JFF Session Notes

 My Blind Spot:

I haven't held myself adequately responsible for partnering. 

• "Ryan isn't a partner so I can do whatever I want." 
• Failure to partner early on: I wasn't able to take myself seriously enough that the marriage wasn't going to move forward unless Ryan was dealing with me honestly. 
• Failure to partner now: Indulgent path in the face of I'm not getting the respect I want so I'm going to distance from Ryan and get it where I can get it from our children, sister, etc. 

Three reasons I am stuck/road blocks:

1. Not something I know. Developmentally a different way of being in oneself and in relationship to another. It's not the model I have experienced in my life. Shared winning is foreign to both of us.
2. Ryan has his own complicity in the same way. This sort of ignorant familiarity: say the right things but don't deal honestly with the marriage. It's like the who wins, I win, you win, even if he gives me what I want he feels resentful rather than he's honestly making a decision one way or the other in this partner negotiation. He participates in the one person wins model. Is Ryan going to honestly look at his half rather than do therapy from a more compliant position? Which is where JFF gets stuck a little. She feels like he tells her what he thinks he should say. That's where she feel like she doesn't know where the real Ryan is and that's part of the problem. Escape routes, "I should have done better" but doesn't mean anything. It paper overs the evidence of conflict maybe to regulate himself but meanwhile he neglects the marriage, neglects me. It looks a lot nice than it is. 
3. Whether or not the two of us want an intimate marriage enough to push ourselves away from the easier forms of validation. Ryan: in his victimhood, his sisters feeling sorry for him and he feeling sorry for himself. Jonnette: easy validation from her sister and children, complicit idea mom got the raw end of the deal. Is there enough love and desire here to really push us to create something that's truly partnered.

Do I want to live up to what I promised God I was going to do? Do I want to do better, do I want to show my children better, and even though I feel some resentments and frustrations am I willing to really stay in this honestly, even if Ryan does not pick up his part?  

Those questions terrify me. The fear of more rejection is a huge risk for me; to which Jennifer said, 

"Choosing to bring your better self to a marriage does have a risk. It is the risk of finding out your partner is not going to meet you in that and tolerating that you can invest and they may not invest back. I think that is a risk of any marriage or any good marriage, you have to be willing to take that risk. And it is a risk. It's a risk of disappointment. It's a risk of exposure, in a sense. But it's also an act of strength even if you don't get strength on the other side."