I'm almost out of polite: the state of my pregnancies or lack thereof.

When people ask  in conversation how things are going in the "baby making department", I try to say something polite like "oh, still practicing" that reflects the way I'm pretty sure you meant it. I'm pretty sure the reason you're asking is that it's been a while since I've seen you and you remember I'd mentioned something about it before and it's a small talk subject you can think of.

Stop it.

The reason it seems like everyone knows I'm trying is because I've been trying for *five years*. That's a lot of time for conversations. I've had *four miscarriages* in those five years. If I see you and I'm not giddy with excitement and don't mention within my first three sentences the exact state of my uterus, it's because either
1. Nothing is happening. Again.
2. I am pregnant, but it's still so early that I'm terrified I'm going to miscarry again and could we please talk about something else because the "oh, hey, nevermind about the baby" conversations are getting kind of awkward.

But it's probably the first one.

The honest answer is that I'm finally starting to realize that I may never have a child. The honest answer is that I spend a vast portion of my energy in a given day not crying, that if I stop for three whole minutes and think about how my life is falling apart, I will begin wet, snotty bawling. I am not exaggerating, any given minute of any day, I am literally less than five minutes away from total meltdown. I don't look like it because I'm really good at putting up a good front, and honestly if you don't know when not to talk to someone about the personal details of their reproductive lives, you're even less likely to know how to deal with me losing my shit.

I talk about other peoples' babies because I work with them all day. I'm happy to talk to you about your baby. I'm happy to talk to you about your future babies, but if I have to excuse myself for a few minutes, do me a favor and just pretend that my eyes aren't more red than when I left and carry on. If I want to talk about it, I'll start the conversation.

If I want to talk about how my entire life I've known that I would have kids, I will. I didn't just wake up one day and think it would be neat to get pregnant.  For the last 15 years, every decision I've made has revolved around making myself a better person so that when I have my passel of offspring, I'm up to the task of raising conscientious, compassionate, creative, rational, reasonable, joyful humans. It's why I was a massage therapist for a decade. It's why I studied what I did in college. The careers that I've started, or haven't, the places I've gone or not, all of the forks in the road I've chosen because they would make me the kind of person I wanted to be for my kids. It's why my entire life is the way it is now.

And that may all be for nothing. It may well be that I've spent the last 15 years training for a mission that will never happen. There are a few steps more I'm willing to take, but not many. Clomid is my endpoint. That's the last thing I will try, and if that doesn't work, I'm done.
No, we're not planning to adopt. I don't have tens of thousands of dollars lying about, I've studied too much of the brain and what happens when to know that I'm not the right fit for adopting a ward of the state and I'm  not going to put myself in a position where I finally get an adoption through, bond with the child and then have some junkie mom find Jesus and decide she wants her kids back. Mine or none, the end.
No, I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I have no interest in going into public education or opening a preschool. I work where I do because these are the babies of my tribe and we have similar philosophies on how children should be reared and respected. I work where I do because I'm tired of being a generic button masher and I wanted to do something closer to what I really want.

 I'll figure something out, but I don't want to talk about it right now. I can barely say any of this out loud, with my mouth, when I'm alone. I certainly don't want to chit-chat about it with someone else. Please, for the love of fuck, stop asking.

Beat the Lizard

I find myself driving out of my way to go down familiar roads lately. Something in me needs to reconnect to my past, to feel myself in the world that was part of me outside my current work/home/VA circle. Lately I've been aware that while I've done a lot of head work over the last few years, it's only half of my experience getting attention. When I was constantly stressed from living in survival mode, I felt like i was living more in my body than I do now. Granted, most of that was in the form of discomfort or pain, but my inside and outside experiences at least matched.

Part of this disconnect was a deliberate choice, for a while at least. when i started school i knew that there were going to be classes and thought processes I'd need to engage that would be inconsistent with the experiences i had and things i knew in my bones to be true but couldn't scientifically prove. So, I made a choice to set aside the parts of me that weren't logical and rational and set to the books. Thing is, I've been kind of stuck trying to get back to it. I've always been a kinisthetic person, and my body was the one way I could relate to others in a non-rational fashion. Even in doing body work, I've been told facilitate energy work well, but I never really did it with intention. i would sort of just move my brain out of the way and do what seemed like it needed to be done and that worked. At the same time, I remember a time when I could direct energy with intention and be more deliberate in how I relate to the world and others.

