I M Perfect lady

Tag: feelings

  • What you Grasp onto…

    "Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life."

    My brother feels that this sentence is wrong, that it should instead read;

    "Grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life.

    And actually the key word is grasping or not grasping what is meant by the term truth.  And I feel that the sentence still works for it is in understanding what NOT grasping will mean.

    The key of truth lies in whether you grasp or let it pass…

    We are given the opportunity hundreds a times a day to use this grasping or not grasping technique, even if you live alone, you are faced with this choice.

    Our lives are directly affected by our ability to grasp on or the ability to not move, this is the KEY to all of life.

    I think, we think, that life is very complex, hard and a huge mystery, when it can be boiled down to the very basic of all things, whether you can hold on and follow your own feelings…

    GRASPING is to become nearsighted or innersighted, to honor nothing else but what you feel inside, to hone the skills to recognize all the little nuances of your body, to treat your inside like a precious child, to grasp on to the essence that is alive and moving inside and then live by it.

    The aliveness, the feelings, the energy, the spirit, the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, IS You.  This is what you are not grasping on to. These feelings are you.

    The you is not found in your clothes, your home, your car, your pretty hair, your job, your family genes,  YOU are in the energy of feelings…

    The key to life is whether you grasp on or not grasp on; your life will take a totally different path depending upon what you do and say about your feelings.

    The key to all of your life lies within that small but gigantic act.

    My life totally flipped around by going with my guts, my inner feelings, my sorrow and my tears, my betrayal and horrific fear…it turned me on to me…and what is meant by the term truth.

    For the first 46 years of my life, I shunned my feelings, turned my voice away from them, disregarded and discarded them for the sake of many things, I betrayed myself in order for there to be peace in my family home and to 'get along' with my mother.

    In the end, none of that served anyone, not even me.

    All my feelings of hurt, betrayal, mistrust, fear, anger, resentment of being abused did not go anywhere while I shunned them, they sat like a bomb waiting to explode, to come out…and they did.  

    Each time I would find myself 'out of control', they poured out…usually upon an innocent bystander, my child.

    I couldn't grasp them, hold them back, they literally would spew forth in a torrent of words, feelings, etc…raining all my inner suffering upon my children.

    This out of control raging screaming voice did nothing to heal or address the pain….what it was doing was showing me what lay inside, what my inside world looked like…and sadly, I ALWAYS blamed my children for my tirade.

    If only they would do this or that.  If only they would behave here or there, if only they would listen to this or that, etc.

    Righteously I stood, the towering inferno out of control, blaming the child…never knowing the truth that was me.

    The truth that was me, that I had not grasped on to, was a very wounded, hurt, child.

    I then grew up to be an out of control adult with a neglected hurt child inside.

    The first glimpse I had of this child, was when my niece spoke up and I took on this visceral knowing of who she was, how she felt and what she needed….before 24 hours was up, I was sobbing uncontrollably knowing I was her.  I was her completely. I was her, I too was an abused child by my father.  I also knew, it was much worse for me, so bad that I had no memory…all I had was the fear that would bubble into slight terror at being alone with my father.

    It seemed this was my final exam, the day of reckoning, could I see me in her and her in me?  Will I once again, pass by and not grasp on to my feelings, when my feelings echo those of a child who is so small and so innocent, who is now brave enough to speak her feelings, to say what happened?

    When my sister said, "She said Grandpa touched her…" all it took was a half a heart beat and I said, "She is telling the truth." 

    And right after that my body began shaking, shivering and trembling out of control….It knew that I knew.  I was grasping on.

    The truth came to me in the form of a little girl.  A little girl sexually abused by her grandfather.  It came to me in sorrow so wide and deep I thought I would drowned.  Yet I grasped on to her little hand and knew that I had to be the BIG one, the brave one, to speak and to say, what perhaps she could not articulate.

    I spoke for her and in doing so I spoke for me…I took her truth and held on.

    Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life…  All of life's abuse.  

    If you don't hold on to the little girls truth, you are holding the hand of the OFFENDER.

    Pick one…and your life will be steered by what you grasp onto…

     

     

  • Impeccable Word

    Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life.

    What does it mean if you can't grasp or know truth?  How are you taught this or perhaps not taught this?  Is there a class where you can understand the terminology of truth?

    There seems to be a fluidity with words when there is no body of truth behind them…words are meaningless unless you attach Truth Feelings.

