Yesterday held an mega AH HA! moment. As we walked toward the bank, John made a minor comment that seemed to flip a major IRKED switch deep, deep inside my psyche. Felt all the physiological responses to an upsetting situation - muscles tensing, skin getting ultra sensitive, breath going shallow, color rising, thinning & brittle voice, rush of emotion. And for about 10 minutes, I felt distressed & let John know it.
Until it hit me - WHAT is all the fuss about? What did John say to bring on such a strong response? The answer, to my shock, was nothing. He had answered a question. That was all. Okay, his response was a bit unclear, but that was due more to my faulty processing powers than to his phrasing.
Stepping back from the immediate situation, I asked myself - What went on here? .
Which was when it smacked me between the eyes - it wasn't John's actual response that triggered something; it was his phrasing & tone, which would have seemed fine to an observer, but reconnected something within me to a response he'd made eons ago that had been genuinely upsetting.
Wow... I got twisted because something unrelated connected my emotional innards to a long past distressing moment. Weird.
Gave me serious pause. Imagining how John could have responded & the whole thing could have become a mega moment of misery. Could have happened so easily.
Personal dynamics - fascinating. John & I are blessed to be in relationship with another who can stop the whoosh of upset, step outside the bristling moment to consider, "How did we get here?"
Stepping outside an emotional onslaught as it's happening can drive others crazy, but we both get it.
So much of what goes right in our relationship is outside our control. We happen to have compatible communication styles, we happen to process things in a way that doesn't drive the other nuts, we happen to be on more or less the same wavelength. Really & truly.
I say "really & truly" because one of the most challenging things about the first fine raptures of falling in love is that it can feel like we're compatible on each of those levels when we are, in cold harsh light of day, not. John & I married seven months - to the day - after we first connected.
We lucked out - what we saw & experienced was the real deal. But it could so easily have gone another way.
Am grateful for yesterday's fresh insight from an unexpected quarter & even more so for having a husband who doesn't go batty when I spend the drive home analyzing what happened, probing what set me into a tizzy of feeling unwhatever, working at it until the light dawned with its EUREKA! moment of clarity. Blessed beyond measure!
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