Breakthroughs

Well, I thought it would be a lot, lot longer before I ever came close to having a breakthrough with my husband, but today one came. We were laying on the bed talking and I began asking him questions from my Maximum Self Esteem book. It was sort of an assessment of one's self esteem. Actually, I was surprised by a couple of his answers and even more surprised that he shared them. As we talked, I turned the book over to him and asked him to assess what he thought my answers would be. I wasn't surprised to learn that he didn't really know the severity of my concerns. But I was surprised when I had the courage to tell him that I had told NP a couple of weeks ago that I was concerned that if I fixed all that was wrong with me, my marriage, or more specifically, my relationship with my husband would be over. I expected him to get mad, but he didn't. He just ask me why I said it and what I thought. I was able to explain to him that I currently feel that correcting myself is going to mean asking him to change and asking him to change for me is going to hurt him. I referred specificially to the need for affection and closeness. But as we talked it through I began to realize that one of the things that makes me crave and really need the affection is because I don't feel that I'm standing on my own two feet. I need the reassurance that I'm a viable human being and currently need that to come from someone else. As I grow stronger, I'm not going to be as desparately dependent upon it as I am now. I think I still need the affection and intimacy and somehow I need to learn to get that from my husband He brought up again that different people express these things in different ways. I do need some things that feel familiar as well. I feel good about the conversation.