    The only power words have are the truth feelings that ride along with them, if there is no power of truth, then they just are letters arranged and sounds being spoken.

    What I am not certain of is how you teach truth feelings…and how to utter them instead of words with the opposite feeling attached.

    Or, perhaps this is just the wiring defect with those of us who have been abused, where we are not able to speak what we feel or feel what is the truth.

    A Lie Detector doesn't detect wrong words, but actually how we are feeling when we utter the words…it is monitoring the body.  So what the lie detector really detects are feelings that don't match the sentence being spoken.

    Somehow when we are abused, we have to begin Pretending how we feel, instead of how we actually feel.  This could be due to threats of violence or shame in speaking out, we hide the FEELINGS of abuse.

    I believe we learn that hiding our TRUE FEELINGS is what is needed in order for many things to continue on as 'normal'….and so we do.

    We now have learned to say things we don't mean or feel….we have separated our body of feelings from the words we speak.

    So then our words do not have the support of our true feelings.

    "Being Impeccable with your Words" as Don Miguel Ruiz says, means that our words match what we feel.  I had to look up the word Impeccable….

     "In accordance with the highest standards of propriety; faultless."

    This may be the greatest tragedy of abuse, where we learn to separate what we feel and what we say…we lose our grasp on expressing our feelings truthfully and hold on to the illusion of what is not.

    Our power isn't lost in the act of abuse, our power is lost when we can't speak of how it made us feel…When we can't be truthful with our feelings after, when we have to go back and now pretend nothing happened or to make nice.

    The disconnection between what we feel and what we say is when we start abusing ourselves…

    We disregard how we feel in order to keep the relationship, the family, the 'love' of thy father and thy mother, we fail to grasp and hang on to our feelings of what is true for us…and instead make sure they get what they want and what feels good for them.

    The dance of the offender/victim fails to operate when the victim finally stands up and demands that their feelings be considered.

    While many want to put full blame on the Offenders, there is a second party involved who agrees with this dance, and the game ends when the victim decides that she/he is allowed to bring forth her true feelings.

    While many think this is a battle of words or powerful actions, it is actually a game of whose feelings will be honored…whose feelings are of greater value?

    What I have come to know, is that abusive parents, believe that their feelings matter more, have a higher slot on the scale of life, and that their children must submit and acquiesce their feelings. 

    It is the acquiescing of their truth and feelings…Accept something reluctantly but without protest…that makes them the perfect victim.

    And in doing so, learn to live without grasping the meaning of truthfulness…for to be truthful is to be without a family.

    They willingly give up their truth feelings to save a family…yet all they are really doing is allowing the Offender to go on.

    If only, all my 46 years of living without adhering to my feelings bought to bear a loving father and a supportive mother, then it wouldn't have been all for naught, but it was.

    No matter how much I suppressed my feelings, it didn't magically create them differently.  All that happened is that I suppressed what I felt. That is all.

    Even when I unleashed all that I felt, nothing really changed.  They didn't suddenly SEE what they had done and then changed.  Nope, all that happened is I began to walk impecably with how I felt.

    I no longer suppressed and hid what I felt.

    I took grasp once again of my feelings and held on…for it was clear to me, I was holding on to truth…

    Suppressing the truth doesn't change anything, it only prolongs the inevitable.  I had to look up SUPPRESSING…

    To Prevent the Development, action or expression of a feeling, impulse, idea…restrain.

    So, instead of holding firmly on to family, We are holding back the feelings of fear, loss, betrayal, hurt, sorrow…

    We don't want to feel those feelings attached to our parents.

    And in not owning or being truthful with the negative feelings, we betray all our feelings…we loose our impeccable word.

     

     

     


  • The Raw and Perfect Truth.

    As I thought about the way we paint people, how we are taught at a very young age to temper our truths, what we see and how we feel, how we not only learn to paint ourselves in false colors, but others as well. 

    We tell little children it is ‘not nice’ to call a fat person fat.

    It is not nice to say that someone who is mean is mean.

    That it is not nice to say grandma made you feel bad.

    We are teaching them, It is not nice to speak your truth…

    And, speaking your truth will make others feel bad.

    Is that right?  How can that be?  How in the world are the child’s words and feelings put aside to protect the mean or fat person?

    And then we wonder why they don’t come and tell us when a mean Uncle so and so did bad things to them.  They have been taught that their feelings don’t matter and that the truth is not kind.

    I am quite certain the fat person knows she/he is fat.

    And perhaps it may be better for us to engage in a conversation about it. 

