All Caught Up

See now, this is what I need :) Got no electricity during lunch here at work. Means I can finally force myself to concentrate on writing something here! :) (I'm writing this up in Notepad on my laptop in case you wondered at the logic there ;)

Actually, I had been meaning to write something last night (well, and for many nights before that, but particularly last night), but all of the time appeared to sort of disappear a bit :) Hmm... Can something appear to disappear? :)

Oh, looks like the power may be back already. Well, I'll just have to leave (Hmm, wrote "leave to have" the first time there - I do appear to be mixing my worms a lot when typing recently) my computer alone and turned off :)

As I (think I) mentioned before, we have another Relate session this evening - the first in 2.5 weeks.

But let's get y'all caught up on the bits I still haven't said. It's been long and I'm determined enough to get caught up, that I think I may even manage to come down from my usual level of perhaps too much detail :)
So, just to summarise the last Relate session I described, we didn't really figure which of the choices that we could come up with we should pursue - we pretty much eliminated the Psycho-Sexual Therapy, leaving getting some "space", or moving forwards into Couple Counselling instead.

So there was some irony that a couple of days after that we ended up having a bit of a snuggle that turned into a little more fun ;) Without going into too much info, I had a little fun, and whilst she felt she probably could have had some herself, she didn't really want the stress of having to "worry" about it (which I do understand, although it's also kind of a shame because I really miss it). In the... month I guess, since then, there have been a few occasions lasting two-three days where she has "thought" (said with a smile and a wiggle) about stuff, but nothing else. Yes, I know that where we are and the amount that's going on for both of us, that's pretty reasonable, but it's still kind of difficult not to get your hopes up sometimes. The last time we both had any "fun" together is still back in March, and I know the time before that was last Christmas, so I'm fairly confident that makes it twice over the last year now, which is by a long(ish) way the "slowest" year we have ever had in that regards.

Anyway, I digress. She decided she'd like to go visit her parents for a weekend. Her parents were free either "this weekend" or "next weekend" (relative to this taking place a month ago). I decided I'd like my sister to come over while Mrs M went to her parents, as I was already thinking about talking to her about stuff by then (as I said at the time). My sister works every-other Saturday, and she didn't work "this Saturday", which meant that Mrs M ended up seeing her parents "this week". It was a slight shame that the timing worked out like this, for two reasons - firstly, we'd just had our little fun together, and secondly, we wanted to think about what we our Relate-related decision before we actually got there. As Mrs M was off work at this time, she decided to make it a long weekend and went up Thursday night, returning Sunday evening.

My sister came up Friday night and went home Saturday afternoon (Mrs M and my sister weren't avoiding each other, was just how the timing had happened to work out). Got through a bottle of wine between us, and I an extra can of beer. For the amount I drink and my size, I was somewhat surprised I didn't feel all that drunk by then, but decided to make do and plucked up the courage to tell my sister that Mrs M and I were having problems. She listened well and was very understanding. As the person who knows both Mrs M and myself best, I think part of me was kind of wondering? hoping? that my sister may have been less understanding towards me. "You lot" ;) are understanding, but you have only my words to go on, so it feels [to me] like you have only half the story.

At the Relate session the next day, we decided to move forwards into Couple Counselling. Like I wouldn't have told you already if it were the other option ;) In terms of what to "bring" into Couple Counselling to talk about... The fact that I was thinking about moving out. Fortunately, the lady we were already seeing is indeed trained in that as well as Psycho-Sexual Therapy, so we didn't need to see anyone new or recount our histories again. Which was nice. :)

Skip forwards a week (that may be the shortest I have ever written about an entire week ;)) to our first Couple Counselling session (this is the last session we had, 2.5 weeks ago). Upon leaving, this was the most positive I have felt after having finished a Relate session so far. Unfortunately that feeling had faded after about an hour. But still, it was an interesting session.
I'd kind of like to go into more detail here, but I want to try to summarise still, or I'll (and you'll ;)) be here all day. We (my wife & I) spend a lot time in the same room. However, we were told to simply think about how we are interacting - are we doing something together, individually, or just sort of there with each other. Most of the time, it is probably the latter.
Was also interesting how we are each affected by the other's mood. When she is sad, I try to be happy to cheer her up. When I am sad but she is happy, she feels guilty about feeling happy (like it's just "rubbing it in", she said), so ends up also feeling sad. I have to say, it hadn't even occurred to me she thought like that. She admitted that when she is sad and I am happy, it does tend to cheer her up, so I found it strange she hadn't thought of that. It was suggested that we should each consider that we don't have to feel how the other is feeling, and it's ok to feel sad or it's ok to feel happy, etc.

Once it had all sunk in, I eventually felt kind of like we could both probably learn a lot of useful "tools" from Relate, that could perhaps improve things to a point better than they have ever been before... I am still not so sure whether that will be far enough.

Over the last couple of weeks, I feel there have been several times where I was unfairly irritated by things Mrs Monkfish did. I think there's an element there of no matter what she had done, I would have been irritated by it.

So, still been thinking about some space.

On Monday Mrs M had her first appointment with a counsellor/psychologist/therapist/person (I'm not sure what the differences are ;) regarding her depression. I gather it went well enough, and she has another session next week.

PHEW! I'm glad to get caught up. Err, even if it did take the best part of two hours. I don't think lunch break is quite that long... Anyway, as I said, I'd have liked to go into more detail on some, but then I wouldn't have ended up catching to as far as now, today.

So, perhaps I'll even write later on how tonight's session went ;)