My Two Selves

Yesterday I did some work with my therapist trying to clear some confusion from my head. She asked me to have a debate between my "thinking" self and my emotional self. I changed positions on each end of the couch in order to have this debate. Essentially, my thinking self told my emotional self that it was the reason for all my problems, and my emotional self was a smartass and said, "Oh yeah, well without me you can't feel a damn thing."

I've done a lot of good work with the therapist and on my own lately. Some things I've discovered:

• I may have married my foreign-born husband who has a totally different culture than mine, a different lifestyle, a different way of loving, to escape everything that was known to me. Yet there is still a small child in me that cries for the familiar -- who wants to have things and relationships that are very familiar.
• I need love and affection because I have old wounds that need to be healed. It's OK to need those things.
• My thinking self tries to stay in control, pushing the emotional side away, so that it can remain in control. But that does something bad to the emotional side that I'm not completely sure of ... but am working on figuring it out.
• When R. -- the other man in my life -- tells me that my marriage sucks, I feel ashamed and judged and it causes that emotional side to throw up a big wall.

My husband has a new job now ... he's moving away. I'm staying put, at least for now. I may never join him. It all feels weird, but that it is happening without decisions being made.