Confusing Feelings
Staying with this close neighbor of hunger for food, have you ever had that weird sensation where your stomach is really hurting, but you can’t tell if it’s because you’re hungry or because you need to throw up? Maybe you were getting over a stomach bug, and your tummy is hurting again, but you can’t quite tell this time if it’s begging you to feed it or if it’s going to, well, reject everything.
See any parallels to your feelings about your marriage right now?
As pain and emotional hunger, and other unpleasant feelings about your marriage bubble up in you, it’s important to examine those feelings closely and with nuance. Rather than ignoring them, see how specifically you can move away from the pain and toward joy and beauty.
Does the pain mean you need to move away from the whole marriage? Or does it mean you need to move away from particular patterns in the marriage? Do you need to move toward the attractive new person you connected with? Or do you really need to move within yourself or within the marriage toward the qualities you find attractive in this new person?
You may have heard something like Carl Jung’s observation:
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Personally, I’m not ready to go as far as to say that everyone is a mirror of ourselves, as some say. Maybe that’s true, too. But I do think the things that irritate us in another are pointing to something in ourselves.
When you feel hurt or irritated by your spouse, gently see if you can find that same or a similar (or sometimes opposite) thing going on inside of you.
Is the pain of feeling abandoned, unheard, or disrespected because someone else is doing those things to you? And/or is it because you need to listen to, respect, and not abandon yourself?
Does patriarchy trigger you? Ask yourself where patriarchy might still be active in you?
Are you angry that your spouse is controlling you? Could it be that you are not trusting yourself?
Let’s take it back to food hunger again for a second. As a person gets more and more healthy and practiced at listening to their body, they find themselves having more and more specific cravings. They may notice they’re craving something salty because their body needs more salt in that moment or craving an orange because their body is asking for more Vitamin C.
But when a person is not practiced at listening to their hunger cues, regularly suppresses their hunger, or is malnourished, their body mostly craves carbs, sugars, and fats because they are so desperate for fast-acting nourishment and comfort.
Esther Perel shares a wealth of insights on desire, marriage, why people have affairs. She points out how so many of us, especially as women, are taught to suppress our desires. She says,
“Desire is owning your wanting.”
If this is an area you sense you could use some practice in, I highly recommend listening to, watching, or reading anything from her (she has a ton of great free content, google her name and see what interests you most).
Just keep in mind that desire may be owning your wanting—wisdom is learning to fulfill those desires in the most deeply nourishing, healthy, and satisfying ways possible.
May we be brave enough to listen to our pain, hunger, and desire with nuance, compassion, curiosity, and wisdom to understand what to move toward and what to move away from.
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