Dear chelle629:

It is right there: “I don’t feel connected to them”- to your parents. This is your last line.

Unfortunately, you were never connected to your parents. There was the strong need in you to be connected to them, unfortunately they did not make that connection possible.

What you needed as a child was for your parents to allow that connection so that you could learn, for example, you lost a favorite toy. You look sad, you act sad, you cry. Then your parent notices you, hears your crying, sees the sadness and anger in your face and he or she sits down with you, calms you down, hushes you gently. The he or she says to you: You are sad. You lost your toy. You very much liked this toy and now it is gone. And you feel so sad.” And then the parent hugs you, comforts you.

If something like that happened, you would have learned: oh, this is Sadness. I feel sad when I lose something important to me. And you learn that when you feel sad, you can be comforted. You learn it is okay to feel sad, and that sadness does not snowball into something terrible, too much to endure. There is that sadness and then there is comfort.

When you don’t have at least one parent to do that and you lose your toy, feel sad, you don’t know what is happening: you make your own conclusions that fit your still forming brain, your age and lack of experience. You figure Sad is a terrible thing. It means there is something wrong with me. It is too much to endure. Etc.

Just like you needed as a child to be taught words to fit objects: like this is a Table. This is a Chair. You also needed words for what you felt. Without those words and without empathy from a parent, you lived in a vacuum.

So now you ask “how to listen to my heart”- the title of your thread. How to listen to a heart that grew up in a vacuum, disconnected?

When you mentioned your marriage, you wrote “this marriage thing” and when you mentioned loving your husband, you wrote: “I love my husband and all that”- this indicates to me a separation, that vacuum I am referring to. Emotional experience/ relationships seem alien, a “thing” and “that”- removed from you.

Back to your question, the title of your thread: you bring your heart to your experiences, to your interactions, closest to 100%, best you can (not 70%). You gently incorporate your heart and your rational parts, make connections between the two, pathways. Your marriage- discover what is in it, what it is. Approach it as if you see it, as if you experience it for the first time. Start from the beginning.

Start from your heart and build from there instead of starting from the rational, the dry rational and getting lost in endless thinking and analyzing.

Start as if you were a five year old.

anita