Читать книгу The 100 Most Asked Questions About Love, Sex and Relationships - Barbara Angelis De - Страница 12

My wife had a very tough childhood, lots of physical and verbal abuse and very little love. The result is that she has locked herself behind thick emotional walls, and no matter what I do, I can’t get through to her. I know she loves me, but she has a hard time showing it and is very withdrawn. Is it possible for someone like this to ever open up? What can I do to break through her walls?

I’m going to say something you may not want to hear: It’s not your job to break through to her. It’s not your job to rescue her. It’s her job to rescue herself. That doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of her healing process, but that can only happen if she decides she wants to break free from her emotional prison.

Perhaps, like many of us who have loved someone in emotional pain, and wanted desperately to save that person, you haven’t asked your wife the most important questions: Do you want to change? Do you want to open up emotionally? Are you willing to do whatever it takes, counseling, reading, seminars, to heal yourself of the emotional damage from your childhood?

Whether your marriage works or not lies in her answer to these questions. If she wants to heal herself, and is willing to take action to do so, then you have a chance. But if she won’t, or can’t start a journey of recovery, you will need to face a very heartbreaking but necessary fact—your wife may be emotionally incapable of having the kind of healthy relationship you want, at least right now, and perhaps for a long time to come. Some people truly are too wounded, too damaged to love fully and freely. And ironically, your pressuring your wife to open up and let you in may actually make her feel even worse about herself and more like a failure than if she were in a less demanding relationship, or even lived alone.

While you’re asking her the questions I mentioned, you need to ask yourself some too, because it’s no accident that you are in this kind of relationship and are acting as a rescuer. Rescueholics tend to become involved with partners they feel compelled to help, whom they feel sorry for. This almost always goes back to your own unfinished emotional business from childhood. Maybe there was someone you couldn’t rescue, but wanted to, like an abused mom, an alcoholic dad, an ailing sibling. Or maybe the person you wanted someone else to rescue was yourself, so you’re acting it out as an adult. Do some emotional work on your own issues, because you may “need” her to be messed up in order to run out your own patterns.

Someone once said that you can’t force a flower to open its petals before it’s time. Find the courage to ask your wife if she’s ready to work on loving you the way you need to be loved, and know that the truth will set you both free.