    When I began speaking my truth, it felt like I was doing something bad.

    Like I had broken the ‘golden’ rule of kindness, that I had turned a corner into the forbidden territory, and all hell would break lose.

    And it did, the pretty painted picture shattered and crumbled.

    I lost friends and family when I spoke out loud and became like a very very stubborn child. I refused to give up what I had seen, how I felt and how the other person’s actions affected me.

    For once in my life, I looked at me in truth and how the world around me felt to me, looked to me…and my coloring people crayons disappeared.

    And the paints I used to tone down what I saw and how I felt…completely dried up. 

    I then discovered an incredible freedom and how easy it was to not have to come up with an excuse for others or worry how my truth would make them feel.

    Byron Katie’s book, “Loving What is” showed me how it was okay and actually a very sacred place to be.

    I was walking with God in reality. 

    I saw what God saw.

    He didn’t paint a sunset over to make it into a bird, nor a tree into a river.  He kept them all in their natural states.  I could then see the perfection in everything. 

    A mean person is mean.

    An unhappy person is unhappy.

    A homeless man has no home.

    A biting dog bites.

    A pedophile abuses children.

    A drunken person drinks.

    A neglectful mother neglects her children. 

    I didn’t try to make any of the above different, it was impossible and not my job.  I retired as the painter to make their lives appear kinder and feel better to me.

    Instead I felt them as they were…I opened myself up to feel all the things I had previously painted, I stripped them down so only their truths shone forth.

    I felt what it feels like to have a pedophile father, a neglectful mother.  I felt it all wash over me removing my own paints of being normal and okay.

    Stripped bare I stood with a family minus the pretty paint.

    Its unvarnished rawness of glaring truths…

    It wasn’t pretty but it was my truth…and I didn’t have the strength or the desire to pick up a brush and cover it up.

    I let it lay there in all its ugly perfect glory… the raw and perfect truth. 

     

     

  • Disguised as kindness.

    The word compliment and its twisting definition is trying to find true meaning in my head, for I feel that compliments are an outside expression we are trying to own, like hand-me-down self worth and self esteem.

     

    When I looked up the definition I found this.

     

    “Something that fills up, completes, or makes perfect.”  

     

    Or

     

    “An expression of praise, admiration, or congratulation. An expression of esteem, respect, affection, or admiration; especially: an admiring remark b: formal and respectful recognition.

     

    The first meaning seems odd, that ‘something is going to make us complete or perfect and fill us up. I know that this isn’t possible, that we can’t fill up another person or complete them in any way. 

     

    And yet compliments are noted as being kind.  Really???  How is it kind to pretend to fill up another?

     

    If I give you a compliment how do you wear it?  How do you then bring it inside and own it as your own meaning.  Isn’t it second hand?

     

    I then thought that the truthfulness or the authenticity of the compliments lay within the receiver not the giver.

     

    The state and condition of the receiver makes all the difference in the world.  If your self worth and self-esteem are wanting and you are not whole and healthy, than compliments are desired to make you so. And this leads to the compliments being more powerful than you.

     

    Compliments come from other people and they usually come after we have done something, so then this makes us work to gain our self worth, we have to do something to feel good.

     

    I used to work hard to gain pieces of my self worth, to be perfect, for I had very little sense of self inside, I needed their opinions and expressions to show me who I was, in their silence I disappeared.

     

    As I dropped the folks who used to give me their expressions and praise, I also dropped my need or desire for what they felt about me.  I then was able to feel first hand about my self.

     

    Isn’t there a ‘backhanded compliment’?  What is does that mean?  Is that an unkind compliment or one with an agenda?  Is it a compliment that has a hidden meaning?

     

    To me, if compliments are meant to make you feel better then they are dangerous, for you have to first feel great in order to receive them and then you don’t need them for you are full already.

     

    They seem like ego mist to me…something the ego feels is good for us and that it lies within others and not within ourselves…something we can’t ourselves grasp or hold on to, yet others seem to carry for us.

     

    Another co-dependent chain disguised as kindness.

     

     

  • My Body, My mind and My Spirit.

    Something magical happens when you are forced, as in my case, to stand without secrets, to be bare unto the world, to have nothing hidden out of sight, when your worst fears and beyond are realized, you are exposed and free.

    I didn’t seem to have a choice, my incest was uncovered the same time that my father was exposed as a pedophile, and yet in the moment of time, while it seemed as if I would die in shame, I sprung forth with a new resolve to live openly and decided I would carry no more secrets in my pocket.

