One or two readers may have surmised that my marriage is far from perfect. My wife says (when she mentions it) that CDing leaves her cold and she'd rather not discuss it/see it etc. On the other hand, on a few occasions over the years when she has seen me dressed she has always claimed she has no problem with it.
For all sorts of reasons there's no space to go into here, I believe her hostility is actually a facet of an overall dissatisfaction with the state of our marriage - principally relating to money and security - and without that being fixed, nothing can be considered.
So... I wear six (finger) rings - or at least I did until last weekend. One is my wedding ring. One I bought myself. One was a gift (from my wife) and the other three are technically hers. By 'technically' I mean that they were hers but over the years she'd become bored with them, left them lying around and I'd appropriated them. Note - I've worn these particular rings 24/7 for about three years. She was aware of them, as were everyone else in my family and social circle. No biggie, you'd have thought.
The only time I take my rings off are when doing DIY etc. and when I'm in the bath. This Sunday I had a long bath then floated around in a dressing gown for ages making lattes and so forth while my wife was around and apparently unperturbed. Then I went upstairs to get dressed and one of the rings was missing from the pile.
I took the bedroom apart, looked in the cat's favourite hiding places, looked down the sofa, looked round my desk etc etc and finally went to my wife and said I'm sorry but I've lost one of the rings - can you help me find it. She says "which ring is it?" so I describe it and she says "you mean, my ring?". You can guess where this going. After a moment the penny drops and I say "Are you saying you've taken the ring?" and she just repeats " it is my ring you know.". She wouldn't say the words "I took the ring" - and I basically lost my cool and started shouting about having taken half the house apart to find it and why couldn't she have said something, but she would only shrug. Our daughter heard the whole thing and was visibly upset.
She had taken one ring from the pile and hidden it, then decided not to say anything to me so I would panic and search and generally be discomfited.
Following this incident I had a long think and decided I should consider a therapist. One thing I want to understand is how much I am responsible for causing this irrational behaviour in my wife (this is just the final straw) and to what extent I should feel guilty about it as opposed to defending the general honesty and integrity (I believe) I've always tried to bring to our relationship.
I've made contact with a suitable professional who is asking what do I want to work on if we start a programme of sessions - and suddenly I don't know how to answer that. What DO I want to talk about?
Originally Posted by TGMarla
