help! I'm so confused.

[Kerry]

From Maurine: n n Maurine, I moved this post from the other board. Kerryn n "You don't love me anymore," he jokes for the hundredth time. I ask him if he really thinks that. He keeps joking, "Yes, I do."n n Wanting him to feel secure, wanting to disspell the fears he might be masking with humor, I hold him and tell him, "I love you, more and more evry day." Which is true.n n "That's not good," he half-jokes. I suddenly feel hurt and confused. It's not good that I love him?n n "What do you mean?" I ask.n n "Nothing," he shrugs me off.n n I persist, "It's not good that I love you?"n n His tone suddenly gets hostile, like I'm really testing his patience, "Look, I didn't mean anything ny it. I didn't mean anything by anything. That's three stupid questions in a row you've asked me, you're tone is getting weird, and I just want to have a good day for Christ's sakes." n n Stunned, I get really quiet. A minute later, he tries to kiss me and explain that he was only joking around, and that I take things too seriously. But my feelings are hurt, and I resist his kisses. I tell him, "You say things to confuse me, then you get angry at me when I'm confused. I feel like you playing mind games."n n "No," he insists, and kisses me some more, "Don't feel confused. I don't want you to feel confused. I was only joking."n n So we drop it, but I'm left with an uneasy feeling. As we ride to work, my thoughts keep turning, trying to understand, and I begin to realize a certain pattern of superficiality: that my sincere expression of love made him uncomfortable, that he can tell me in exaggerated tones how hot I am, but he can't ever look me in the eyes and tell me I'm beautiful. Occasionally, he'll joke his way around the "l" word, slipping it sideways into conversation, but he can't earnestly tell me he loves me.n n I don't know, maybe it's just his own issues, fear of abandonment or whatever, but it makes me start to wonder if he has any particular love for me at all. Maybe the reason he doesn't express it is because he simply doesn't feel it. Maybe I'm just a comfort to him, a body to hold and an ear to talk to. Maybe his ego just enjoys the fact that an attractive girl is so into him. Maybe he doesn't really see me for me at all.n Or maybe (and this is the one that really scares me) I'm not so loveable after all.n n After a few minutes of acting distant and weird, not knowing how to articulate any of my thoughts, I give it a try. "You always have to joke around. You can't just tell me I'm beautiful, or tell me how you feel in a serious way." n n "Well, I never said I was normal," he replies, which spirals me further into confusion and anxiety.n n A few minutes later, he was joking around about me moving back into the city (and out of his place), and I said, "Maybe I should. I'm realizing a few things." He groaned and rolled his eyes, like I was driving him out of his mind with my harping, female ways.n n When we parted for the day he told me, "Don't think too much."n n I'm so confused and upset. Am I being unreasonable and crazy? I am forcing him not to love me by demanding it too much? Aaauuurrrgghh! n --------------------------------------------------------------------------------n IP: Logged

[Kerry]

Hi Maurine:n n Are you willing to acknowledge that you are addicted to abuse? If you are, then the rest of this reply will be of value. If not, if you aren’t willing to see that you are addicted to abuse, then there’s no hope for the relationship. You’ll just have to let life take a couple of turns until things get so bad that you engineer a split. n n Notice how you manipulated him into sharing his experience, “I’m not experiencing love in my relationship with you” and then you invalidate him. Instead of, “I got it. What else is there about that?” You pile words on top of the words “I love you,” which have now become a lie. In truth it’s been a while since you have experience the emotional joy of just how magnificent your relationship is with him. Your "love" is what’s called the memory of an experience, which has now become conceptualized. You can’t experience love and confusion in the same space. And, you certainly can't experience love with someone you can't get to recreate your communications.n n Please don’t mistake my reply to mean that you are any more or less addicted to abuse than he is. In fact you mirror each other perfectly. Without you in his life he’d have to find another like you; he’s using you to dramatize a childhood incomplete, as are you using him. And, if you leave him you’ll have to search out another with the identical behaviors until you discover what it is about you that requires/inspires abuse. n n Many would consider the banter between you to be low-level foreplay. It’s what people do who are on the verge of divorcing or discovering intercourse. It’s a fork in the road thing. What you two call sex is elementary school stuff. Intercourse always always results in the experience of love. You guys have become stuck in what's referred to as talking.n n Tip: When you cause another to say, "You don't love me anymore," it works to say to yourself, “H’mmm, just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean it's not true. What am I unconsciously doing that’s causing him this doubt?" Instead, you invalidate his intelligence. He knows when he’s being loved and he knows when it’s an act. You are so caught up in defending your position that you can’t see that you are withholding something from him, most likely a thought or a perpetration. It is serving as a barrier to the experience of love. For sure you love him conceptually. He’s just not getting it experientially. Notice how you manipulate the conversation until you trigger anger. It’s called covertly driving another crazy. Recall another with whom you used to do this "mind game" with. n n Also, he is absolutely witholding (hiding) something from you. His anger gives him away. Most everyone has learned to use anger to keep someone away from a truth.n n Re: Which is true. Nope. This is a lie. You believe it to be true but you have someone clearly telling you, [no matter what you think, what you call love ain’t it.] n n It’s also possible, given that you both have nonverbally agree to withhold certain thoughts from each other, that he is looking for a certain thing/behavior from you, which when you do or provide it, he will then interpret it to mean that you “really’ love him. If this is so, you’ve got to extract what would it look like to him if you did in fact "love" him. BTW: If this is what's going on, it's a no win situation, and, you'll reveal that you need as much therapy as he does if you keep interacting with him. n n Re: "You say things to confuse me, then you get angry at me when I'm confused. I feel like you [sic] playing mind games." Another lie. This is blame. The truth is you set it up for him to say things that confuse you. Then you blame him. It is you who are playing mind games. n n Re: "Don't feel confused. I don't want you to feel confused." Another lie. Of course you intend for him to confuse you. How do we know? Because you are confused. It doesn’t matter what words we use, the results are the proof of what our intentions are.n n Re: So we drop it, Another lie. Stated responsibly it would read, “So I drop it." Again, your use of the word “we” comes from blame. “I blame him (make him wrong) because I’m not willing to get certainty” would be a true statement.n n Re: …I'm not so lovable after all. Given that this thought came out of your mind, it’s best to acknowledge the truth of it. I suspect that you have dozens of accumulated, unacknowledged, perpetrations (mostly childhood) that now serve as a barrier to you experiencing your lovableness. It’s where the saying, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me.” comes from. How can you respect him when he chose you not knowing fully just how ____ you are/have been. All this stuff has to come out.n n Re: "You always have to joke around. You can't just tell me I'm beautiful, or tell me how you feel in a serious way." This is a make-wrong. It's abusive to make another wrong.n n Re: Am I being unreasonable... No.n n Re: ...crazy? Yes, but not any more than the rest of us. n n Re: I am forcing him not to love me? No, he has no choice. Just as you have no choice but to love him. He can try to take away his love but all he'll do is change the way he expresses it. The way he tells you he loves you now is he says, "You don't love me any more." This, beleive or not, is an expression of profound love. He just doesn't know how to consistently have fun evenings. n n Re: ...by demanding it too much? On the contrary, you're not demanding enough. It's your job to set the standards. If you aren't more strict with him you'll drive him out of your life. You should do the Spouse Abuse Tutorial (though I recommend that you do The Clearing Process first) so that you can both recognize when you're being abusive and when he is. You are in denial about abuse so you can't hear when he's being controlling and abusive. You must learn, very soon, how to stop it, mid-sentence, when you hear abuse. Unless you do you'll find yourself escalating the abuse.n n Thanks,n n Kerry