As i try to get back to my roots, I'm finding that while a lot of the clearing has been done on an intellectual and emotional level with my past, and the effects thereof, it's not in my bones. It's exactly like any other emotional experience when you *know* better, but still feel your feelings. The Monkey brain doesn't care that you *know*. The Monkey must be felt, willingly or not. it works out well to have done it this way, I've managed to clear out a lot of deadwood, to see patterns and consequences that weren't obvious before, to make changes and form new patterns based on the way I want things to be.

Like the Monkey, the Lizard also has a place. While I have also done work and reclaimed much of the emotional experience I shut out either in defence or deliberately, the visceral, body state experiences I've largely ignored. I honestly didn't give them much thought, and as I wasn't ready to before now it's just as well. I can see where trying to do PTSD clearing all at once would get messy and overwhelming really quickly. These are big files, it's best to manage them in small bites. I'm working with someone these days who is helping me get in touch with the Lizard brain. By creating intense experiences that recreate some of the states of fear, panic and pain I've felt before, but in a controlled and consensual context, I'm slowly reclaiming my pieces. I'm realizing how much power I'd given up to fear and anxiety, how much potential had become tainted by misuse, how much of what's mine I've left in the hands of the one who was supposed to protect me and was instead the source of my terror.

One key difference this time, in addition to being able to stop, is that I can finally fight back. It's just now hitting me how much having to take abuse without complaint or trying to protect myself made me angry and broken. The few times I stood up to my mother when she was in a black-out rage were to step between her and my siblings, because I didn't trust her not to do more damage than even she meant to. I didn't fight to protect me. The battle over my will was already lost, the flesh was just collateral damage.

When you hear "I beat you because I love you" all through childhood, is it any surprise it makes things a little weird later on?

Vitriolic Fear Based Rant

For the first time in a long time, I'm sitting in an empty, quiet house in the evening with no expectation of company. Mr. H has left for a three day hiking trip into the mountains, and I have no one to "keep it together" for. I'm surprised at how close I am to tears. I started work again, and after months of waiting for a short sale everything happened this week and we move in on the 30th. That's roughly two weeks to pack the house, clean one house, move, and start cleaning another house. I think i could handle all of that just fine, except...

I'm in the Schrodinger's Box phase of my cycle, also known as the luteal phase. For those of you playing along at home, that's the two weeks between ovulation and menstruation when you could be pregnant but don't know yet. This. is. tearing. me. apart.

This is the first cycle after my first period after my miscarriage. I've been pregnant three times. All of them died. My hands are shaking because I'm terrified. If I'm not pregnant, I'm worried it will be another Frigg-knows-how-long before I do. If I am pregnant, I'm terrified this will end like all the others.

I don't generally let on how much this bothers me. People feel bad and want to help but there's nothing they can do and all their suggestions sound like "the reason you fail at this is because..."

That drove me fucking mad the last time. I had some very well meaning but clueless people try to "help". My yoga teacher kept offering to teach me the "fertility series" which is a set that needs ot be done regularly, like clockwork. I told her that I would really mean to, but I just don't start new habits very easily and it wasn't the appropriate solution for me, but thank you. She offered over, and over, and over again until I asked her to please stop. She didn't know what else to do so she had one thing and used it every time until it felt like judgement. There's no scientific evidence this series helps, she doesn't know what's going on with my system, there's no guarantee this would help and it would just be one more thing that didn't work.

Also, I'm a fucking adult and fully capable of asking for help when I need it and knowing what's appropriate for me and not, and so stop telling me what I should do. This was the same person who, after my last miscarriage before I'd even stopped bleeding, was excitedly showing off her new hand-me-down baby clothes for her pregnancy. "isn't this cute? look at this one. Aww, this is adorable!" As I stand there and smile with dead baby dripping into my maxi pad. While I'm happy for you in the long run and this is a joyous occasion and whatnot would it fucking kill people to think for a second and maybe guess that this isn't appropriate?

I see people treating their kids like shit and i want to scream. I can't even look at "cute kid" photo collections anymore. Every time there's a baby on the bus I have to be careful how much i smile at them because I'm sure I'd start to lose it and freak them out.

I'm not "baby crazy", i'm not responding to my biological clock ticking and suddenly oh, hey, I want to do this now. This is *all* I've wanted to do. All of the work I've done on sorting my shit out, all of my education, all of my life to this point has been living a full and educational life so that I can be the best parent I can and make contentiousness, puzzle-solving, curious, accountable people. I want to get my house set up with kids, and once the last one's able to totter and ask for things, I want to take in foster kids like we had when we were little. I want to create a safe space for everyone and shelter at least a few from the fucked up system.

