Getting whiplash/how do I convince him it's OK to talk to me?

[phili]

Hi again, Pandora. Your energy and sincerity and willingness are evident. Your reasons to be hyper-vigilant are clear, and you have about a zillion huge stressors operating all at once.

If I was there I'd take your hand and give you a hug and say let's just stand still for a moment and feel good about all the things that are going right. Your husband is struggling, so are you, and that's the way life is. We normally have shared stories with those around us, and some private stories we don't share, that we use to sort out and suppress unresolved issues so that we feel successful. What has happened, I think, is that your husband saw clues that you might be willing [like the bra incident], and took the plunge, beggings to share his private story, and make it a shared story.

But - and as a typical man I do this, he is not used to managing the ebb and flow of strong emotions with any finesse, and he shuts down in order to get back to the stolid stoicism and withholding that is typically safe for him. This is frustrating to you since you are actively trying to engage and negotiate and ...he is just looking out at you calling to him from his hiding place and seeing someone who doesn't like the story he wants to share.

To be fair, it is unreasonable for him to expect that you would, but I can say in my experience the fact of my inner femininity is real and existential, so it feels like a monumental tragedy that my wife just hardens her position more when I say that. I can see that gender is a trained performance, a cultural structure, integrated with thousands of restraints and privileges and bargains in our social and interpersonal life. Maybe that awareness is only easy to obtain in those for whom it wasn't a welcome training, [perhaps like your daughter], but as we get older we want to feel ourselves in relationship as genuine. We may only live once!

I recommend Harville Hendrix' book, Getting the Love you Want. As a long time marriage therapist, he concluded that we marry people with whom we will eventually confront a difficult transformational task- that we will each find a point where we really don't want to give the other what they most want from us. (That heightened desire comes of course from the fact that we don't get that important thing.) But, if we do give it to them, we will also find that it releases us and meets a need we were not conscious of. I have found this to be a wonderful resolution of the apparent dilemmas. The case for me was that my wife wanted me to be chatty and hang out with her, and I found it boring and trivial. When I willingly became chatty, i discovered a whole world of emotional interplay that I had unconsciously held back from.

In your case, you can understand and support your daughter's questioning of her gender role, but you hold reservations against your husband doing the same. OK- that means you feel you will lose something very important if he does expand in the direction he wants. As a simple point for helping a therapist help you, you can start there- explore what you forecast you will lose if he does x. Then, for the purposes of the exercise, imagine a what if scene where you willingly give him space to explore freely.

My wife is not taking Hendrix' advice, and she has convinced our therapist that the fear she has is so monumental that she simply can't be expected to explore it. But my doing it on my own has really helped me find safety and growth, and realizing, as in my opening sentence, that I am safe being me, and others don't control how I feel.

[bridget thronton]

Welcome to the forum Pandora and thank you for reaching out. I hope someone has shared the fact that once you make 10 posts or replies in this forum you can join the subforum for Females at Birth (you will find some great ladies there working through the same issues you are)