Picking up a magazine in an office today I found myself reading an interview with Charlize Theron. She commented on her concept of what makes a relationship work: “You have to be nurtured emotionally and spiritually and you have to be intrigued.”

I pondered that, especially the part bout being nurtured emotionally. Right now, as I am going through the divorce, those kinds of comments trigger me, because I didn’t feel nurtured emotionally…(I am not saying I never felt this, but at significant, crucial times, I did not receive it and there were way too many times during the marriage were I felt “left out in the cold.”)

So I read Charlize’s statement: “You have to be nurtured emotionally” and I feel the hole inside of me. And then I start to ruminate. And the Won’t Quit Daemon pops into my head and starts jumping up and down, taunting me:

“You didn’t get this, you didn’t get that, you suffered!”

I respond: “Damn dude, can’t you shut up? I’m trying more than ever these days to keep you out of my head. You’re not welcome anymore, SCAT!”

But he insists on reminding me:

“It wasn’t that your husband couldn’t extend emotional nurturance to anyone. Remember all those times he gave it to anyone but you, to your sister, to your girl friend, to his Buddhist therapist? Oh you can hear his sweet kind nurturing voice, empathizing with them. See how easily he defends them, defends their emotional life? But you, when you were down and out, when you felt rock-bottom sad and hurt, did he show empathy for you? Did he show defense of you? Oh no, he shut you out in the cold!”

The Won’t Quit Daemon is literally screaming and banging the walls of my brain. I feel like I am going to throw up. Maybe that will work! If I throw up, maybe that’ll make him shut up. Make him leave.

I pull my car into my carport. I sit for a few minutes wondering if I can throw up. Can I just throw up the pain and be rid of it?

I hear “mi mi” outside my car. My cat is waiting for me. I tell Won’t Quit Daemon to “F___ Off” and I quickly get out of the car to scoop up my cat. “I love you, I love you” I say into his fur. He’s the one who has been there for me this past sorrowful year.

How do we end up in a predicament where we’re not emotionally nurtured in a marriage? A nice guy asks you to marry him, he says he loves you, says he knows he wants to marry you, you know he’s got a good heart. You know he’d never mean to hurt anyone. It seems safe to assume you’ll be emotionally nurtured. It seems safe to assume he’d want to put you first. Right? It seems logical but my therapist said: “You were in Chandi-Land… it doesn’t matter if your assumptions seemed logical, you still were in YOUR head about it. You made assumptions about was logical, natural, expected. Assumptions are dangerous.”

So there I have it. Two things to work on. Assumptions are dangerous and ruminating is bad for my health. I had actually gotten better in recent years about the ruminating thing… but it’s come up again as I am going through the divorce. I am therefore working harder on getting rid of it. I have started doing “Breath Work” and yesterday a friend gave me a session of “Emotional Freedom Techinique”

As I end this post I’d like to ask readers:
- have any of you suffered from rumination and found a good technique for getting rid of it?
- what do you think of the problem of assumptions? How do we catch ourselves from making assumptions in a relationship that end up trapping us?
- How do we achieve and maintain emotional nurturance in our relationships?