The idea that I might not be able to birth children is too big for me to even contemplate right now. Save your platitudes, I know "there's always adoption". I'm not fucking stupid. And by the way, don't *ever* say that to someone. All it shows is how grossly you've missed the point, how disconnected you are from what's going on and what an asshole you are. Someone in this situation doesn't need advice I can pick up from bus adverts. If that's all you have to say, shut the fuck up. People in rough emotional situations need you to *be there with them*, they don't need fucking advice and pithy statements. Just shut up, give them a hug if they want it and sit next to them quietly if you want to help. Don't expect anything, don't try to engage conversation that's not forthcoming. The person you are trying to help should not feel like they have to entertain you or make you feel comfortable. This goes double for funerals. Learn how to be a person, not a sound bite.

I'm worried I'll get more disconnected with each failed pregnancy. I'm worried that my failure to get really excited is what causes them to fail, like maybe i'm not channeling the energy right or something. the last one had a strong, clear heartbeat. two days later it was in my hands. I don't know what to do but go forward. I pretend that everything's fine because people don't know how to react so they wind up costing me more energy to reassure them or politely grin through their "help" than it's worth. I feel like a river of lava running under a thin shell of rock and I don't know if that rock is going to thicken and cool or break through. My courage is screwed to the sticking place, but the sticking place is starting to crack.

Letter to management.

I’ve observed a few times now that S. has made a point to highlight the dissolution of the entire team or firing of individuals if we fail to produce good quality work. This needs to stop. It didn’t work with the old team and this team is scarcely two months old and is already showing signs of breaking down. One of the reasons the last team did wind so far off was the building fatalistic attitude that caused a “we’re already dead in the water, why do we care” mentality and the results of that were not pretty.

Threats work when you need oars pulled or rocks smashed. We work at a business. It is a given in the business world that liabilities get cut. Unless this is a done deal and you’re announcing severance, this threat is not what judges get paid to deal with, and it is *exactly* the wrong thing to do to get the results you want. Reminding people on a regular basis that their jobs are at stake is not just hurting their feelings, it is threatening their resources, their money, their food, their house. The same parts of our brain that respond to a bear attack also respond to social danger, including the loss of a job.

When in danger, blood flows away from the cortex, the thinking part of the brain and flows to the amygdala and brain stem, triggering emotional response and automatic functions, respectively. When a person is threatened the “fight or flight” response is activated. Blood flows away from digestive organs and higher brain function to the heart, lungs and limbs, adrenaline is released and the body gets ready for an intensely physical reaction. In the modern business world, this is inappropriate, so people sit there with these stress and anger chemicals running through them, indigestion and they start to take it out on each other. The unconscious part of the brain says “I feel a threat, you’re in the room, you must be it.” This starts the bickering, the refusing to see other perspectives, territorial behavior and attempts at forceful group dominance. This has happened before and it is happening now.

People *cannot* be creative and cooperative the way you need us to be when they are anxious about survival in this context. We are hardwired like this so the species didn’t sit around pondering the nature of the universe when there were wolves at the door. We are a species that prizes immediate self-preservation over Descartes. If you want rational, reasonable people who can cooperate, they need to feel it is safe to be wrong, to listen to what others have to say and to find solutions that solve the problems of judging, not the problems of ego or survival. I cannot do my job well if the people with whom I am supposed to hold intelligent discourse are terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. The only worse way to “motivate” the team would be to threaten physical harm. People respond to danger with physical action, verbally defending their territory at all costs or by shutting down and backing out. None of these is useful to (the company).

People respond creatively and constructively to confident leadership, confidence in the validity of their contribution to the team and a neutral-to-safe workplace.

Sincerely,

Delta Hranek

Dead babies aren't much fun.

Two chemical pregnancies, two miscarriages. Each one gets a little farther in the process, this last one had a strong heartbeat, 150 bpm three days before I cramped up badly and passed a little foetus. We went the emergency room, again, because the books and the internets tell you to go to the ER if you experience XYZ. I think I'm done with that now. My husband is a nurse, I'm no simpleton, I'm not going to the ER unless it's an emergency anymore. They were condescending, probably because they see that sort of thing all the time. A nurse came in to tell us she was covering for another nurse on her break, she was the first person we'd spoken to.