    I would instead own this legacy of abuse and I would live my life fully aware of where I came from and how it formed me into who I was today. I understood all my idiosyncrasies and me perfectly, they were all birthed in abuse.

    Once I accepted that all the mess was from where I grew, I could then begin to grow in ways that were different.

    While you are holding on to secrets, the secrets are holding on to you and you are not free to heal and move beyond them, but once you agree that it is time for you to accept the truth of your roots, you begin changing out of abuse.

    How tragically sad that we can’t share with the world our deepest wounds that unlike cancer it is a shameful disease and while we keep it hidden in the deep pockets of our bodies, our bodies are not free our spirits are not free and we are in a prison of silence.

    Yet we hold the key that unlocks the door of shame. We have to be brave enough to align ourselves with our past’s reality. We have to have the courage to look upon the secrets that our families carry, our legacy that few will speak of but all know.

    The truth is what sets you free…and the willingness to lose all you are, to become someone you have never met, the person you were prior to abuse.

    My body and I have an agreement, we will no longer hide truths, we will speak our feelings always, regardless of the consequences, we have a bond now, a sacred bond, we are one…my body, my mind and my spirit.

  • Unravel

    In the past few months my teeth have been falling apart, broken teeth, fillings falling out and just this past Monday a root canal, all signs that my eating machine was breaking down.

    At one point I had 6 teeth with issues, both sides of my mouth and top and bottom, which created new challenges in eating, I could no longer just eat, I had to be aware of what and how.

    How interesting that I became aware of this Pac Man like eating machine only when it broke.

    And it took 7 broken teeth to get my attention and one root canal, but I am seeing it now. It slowed me down the only way it could by busting the Pac Man…the eating machine.

    When the eating machine was broken I saw my eating in slow motion.

    The frenzy pace was brought into focus…I became aware of how much I was unaware.

    How incredible is it that the Pac Man is the control center of eating instead of it being a team of mind, body and soul…this cavity of teeth and tongue is the ruler and the rest of me a victim of its poorly developed palate?

    Changing the palate to fit the fitness of my body is my latest adventure, to begin eating from the body and using the teeth instead of the teeth using me.

    I am sure in an uncontrollable environment, we control what we can, and eating uncontrollably gave us control, as well as the feeling of being satisfied in an unsatisfied world.

    What also linger at the fringes of my out of control eating are recollections of me being out alone with my father. I don’t recall anything but us eating alone. I was young, I was special I was out on a date. Yet, knowing he is a pedophile, this isn’t a nice scene…however the food was normal or more normal than what happened before or after…was I bought by a malt, was that my price? Did my life become normal again with food? It is funny how I can’t recall the abuse, but I can recall the food and can picture the restaurants and booths and even the swirling stools…

    Each part of my world is complicated with abuse.

    How I used food to normalize or control myself is the mystery I will unravel.

  • Not the Tail…

    When one person in a relationship changes, the relationship changes, for you are asked to adjust yourself. We are like two moving puzzle pieces that keep losing their shapes and we have to move and work to fit back together.

    I have felt the nerve of my security and found that it is based on sameness.

    It likes looking at the sameness; it likes to see itself in others and is fearful around different views and actions…it gets nervous.

    My security nerve feels more secure when the other person acts, thinks and moves like me, it wants a mirror image, it feel secure there.

    When a person moves in a different direction, I feel they are hearing differently than I, perhaps tuned into a different radio station, and dancing to a completely different song.

    My history on group movement, and being so alike, has made my security nerve accustomed to a bunch of people moving like a flock of birds, and it feels uneasy with independent movement.

    This is good to know, that it isn’t that the actions so much that is off, but how I perceive it.

    When you are raised to fit into a group and live nestled in that group, it is really odd to separate and live as a single.

    A single amongst the many…

    An individual doesn’t make you alone; it makes you a single in the bunch of many, a unique expression of humanity.

    My security nerve is okay with me being unique, however, it does seem to register changes within others as well.

    If the changes are empowering and heading towards whole being, I am okay…and actually feel a lift as I cheer them on…but if the changes are someone losing their power, I feel the drain as well.

    My security nerve has to fully separate and become its own, and stop being so co-dependent upon another’s power source.

    My wiring seems to get twisted up, it surges or fails when my boundary between self and other get blurred.

