P.R.F. Prosebox 8/6/2019 in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening; you’re joining us here at P.R.F. Prosebox this entry being put forth on Tuesday, August Sixth, Two Thousand Nineteen. This morning was certainly a rough one for me. Work was go-go-go for four hours straight! And of course none of it was routine, easy, or unemotional. It was all dark, disturbing, and heart breaking. Parents hurting children; lovers beating each other; assaults using weapons, attempted kidnapping; rape of a child under the age of 11.... y’know, the truly dark and terrible shit of humanity was my entire morning.

And it is funny/interesting. As I got through the morning, I realized it sort of strangely made me miss Raven a bit. As an attorney’s secretary… she’d have had unique knowledge about the procedural issues involved and be able to comfort me in ways unique to my “particular type.” BUT that is where the book “Attached” has already helped me to understand some things. Thank you to all (the many) who recommended it as it does hold a lot of good things that have been both interesting and helpful. Even the assessment was interesting and indicated interesting things to both Wife and I. Not that there is any surprise to this but.... yeah. I’m SUPER Anxious Attachment. The assessment has a number of statements and you write down the letter next to the statement if it sounds like something you feel/agree with/would say. I wrote down 16 letters (out of I don’t know how many statements). I had 12 “A” Statements, 3 “B” statements, and 1 “C” statement. Those correlated to 12 “Anxious Attachment Statements”, 2 “Secure Attachment Statements”, and 1 “Avoidant Attachment Statement.” I didn’t ask for Wife’s specific breakdown, but she confessed that the majority of the letters for her were C “Avoidant Attachment”. And much like me… she was surprised by exactly how many of the statements really fit with something that she had thought or said before. And while this is just the first step in something much larger, more complicated, and more difficult… it already has helped with perspective on past and present.

For example: I told her that I was stressed because of this morning and was looking forward to dog/Wife time tonight. Wife said that she was stressed about the medical news (to be discussed later) she got as well as school starting soon and some other things. Typically in a situation like this… I’d keep asking her what she would want me to do to help, she’d get annoyed, it would start a fight, and then we’d spend the evening apart. BUT with the added “here’s how attachment styles and stress interact” WIFE actually said, “So how about you give Nala a walk when you get home, give me some alone time to deal, and then when you come back, the three of us can cuddle on the couch.” BOOM! Wife actually putting in a little effort to figure out (1) what she needs and (2) what I need and (3) how to achieve both. I’m not going to say whether that is a BIG thing or a SMALL thing but for Wife to have integrated that into an active choice is noteworthy.

But also, these Attachment Styles really hope to put everything into perspective.

When we first started dating, Wife was all about me. It was awesome. But then she wasn’t. That fits with Avoidant. The closer they feel to someone, the more they kind of “pull back”. So in 2009, when I was looking for “where did the girl that liked me go?!” Wife was thinking “She’s right here, but this intimacy and closeness is freaking me out.” In other words, the way the book said that REALLY felt familiar “Both people loved each other, but they were speaking different languages about it.” And then it exploded the entire Omaha Debacle in a way that I (actually) could have desperately USED back then!

So, leaving Iowa and living in a new state (for the first time) and having just recently been married (for the first time) and me going to Law School and Wife working at a “Mega Busy Wal Mart”… these were unique and powerful stressors that slammed the both of us simultaneously. Anxious Attachment? I thought about my relationship a lot and thought I was the one that had done something wrong and was really trying to push for more time/connection/etcetera with Wife but had a REALLY difficult time doing that because I was always at school and she was always working. In other words, the fact that I’m “Anxious Attachment” but was trying to succeed in Law School actually kind of helped. Because I didn’t implode the marriage with my stressed-out neediness AND I was both too busy and too faithful to target my needy “i want a relationship/sex” energy towards someone else. Something that DID start slowly changing after law school ended (you can see it as the year I did Law Library I was more “hey… work crushes!”). So that all tracks! As for Wife? HUGE STRESS thrown at her. So, she pretty much shut down. She would tend to withdraw and attempt to cope with the threat on her own only indicating that she was having issues by hinting, complaining, or sulking. And me being anxious, when I pressed too much to get her to actually discuss what was bothering her, she’d explode, shout, and then run off and remain silent for an hour or two. Like… seriously, going through this book even in the limited way that we have already? We could have COMPLETELY AVOIDED making Omaha hell for each other! TOTALLY AVOIDED IT.

Then we come full circle. We get out of the Omaha situation and find ourselves in Tiny Town. We both hated Tiny Town but the whole place was so isolated and empty and the house we lived in laid out in such a way that we could survive together. In Des Moines, things weren’t great but my Anxious Attachment found support through my friends that live in Des Moines, my family that live in Des Moines and Ames, and all the other “social connections” that stream throughout that city. Which is PARTICULARLY why I was able to figure out how nightmare hell-hole the Chinese Firm was. Because that firm was dedicated 100% to making damned sure I had nothing in my life BUT the firm… the firm that was really leaning in to my anxiousness by constantly making me feel like “Yeah, they’re going to fire you at any moment.” So then I found CURRENT JOB. But it required me to live away from Wife. Which was brutal for me… but totally fine for her. Which I took really hard. Like… how could she be fine with this arrangement?! She didn’t want to talk to me every night? She didn’t need to see me every night? What the hell?! (anxious versus avoidant). That created the blow up that first GOT us to the new counselor.

In some ways, too, this connects to this year’s sexual desert. We were finally starting to have sex at least once a month. UNTIL WE GOT THE DOG. Then she found that “new, shiny” to attach to, albeit still with her avoidant attachment that really worked as “I’ll attach inconsistently” which is why we see so much pronounced anxiety in Nala’s attachment to Wife, lol. But Wife turning her emotional attachment direction towards the dog, she was free to completely sever the attachment (what little there was) with me (I’m speculating).

Clearly, we’re in the Anxious Avoidant Trap I don’t think there is ANY doubt as to that.
SO… that leaves us with two questions.

(1) Is there a way to create permanent change that would bring both us, individually, closer to a secure attachment style?
(2) Do we want to put the work in for each other to salvage this marriage?

Because together or separate… we both need to figure out this attachment dysfunction. I can see how my own fucked up attachment style ruined MOST of my relationships (friendship or otherwise) throughout my life. I don’t want to continue like that. So, growing into better and healthier people is a must. But as we do that… we need to consider and really ask ourselves if we want to do that as a married couple. Can we stay together and get healthier? Do we want to? Is that ultimately for the best? THese are the questions that we need to take forward into counseling now.

Medical News I Mentioned Previously: Wife got some bad news last night. As her mother and father both had breast cancer in the last ten years, both her mother and father got Genetic Testing to see if they had a mutation that increases the likelihood of breast cancer. MIL: Negative; FIL: Positive. So, Wife has a 50% chance of also having the mutation. This particular mutation is seen as “so increasing the risk of getting breast cancer” that if you DO have the mutation, they recommend an immediate double mastectomy. So, she’s understandably very worried about that right now. She’ll be scheduling the test at some point because she wants to know and confirm or not. My fingers are crossed for her.

Last updated August 07, 2019