So, things are getting “better” in that we’re being more positive in our interactions. A weekend in the mountains was good, although there were moments I felt great anger toward her. Rather than suppress it, rather than let it boil over, I stepped outside myself and examined the anger, acknowledged it and let it go.

She wants to undergo joint counseling, which I welcome. Of course, we’ll need to find the right person, as I’m trying to let go of anger and expectations and I don’t know if it will help to engage in a therapeutic course that follows the paths and roots of anger. I still feel the wounded child in me seeking justice and craving her deep acknowledgement of the pain she caused me. I know that child won’t be satisfied and that I need to follow a different and more enlightened path.

My partner is starting to acknowledge her own anger and the role her unprovoked rages play in our relationship. She explodes, says devastating things which she lately blithely dismisses and then wonders why I’m guarded, untrusting and inferring bad motives in her behavior. Where I would normally feel vindicated from her new-found self-awareness and think “Hell yeah, you’d better apologize,” I’m trying now to feel joy that she’s observing her own anger in order to let it go. And I prepare myself for future rages which I hope to view as profound expressions of pain, not as an excuse to see my self as its victim.

I cannot consider myself “cured” from the impulses of my wounded child, not ever. But I will focus on getting outside of the anger from those impulses and see her behavior not as wrongs against me, but as expressions of her own pain.

All for now.