The Doc kept saying things like "so you think you've had a miscarriage" "so you passed a clot?" No, I don't think I had a miscarriage, I did have one. My uterus went "squeeze" and my nerves went "ow" and the in-tact, multi-colored and textured capsule of dead baby went "splot" in my underpants. I held it for a while, showed it to my husband (the nurse) we consulted his maternity nursing text book, the one the nurse who hasn't bothered to check in yet also read, and now we're here because it's procedure. The reason I'm not freaking out or a big mess is that I don't tend to have big emotional reactions in front of people I don't know, and the bigger something is, the less you'll know about it because I play the important cards closer to the breast. So fuck you, I'm here because I'm supposed to be even though I don't want to be and really don't need to be. You have a problem with that? Take it up with the other doctors who write this shit.

I said that on the inside, later. At the time I was too tired and getting kind of pissed that clever coherent rants were hard to come by. The next day I went to my already scheduled primary care appt., originally to check my thyroid (turns out it's fine, pregnancy just makes it do more) and for the first time since I got pregnant I had a health care person in front of me who wasn't insulting or a noob. The midwife clinic I went to had students doing most of the hands on stuff, two weeks later my arms are *still* bruised where they tried to draw blood. We took another reading with a frightfully efficient phlebotamist whom I complimented on the best draw I'd had in weeks.

Went home, cramped some more, passed the placenta, put it in the freezer next to the baby while I rested enough to build a boat out of foil and plaster so Peter and I could have a viking funeral. The next day or the one after, we took lots of cedar sticks and made a pyre on the boat, then put the boat into this vessle with some water in the backyard. A few rose petals and salvia flowers on the grass made it pretty and we sent the little one along into the smoke and air.

I laid low for a while because the attention was a little overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to have the reaction people expect and it's always a little awkward when I don't. Ya, I'm bummed that didn't work out, but I'd suspected something for a while. Even the heartbeat didn't convince me that the spotting was completely innocent. So when someone was like "oh my god I'm so sorry, how sad for you" it was like "well, yes, that sucked but I'm pretty over it now. I still have moments where I wish it would have worked out, but these things all happen for a reason, it'll work when it's time, in the meantime I've got stuff to do"

It was one of the few moments that I have ever actually hated my body. I don't care if my ass is big, I can do something about that if I really wanted to. But this whole "not supporting life" thing is starting to grate. I'll give it one more try before we go in and start testing for non-obvious reasons, as everything seems to look fine inside and out. I'm better now, I don't have the constitution for a serious grudge, I get that things weren't right, that when the guys upstairs get their acts in order and someone's ready to make a go of it, it'll match up.

The hardest part has been remembering that I have to heal at the speed of chemistry. That just because I'm rationally ok with things, the hormones still have to sort themselves out and find their level again. Just as I was starting to get some of my energy back I was hit with a wave of depression that was more annoying than anything else. I wasn't sad, I was depressed, the muting and absence of sensation and feeling. I had no motivation and didn't care about it. It took a while for that to pass and it was an interesting reminder that my body will do things at its own pace and it doesn't really care what I have to do today.

I've never really wallowed in feeling down, I don't really get people who do. I start thinking about the things I can do now that the timetable has been reset and it's not all bad. There were a few things I was hoping to get to before I got pregnant and now I've got another month at least before we start trying again. I may be able to lift boxes when we move, I won't have a fresh infant on my hip while feeding pros at NWC next year (though I may be a hippo), and I don't have to cut my MSFT contract short yet. I'll also be able to go to Critical Massive and not worry about people using my cooler or making some of the adjustments that go along with camping for a week while pregnant.

Yes, I find silver linings if i have to hunt them down and nail them on. Finding good in bad and not living in yesterday is how we survived growing up. I'm not entirely convinced it's not still a useful coping mechanism, especially when I'm taking time to honor and acknowledge the bad and then move on. "Nope that didn't happen" has issues. "Yup, that happened and it sucked, what's next?" seems fine to me. Though it does still smart when my other pg friend shows off her baby clothes that are so adorable. I'm only human.

Sometimes, I miss the people in my head.

People who run in philosophic circles sometimes make a big deal out of the question of whether we actually _know_ anything in the world beyond our own perception of it. People you know? Places you're familiar with? They're all just constructs in your mind, even your senses aren't reliable. After a fashion, they're right. It's important not to go too far down this rabbit hole or you may wind up spending years in coffee shops waxing intellectual about the futility of it all until someone kicks you out of your apartment and you realize you should get a job. At some point in your early 20s you should come to the conclusion that whether you're a person or a butterfly dreaming you're a person or a construct in the Matrix, whatever reality may actually be the one you're in requires food and shelter.

