I've been dealing with a flood of insights from trying to figure out what is keeping me from feeding my wife's emotional hunger. I felt a need to unload some of these thoughts in a blog post. This is the first time that I've ever looked at how certain habits carry over from one part of my life to another. I wanted to write about the advantage to thinking about my problem holistically. How can my habits and approach to work, this blog, the way I thought about life in high school and college, the relationship I have with my birth family, and intellectual pursuits like this blog help me understand my relationship sabotaging behaviors? I thought about a blog post where I tried to figure out the most authentic experiences of my life. These were things that I felt were expressions of who I want to be rather than simply perpetuating the behavior patterns that were shaped by my childhood.
I considered plenty of other topics in this vein, but I obviously didn't write those posts (at least not yet). Those topics are interesting and relevant to solving my problem, but in a way they are also a perpetuation of my problem. Writing about those things direct my attention to my internal states. Inward directed thoughts are a huge part of my recurring pattern. I spend so much effort looking inside, I fail to offer Tiffy important parts of myself.
So rather than spend my evening focusing on me, I worked on putting together a new treadmill and writing Tiffy an email that told her about what I was feeling about something important in our life. I did some giving rather than keeping all my energy to myself. And I have to say that it felt pretty damn good.
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