working through some feeling in our relationship

Have to sort through some tangled feelings -

1) never considered divorce and never held on to it as a value for any amount of time in my heart in fact hate it intensely.

but the constant reminder and suggestion of the idea in conversation damages the relationship and creeps in slowly making it more acceptable with each passing mention.

2) unhappiness

we are both unhappy and we seem to constantly arrive at the same point in our relationship but not have the abiility to break through. i wont get into that here. but here i will ask myself: why are you unhappy with your relationship and what would make you happy:

-1) unified vision on God

-2) unified ministry - i have this great fire and drive within me to serve and help other people, its the innate part of being an INFJ personality - extraverted feeling and i suppose the main drive of my idealist personality. and the pressure that is put on this that results in it being constantly constrained makes me frustrated. and also results in the oft used accusation that i dont care enough about my wife and dont spend enough time with her. which is a total lie. what i think she means is that although we spend time with one another we never seem to be able to break through to where we are happy in our relaionship.

-3) for us to enjoy one another

focusing on #3 why is this so hard?

She desires a soul mate that will give her the understanding she craves, but i cannot agree with her convictions, motivations and behaviors and in fact strongly disagree with many of the reasonings and the whys of 'why she does what she does', according to my own interpritation which can be very rigid- a good counsellor with strong and more objective understanding of her person could be of strong help to me in this area to help me correct my views and opinions of her.

I must begin to clarify more of my own judgements to slow down the formation of my opinions of her, through 1) withholding judgement and 2) to ask her why she is doing this or that instead of forming my own conclusions too quickly.

I understand much of what she does is controlled by fear. the problem is that fear has become so much of a habit that she has almost intergrated it fully into her own value system and has ceased fighting against this so that she can live life boldly and unafraid. I on the other hand long to live by faith which can translate into a rash and brash unthinking and foolish thing, but in essence is the courage to venture. she has lost all her initial venturesome spirit, and given her strength to fear instead, the avoidance and living with fear as a reality. its like living in a room with a gigantic elephant. you no longer venture to get the elephant out of the room but live with it, accomodate it, feed it and otherwise live your life around it so that it wont harm you because essentially you are afraid of the battle to chase the elephant out of the room, the energy that is necessary in chasing it out, and the possible change that is results and the cost of bloodshed that results from the battle. this is the attitude i so detest in her, that has claimed so much of her and made her so much less the person she was and marrs the vision of who in in my heart and mind i strongly feel she ought to be.

and because i so detest this fear based living i do things venture and many times sub conciously do things to disrupt this fear based thinking in the process, it in fact strengthens it as its makes her insecure because in her mind 'i am unstable'.

her insecurities drive our marriage and is the main flavour in our relationship. which makes the relationship toxic to my taste. I never believed in living in fear or in insecurity and i hate living this way.

which leads to #4, how can we address these and solve the above problems so that we can enjoy one another? do we have to solve the above problems in order to enjoy one another? are we happy with living with the elephant in the room?

of course the answer is no. i dont have to have her perfect to love her. i need to exercise unconditional love. but i want to kill the elephant so badly, maybe the weapon for killing fear is gracious, merciful, kind and accepting love that will not compromise with fear but lead her on to show her hope and the good land ahead. an enduring love that will win out eventually, this is a love i do not possess but i know the one who does, and i know where i can get it.

i feel this need to create and generate positive experiences for her that can slowly beging to reshape her mind and heart. kindnesses in many forms : dinner dates and presents and the like.

maybe my expectations of immediate results are too unrealistic and my methods poor and ineffective.


more later....