    Where my sense of self leaves my body and is attached inside of another, in one point two seconds, I am clinging to their feelings to find mine.

    When my power of security relies on another, I fail for I am plugged into them and their actions for my peace of mind, and this is insanity.

    This is how I know that a part of me is still co-dependent, for I feel unsettled by your actions, I feel my power surging or failing; I feel the pull and ebb as you move.

    It is incredible and yet frightening to feel the tail of the dog, and not being the dog.

    When I am the tail I have no power, I go where you go and either wag or droop…but can’t steer.

    Life is completely different when you are the dog and not the tail…

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  • An Artist with words.

    I have been going to writing classes, listening as Authors speak of their writing techniques and style, it seems they all know what their pattern is called and how it works, and I have yet to hear one who writes like me.

    My words come barreling out, pushing and shoving each other; they are not at all concerned about style and land on the page happy to be free from my tangled mine.

    They are driven by confusion and fear mostly, and feel much better on a clear white paper, all sorted out and explained.

    My writing starts usually with a thread or a nagging and often times a sinking feeling, and it matters not to me or the words how they look after we are done explaining.

    They are all bunched up in my head, running over each other, truths buried beneath the piles of fearful thoughts, overrun with uprooted beliefs and all are wanting the space to sort themselves out.

    A place where they can line up and be seen and felt, acknowledged and labeled correctly, room for separating truth from fiction.

    They are in a hurry and are reckless, heedless to watching where they land and how. Haphazardly flopped they care less about how they look as long as they are felt properly.

    As a writer I have failed in the eyes of the writing teachers, for I have not followed any proven path, but set out on my own and let my words land as they may, letting them be the creators not I.

    It truly puzzles me how they can know ahead what the words are going to need, how they can have in mind the structure that they will use to express themselves, like map writing, they seem to know where the words are going.

    My words are like vagabonds wandering around or riots of revolting feelings; it would be nearly impossible to know ahead of time where they are going, let alone draw a map ahead of time.

    Perhaps my words and self-expression have been tied up in the dark for too long; guarded, restrained and held in strict beliefs and ideas, that we are not willing to succumb to lying down nicely, instead we run wild in expressive freedom.

    Maybe I am not a writer at all, but an artist with words.

  • My mind now knows it.

    My feelings are like energy magnets and they seem to either be drawn to someone or pushed back, I am unable to steer my feelings, they have a life of their own.

    I can be friends with someone, and then they do something that changes who they are, and I don’t even have to wonder what to do, inside of me the desire to be with them changes and I move away.

    Some will say the friendship or love began to cool, and what I believe happens is new information comes in and it changes the ingredients of their energy system. And then we act differently, it isn’t a conscious thought, but unconsciously our body is leading us.

    I am now very astute as far as my body’s signals are, even a slight change sends a ripple across the water inside of me.

    In the past I believe my insides were very choppy waters so I couldn’t tell if an outside stress was stressing me, for the insides were already such a mess, it is like looking for ripples on 8ft waves.

    Each time a new ripple comes in I stay with it, I discern where it is coming from, what is going on in my world, and who is carrying it?

    My body doesn’t lie; it knows when something in my world is off kilter, when peace has been disturbed, when an untruth has walked into my space.

    Hints to my dis-ease float to me, unannounced and land like odd objects in an otherwise normal world, beckoning me to notice. If I miss one, a second one appears like messengers relentlessly waking me up.

    Once you notice these mess enders, the mess in my understanding clears up, and I see clearly.

    What I see isn’t always what I want, but what I need to see.

    I used to dismiss these signals and over sedate my body so I didn’t feel their uncomfortable truths, now I know if I don’t get the first message the problem doesn’t go away, I am just wanting to play in denial.

    The land of denial is only a temporary home, a respite on a journey towards the truth, and it seems the longer you put it off, the more you have to face in the end.

    I now prefer to face things one at time and as they happen, and to see the nuances and changes in people’s personalities and stay recent with the affects of their behaviors, so that we are not familiar strangers.

    My daughter’s face is familiar but everything else is getting stranger and stranger, my body no longer is comfortable with the ‘truth’ that she presents, it seems to be a token or crumb tossed my way to chew on, and bit by bit I am being fed a book full of lies to deflect me away from who she really is.

    To be honest, I wish my body believed what my ears are hearing, it would be so much easier, but they disagree and there is dis ease inside of me.

    My body is a lie detector and my mind now knows it…

  • That Loving Feeling?