Still, it's not entirely a bad idea. We never really know another person, partly because they're so complex. To really know them you'd have to have access to every moment in their lives, first person data on how that affected them and then keep track of every moment of the present as well, including your experiences and how you're affecting them and that just can't be done. We see what people show us. Sometimes we can nudge in around the edges, but that's still pretty much seeing what they show us albeit unintentionally. It's kind of like when someone's pants are unzipped or have tucked their skirt into their underwear.

Every now and again, I'll see something that reminds me of someone I was once fond of. Train tracks are what are doing it for me now, especially the set that Amtrak uses. I think I miss the person I used to ride them to see, but really I miss the version in my head. I miss who he was at the very beginning when everything was promises and potential and neither of us knew where we fit so it could have been anywhere. Anywhere is a really exciting prospect, especially when you've got some ideas and some things you're looking for and they've read the brochure and the *seemed* like they were on board. Sometimes they even are, since the brochure is all they've got to go on and the picture in their head seems just as exciting as the picture in your head so Hell Yes, let's do this thing! It's called New Relationship Energy and it's Nature's way of getting us to breed before we come to our senses. Clever bitch.

Because then you start trying things out and no matter how hard you try it becomes apparent that the picture in your head and the picture in theirs isn't quite the same. Words and ideas get translated differently, your dictionaries aren't the same and the shine begins to show spots of tarnish. Sometimes there's enough solid ground to form a lasting relationship. Sometimes the people you are when you've come to your senses get along pretty well and you figure out where you fit and things are peachy. Sometimes you realize that you didn't really know the person at all and who you are together when you're not trying to impress each other just isn't working out. At times like those I feel like I've got two different people inside my head, the person I wanted them to be and the person they turned out to be. I miss the person I wanted him to be, the person he tried to be but couldn't. I miss the feeling I had when I still had complete faith in his brochure, in his promised potential.

But alas, it turns out all people are people. It turns out that everyone has somewhere they need to go, some things they need to do and a way they need to do it that makes sense for them, and often times those brief mirages of potential were more to tell us about ourselves than someone else. Assuming you're playing fairly they're getting something out of it too, and if you're not playing fairly and they don't tell you to fuck off...well, both of you have issues and I'm not interested in getting in the middle of them.

I know we can't go back, I know we have to learn and move on and have new experiences and make room for the future. I'm not even entirely sure what it is I miss. Maybe it's just a feeling in myself that focused on you but didn't originate there. I wonder if I can create it again, but this time without needing you. I wonder if that was just practice, like training wheels to show me it could be done and what it feels like so i can find that space in myself again and meditate there, find the power in it and figure out where to fit it in the rest of my life. Now that I think about it, there's really no reason not to be as excited and romantically curious about my own future as I was about a shared one.

Teachers sometimes come in the strangest ways....

My Husband is an Honorable Man

Something has been bugging me of late. It's always kind of bugged me, but it seems I'm either picking up on it more now or I'm hanging around more married people so it comes up more.

When two (or more) adult live in close proximity for any amount of time, they are going to get on each other's nerves from time to time. It's unavoidable, no matter how well you match up with someone, there will be the odd corner or two that is not complimentarily shaped and lo! friction. Sometimes you'll bitch to your friends about how your partner is doing this thing that drives you bonkers, and that's fine, so long as certain guidelines are followed. Generally I try to have those venting conversations 1-1 in privacy with someone who understands that I'm frustrated and this isn't to be repeated or taken as a measure of my partner's quality. We're crazy monkeys, stuff happens.

The bit that's been driving me crazy of late is when people talk down to or about their partners in public, or private mixed company. This goes from the little old lady at the fruitstand who chides "oh men, they can't do anything by themselves" to the "casual" comments at social gatherings about how the husband used to be messy when he was a batchelor, how he doesn't earn the lion's share of the income, how sometimes it feels like he's one of the kids one has to deal with. I try to be polite and either dodge the premise of the question or, as in the case with the fruitstand lady say something neutral so we can GTFO, but this is my blog, and it's time to say this.

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

Are you kidding me? Look, I understand the frustrations that can build up in any relationship and the tendency to want to "get a bit of your own back" and sometimes it feels like the only way you can do that is to be passive aggressive in public by showing the world what a doof your husband is and how great his life is now that you're in it but seriously, shut the fuck up. It makes you look like a complete ass. If your partner talked that way about you, you'd tear him a new one and if you were super polite you'd wait until you were in private to do it. Otherwise you'd have a fit right there and make everyone around you as uncomfortable as you are for the sake of your emotional outburst.

