Learning the ins-and-outs of long-term relationship

During the past 3 weeks, I experienced a very intense growth spurt in a few areas of my life.

During that time James was absolutely amazing. In the midst of supporting me on an almost daily basis, he’s also been teaching more than usual, seeing clients and is a bit burned out. Just as he watched me experience a lot of discomfort and even pain recently, now I get to watch him withdraw and rest. At the moment he is napping in our bedroom.

My inner control freak projects on him that he wants attention. As a woman who almost always wants loving attention when I feel down, I want to go to him, to nurture him and to do anything but leave him alone. Yet, I know what he really wants is to be with himself. John Gray calls this withdrawing going into ‘the cave.’

In my past relationships when men began to withdraw, I made it about me. What did I do wrong? What could I do to make them happy? I was basically asking, “How is this my fault and how can I ‘fix’ it?” I believe this is called codependency.

I noticed myself doing that last night with James, asking him “What’s wrong?” When I realized that he needs space, I was able to back away without getting defensive. I didn’t ‘make myself wrong’ for my recent experiences or blame him for helping me ‘too much.’

I was ‘triggered’ a bit though. There haven’t been many times in our relationship where we weren’t super open and connected to each other. And since I haven’t done the long term relationship thing very much (this is my longest committed relationship ever at 14 months), I’m not used to riding the waves of live with another.

My past relationships were so short that we didn’t go beyond the honeymoon phase or when we got past that we broke up (usually I did this, being a perfectionist in all, I wouldn’t settle for anything but happily ever after all the time). This created a lot of heartache and a lot of learning.

I’m learning to do the day-to-day thing with someone I love and to ride the waves of our lives and our relationship. I’m learning to surf…tandem.