to reach that point in your life when you look back at behaviors of the past and have realizations about them that help you in the Now. A friend recently wrote: “I love looking back at old relationships and to see my part in things. I really wanted my ex wife to breast feed, because I heard it was better for our babies. Back then I was a very lost soul and thought like many there was a right and wrong way. She was against it, she was completely distant from her own body. Sex was the worst I ever had, but I, in my mind thought that meant being more virginal, she would make a better mom, hard to believe my thoughts looking back. We had sex maybe 50 times over a 18 year relationship. She was taught that sex was something you have to do for your husband out of obligation. So I pressured her into trying to breast feed our son, which was just an awful thing to do now looking back. This is a woman who wanted to keep her shirt on during sex. I just had the story in my mind it was so important to breast feed, that I would have done it if I could.”
So I remember it quite clear the three of us in the room and me just kept pressuring her to try and then she finally did and before she even really started, she had a bit of a nervous breakdown. I backed off, but I know I must have held resentment.
How kind and loving was that of me to pressure a woman, who had never even looked at her own body and had all this shame about her body to do something she was not comfortable with. It was not only unkind and unloving, it was mean of me. I take 100% responsibility for all of it, I married a woman for a story and not for who she actually was and then I was unkind in my actions because she did not fit my story.
Second example, I was the only one who could get our babies to sleep. Again she just did not have any mothering instincts. It really angered her that she had to call me to get the babies to sleep. I would make jokes about it I’m sure, undermining her self confidence. What a mean and horrible thing to do to a woman and her children, especially your own childrens mom. She was just who she was, a perfect human being and I punished her for it.
When I think of how unloving this must have felt to her, it makes me want to cry. We eventually went through a brutal divorce while I was sick, no wonder she attacked me in court, how could she be kind to a man who was so unkind. Never saw what I had done to her early on, i am deeply sorry.
I feel love for her as a human being now, so much love. I do sometimes think what if I could go back in time to when she was a baby and just rocked her, held her and given her all the love she needed.
Deep long hugs and unconditional love is all any being needs to grow, how sad I feel for the old me, that I was unable to give that to others, besides my children and I only gave it to my children, everyday since birth, because it was withheld from my father.
It’s always about me and my sadness is so wonderful to notice. It gives me tears of joy and I don’t live in it. It’s just who we all were, but how can I even know that, its all just a wonderful story.”