The next time you feel the urge to say something negative about your partner in public, bite your tongue and think about this: he puts up with your shit. All of your crazy, all of your demands, all of your insistence on changing the way he sees the world, the way he talks to you, the way he lives in his own home, the way he spends his time and how he shows you he loves you are things you've influenced and he swallows all of it because he's crazy about you. If you feel frustrated that he's not meeting some need, ask yourself, "have I ever actually *said* this to him out loud? Do I just assume that because he loves me he'll know what I mean to say?"

If the answer is Yes, you have some work to do. Expecting someone else to interpret your clues because you don't feel comfortable saying what you mean out loud is total bullshit. You're telling that person that your needs to not feel a little awkward are so important that they need to run their own lives, and spend extra attention on figuring out what you want. And you can do that, but the odds they'll get it right are slim, and all the energy they spend trying to figure out your cryptic clues could be spent on the two of you being happy together.

And don't think that just because you've made your needs clearly and plainly known means you're off the hook. You're not on a goddamn pedestal, he doesn't exist to serve you in whatever way you think is appropriate at any given time. He's a person, he has needs too. When is the last time you asked him what he needs, what he feels, what he thinks could be going better.

"Oh, men don't talk about their feelings"

Bullshit. They may not wax poetic and go on about it for hours, they may not chatter on as a form of bonding, but any man who's even remotely self aware knows when you piss him off, when you're being an unbearable ass and has an idea or two of things he'd like to change. If he says "fine" it's because you haven't created a space where he feels like he can actually talk and be heard without being shut down or criticized. If you have a knee jerk reaction to something he says, assume he means something else, have ever accused him of an off "tone"...those are in your head. Any meaning you put on someone else's words beyond what they say is your own internal dialog. Those are *your* emotional reactions to things you * perceive* and you, as an adult, are responsible for checking your emotional response, taking a break if you need one, until you can address the content of the conversation for what it is and not what your projections are.

If something in your relationship isn't working, it's 50% your fault. You can work on it together, you can explore the things you both need to do to change how you approach something. Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes there's just no way to reach the middle ground. Sometimes that 50% both of you have are just different needs/offers and the relationship changes because what you need is not compatible. It happens, you grow, you change, you realize you built something up that wasn't there, you wanted something so badly you tried to make it what is wasn't. That's fine. It happens. It hurts. But you can be graceful about it, like a grown-up.

Your husband isn't a fucking child, stop treating him like one. Your husband is man, a grown-up, a person who deserves respect and kindness and for you to go out of your way to give him some of what he needs. Think about whether he's had sleep, whether he's in a conversational mood, think about all the things you want him to consider before bringing something to you before you unload whatever rant about him or someone else loose. Sometimes they don't want to hear it. Sometimes they don't want to hear it *right then* and because their needs are just as important as yours are, that means you have to fucking wait. You're an adult, you can do it.

My husband and I have had our share of disagreements, we've had the odd shouting match. We've both had a lot of growing to do to learn to trust each other. Part of that was him learning that his home is a safe space, that it's ok to tell me what he needs and wants and won't be accused of manipulating me (thanks angry, childish stepfather). A big part of that was me learning that I do some pretty messed up stuff too. I have a hypersensitive reaction to anger so I tend to try to shut it down, to explain how it's not my fault, to lean into the tiller until the conversation steers in my favor. This was a perfectly useful tactic when I was in a house with a crazy angry person who could escalate at the drop of a hat with her own internal monologue guiding the storm. It's a very *bad* tactic when you're not in a house with an abusive nutcase and are talking to a person you actually like who would like to feel like I listen to him once in a while without showing him (with citations) how he's wrong.

Maybe this is a key. I don't just love my husband, I *like* him. He's a person I like, and I want to treat him well. When he tells me I'm doing something that makes him feel bad, I may feel defensive or under attack, but those are reactions that have to do with the past, not the present. So I take a breath and do my best to let my rational reasonable mind take the lead, and if I fail, I come back to it until I get it right. I make mistakes, that's ok. I work to fix them. If you don't feel like you ever make mistakes, that you're a great wife and mother and the problem is all other people....I have a rude awakening for you.

If you *don't* like your partner, what the hell are you still doing with them?