Читать книгу Cooking Without Made Easy: All recipes free from added gluten, sugar, yeast and dairy produce - Barbara Cousins - Страница 30

During the time I was learning to love myself I suddenly found myself attracted to someone new. The feeling was mutual and I was shocked. I thought I had the perfect marriage, so what was happening? However, in reality I was more in touch with what I imagined my marriage to be, rather than the real thing. Looking back, I did the best possible thing—I told my husband what was happening and how I was feeling. This opened up a level of communication we’d never had before, enabling us both to face issues, many of which we’d not even known were there. These issues were ones that would have come up in the new relationship, if I’d chosen to move on, because like attracts like. I was attracting someone who would have been there to teach me in the same way that my husband was. The only time a new relationship is necessary is when an old one is over; when one partner has moved on and grown and the other hasn’t and doesn’t want to.

I’d not been in touch enough with my feelings to be able to be honest with myself, and now suddenly feelings were overwhelming me. I had always tried to be ‘Miss Perfect’, using perfectionism and super-achievement as a shield to cover up for my lack of self-worth. But suddenly I felt very human, and human beings are not infallible. It was actually a relief to realize that I was human; that I wasn’t perfect and that it was actually all right not to be. I was being taught to love myself, warts and all. Even though I hadn’t consciously attracted someone else, I’d obviously done so unconsciously. Inside of me there was still that little girl who just wanted to be loved and who felt better about herself knowing that others loved her. It made me much more aware of the work I still needed to do in order to love myself sufficiently so that I wasn’t so needy. I had to be able to stand on my own two feet, whoever I was with.

My husband’s fear of losing me made him face up to the fears that had prevented him from wanting to listen to my problems in the past. If I wasn’t happy he felt vulnerable, inadequate and lacking in control. In turn, I sensed his pain and tapped into my own fears of losing him, because I wasn’t making him happy, therefore I’d always suppressed my feelings and backed down. Now that things were changing, I was able to tell him about all the occasions when I’d been unhappy, when I’d felt unsupported, when I’d been very hurt. I cried and I got angry. Finally being honest with each other allowed us both to grow and we became closer—and more open with each other than we’d ever been.