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Quiescence for Me and Yet, Fear for a Friend

I was able to have a very long, very emotional, heart-to-heart talk with my wife and from that discussion, she came back to me later in the day and told me about her understanding of me, my hopes, and my dreams in such a way that I could believe she DID understand me.

Some of you may find it odd that someone married as long as we have been would still have to work at these sorts of things... but I think it is always the case for all marriages and unions. Because there are two people involved, there will be two different personalities and hence two different strategies for living life that need to mesh.

We each have our strengths in understanding some parts of a person's personality, but other aspects may not be our strong suit. With me for instance, I tend to be very cerebral and engaged in thought, I tend to display my love through action.... by doing things for her or for the family. I figure when I do something with love to help the family, even if it is at a cost to myself, I have done good and I have expressed my love. She on the other hand tends to want love more through touch and intimate (not necessarily meaning sexual, just very one-on-one) time together. Those are our innate mannerisms and our tendencies for showing and wanting love... and in times of stress (like I am going through), we tend to use our primary love approaches and forget our secondary and tertiary forms because they are not as "natural" for us.

Hence, challenges occur because I keep trying to fix things by showing more and more love through "doing", yet she feels moody because she wants touch and intimacy. As my natural inclination toward touch and intimacy (again, recall I am not speaking about copulatory behavior) is very low, I have had to learn to become more touchy, more feely, and more intimate throughout our marriage. It is a good thing I have learned, to be sure.... but like a person learning a second language in adulthood, I am still not overly fluent in it. Likewise, she is definitely not fluent in the "doing" of acts to show love... for it is not her native love language. But yesterday, when she talked to me about my hopes and dreams, and how she did want me to be able to continue to grow and strive... that was a great, wonderful, blessed show of her love. It made me cry... this time out of joy. She understood! She cared!

With that growth, things have become much more even keeled at the moment. I feel wholly average. I feel even a modicum of hope for a future that can be filled with growth and increases in happiness and joy.

With my elderly mother's health also appearing to reach some form of steady state right now, the net effect is I am starting to once again feel like an "average Joe". I am not jumping off the walls with glee, but also I am not in the pits of despair.

Average it is.... neither happy nor sad. I shall embrace it and hold on to it with all my might! It is a relief. It is so much better than what I had been experiencing. And with both my wife's words, and my mother's condition, I may even allow myself a brief amount of time to look for a possible goal, perhaps to make a try at developing a new research strand, or take up photography, or anything so I can think and believe in my being able to accomplish something just for me. It could perhaps be only a pipe dream and the world could crumble down upon me again in a half hour if either of the above "shes" sours, but right now, I will accept this respite, and hope and pray for more.... more average.

As a side note, a very good friend of mine at 4th Avenue Blues is having a very, very difficult time right now. It makes me feel sadness as he is a person so deserving of autonomy, so deserving of happiness, and also so deserving of respect. I have been communicating with him the last few days and am hoping he will be able to win his battle to arrive at joy.

PipeTobacco