    “Love Must Be Tough” by Dr. James C. Dobson, is a book a friend recommended for my daughter to read, by I am reading it first.

    In chapter three called, “The Tender Trap” he states first the three conclusions he has so far.

    1. Marital (and premarital) conflict typically involves one partner who cares a great deal about the relationship and the other who is much more independent and secure.
    2. As a love affair begins to deteriorate, the vulnerable partner is inclined to panic. Characteristic responses include grieving, lashing out, begging, pleading, grabbing, and holding; or the reaction may be just the opposite, involving appeasement and passivity.
    3. While these reactions are natural and understandable, they are rarely successful in repairing the damage that has occurred. In fact, such reactions are usually counterproductive, destroying the relationship the threatened person is trying so desperately to preserve.

    In the previous chapter we explored the fears and sorrows reverberating in the mind of the rejected partner. Now let’s take the next step by looking at the husband or wife who is drifting away. In order to pull that person back from the brink, we need to understand the forces operating within. What do you believe motivates a man or woman to terminate a marriage? What thoughts are typical of one who rejects the unconditional love offered at home? What secrets lie deep within the psyche of the woman who has an affair with her boss, or the man who chases the office flirt? Is the desire for a new thrill the only enticement, or the more basic motivators operating below the surface?

    It has been my observation that the lust for forbidden fruit is often incidental to the real cause of marital decay. Long before any decisions is made to ‘fool around’ or walk out on a partner, something basic has begun to change in the relationship. Many books on this subject lay the blame on the failure to communicate, but I disagree. The inability to talk to one another is a symptom of a deeper problem, but not the cause itself. The critical element is the way one spouse begins to perceive the other and their lives together. It is a subtle thing at first, often occurring without either partner being aware of the slippage. But as time passes, one individual begins to feel trapped. That’s the key word, Trapped….

    This intense desire to escape from a marriage can occur on the first day of the honeymoon or fifty years thereafter. For men, it is the primary ingredient of a midlife crisis. But these feelings of constraint are by no means unique to men. For women, they usually (but not always) occur in response to an unromantic relationship that refuses to be energized. A wife may ‘reach’ for her husband for years, beg for his attention, nag him when he fails to notice, and the scream to herself, “Help! I’m suffocating in this loveless marriage! Somebody get me out!”

    How sad it is, furthermore, that this trapped partner who is fighting an impulse to run is rapidly sinking deeper and deeper into a form of marital quicksand. Why? Because the more he struggles to gain his freedom (or even secure a little breathing room), the more his panic stricken spouse clutches his neck. Even the fluctuating emotions of the rejected party are interpreted as attempts to grab and hold.
    For example:

    The response of grief: “Please don’t hurt me. Come and meet my needs.”

    The response of anger: “Get back in line, stupid! How dare you try and walk out on me!”

    The response of blame: “How could you do this to me and the kids?”

    The response of appeasement: “Name it and you can have it. Just don’t leave me.”

    The response of servility (the doormat): “No matter what you do, I’ll go on smiling ‘cause you’re mine.”

    The common denominator between these varied responses is one of entrapment. They each restrict the freedom of the less interested party. For someone in the trapped syndrome, love then becomes an obligation rather than an incredibly wonderful privilege. Perhaps it is now obvious why the natural reaction of the panic-stricken spouse typically drives the cool partner farther away; the more he pulls back from the relationship to gain desired space, the tighter the bonds close around him. He sometimes becomes almost claustrophobic in his desperate attempts to breathe – to get the noose off his neck. He may even resort to infidelity as a vehicle to escape from his partner’s clutches.” Dr. Dobson

    How affirming this book is to my experience. He is explaining how the trapped feelings don’t work, while I am experiencing the joys of the free-range children and I love you today.

    What is sad though, is that the ‘other woman’ is used to escape, an excuse to leave the place he feels trapped.

    And I bet that she feels like freedom to him, but the other woman is actually a bridge across the moat to freedom, but not what he is seeking. He wants his freedom and he will use her to get it.

    She is being used to set him free from a marriage he feels trapped in. Incredible.

    Of course he has this death like grip on her, for she is the answer or his way out!

    And I can see how she does feel like she is ‘saving him’ or rescuing him from a ‘broken marriage’ etc, for she is saving him, but little does she know, it isn’t so much about her, but a way out.

    Not sure if my daughter will read this book, but it has given me a clear view of the dynamics she is in.

    Freedom or trapped what gives you that loving feeling?