You all may recall that my wife of 19 years and I are going through some real struggles. We’re doing a lot of work, individually and with a couples counselor, to work on things. We’re each looking at Buddhist teachings to help guide us through this as well. We’re recently looking at family of origin issues with an eye toward understanding and forgiveness.

Last session was intense. Our therapist helped us reveal what I’ve been trying to get out in the open, unsuccessfully, for years. Due to my FoO issues I have an inner child desire to want my feelings heard and acknowledged and feel wrong and wronged when they’re not. I have been fighting this urge for a long time, figuring it was selfish and destructive. My spouse, on the other hand has FoO issues that cause her to view my sharing of my feelings as personal attacks, so she shuts down and/or becomes very defensive, using my revelations of my feelings as a springboard from which to attack me, demonize my feelings and depict my feelings as wrong or destructive.

This all came out in a beautiful way in our last session. The best part was it came out in a forgiving way – we both acknowledged these tendencies sprung from unresolved childhood issues for which we should feel no shame or blame. It also helped illustrated a significant vector of dysfunction in our marriage – that I believe my feelings are not welcomed, a revelation I think she’s now seeing.

This helps me view her negative reaction to my feelings with compassion and not anger. I’ve been working in this direction for a while, but seeing her acknowledge the mechanisms behind the dysfunction, and her not feeling like a bad person for realizing it, really sent my heart soaring. I want to see her pain and struggle clearly, so that I can respond to verbal attacks with compassion and not my own pain. That’s easier said than done, but if I can trump shenpa with compassion and equanimity, I’ll be a more peaceful being.

Thoughts?