Blog | Page 2 of 2 | Dr. Kelly Rees

What do I mean when I say I love you? -or- I love the man I’m divorcing

Lately I’ve been thinking about love. As I move toward divorce I still have a strong connection to my partner. I’ve been peering deeply into this. Deeper than hurt and resentment, deeper than contempt which surely kills a relationship. (http://www.gottmanblog.com/four-horsemen/) As the other artifacts fall away something essential remains. What do I mean when I say I love you?

I’m talking about that gritty, tenacious, totally human, messy type of love. The thing that acknowledges change over time, expands and contracts. I’m not talking about sentiment. I’m talking about the way we show up for ourselves and each other that defies logic. That which is unshaken by disappointment, bad behavior, personality conflicts, hurt feelings, pettiness. The thing that grows over time and remains. I can’t help it, can’t stop it.

Love is all you need?

Love is not all you need, and nowhere near all you get. Love shows up along with attachment, neediness, manipulation, fear of abandonment, possession, expectation, implication, exclusion.

Love is the excuse for a million things that are not love.

Love comes packaged with hurt. I’ve been asked if there isn’t a way to love without being vulnerable. Nope. It’s the same channel, straight to your most tender places. Open for love equals open for hurt.

It’s easy to love from a distance. As you get closer you start to notice things. Annoying things. Things that you don’t love, but it’s a package deal, isn’t it? Love me, love my warts. That’s our basic predicament.

Unconditional love?

As soon as someone starts to matter, conditions show up. Love becomes a way to prove something: my worth, your worth, the validity of my choices, emotional purity. A call for unconditional love is striving for selflessness in a mostly selfish, very flawed human with wants and needs and fears up the wazoo. Expecting unconditional love from a partner is a good way to stay lonely.

True love?

True Love implies false love. It might be true lust instead, and we know that lust is notoriously fickle. We mistake lust for love. We then attach specific behaviors to love. “I only do that with someone I love.” “I can’t do that with someone I love.” “If you loved me you would….” “If you loved me you wouldn’t….” We even call our sex partners “lovers.”

A friend was having an affair with a married man. She scared the hell out of him by telling him “I only have sex with people I love, so I guess I love you.” That was the last thing she got to say to him.

How can we tell true from false? How long do you have to wait to find out if you’ve been fooling yourself or someone’s been fooling you?

Real life love.

This love doesn’t expect anything in return. (Sometimes I don’t even tell the person I feel this with.) Do I say this lightly? Sometimes, when it feels light. Love is easy for me, it’s a natural function close to happiness.

So what do I mean when I say I love you? I refer to the entity that lives between us. It connects me to you. A living thing that has arisen out of the very center of me and winds its way to you, seeking your depth. Some part of me is willing to sidle up to you, to get close enough to be hurt. Exposed. Intimate. Perhaps this tender, young thing matures into the gritty, tenacious thing with time and experience.

Perhaps it is true, and unconditional too.

Grieving and Living

Do you avoid thinking of those whom you have lost either to death, to moving away, or by breaking off a relationship?

If someone nearby begins to cry or expresses sorrow do you quietly panic and get away as fast as possible? Do you attempt to stop them?

Do feelings of sadness and loss arise in moments of joy or intimacy?

Undigested grief gets in the way of living. It colors our thoughts and feelings and comes between us and those we love. That a National Grieving Day exists says something about how prevalent this is.

When my father died I was surprised by my grief. My relationship with my dad wasn’t easy. In his last few years I distanced myself in order to keep healthy boundaries. I had already grieved the dad I didn’t have, the one I wished I had. His death didn’t come as a surprise and still it shook me. For about six months every time I had sex I would dissolve in tears of grief. My husband was patient and supportive. He had lost his mother a few years before and had no support for his grieving.

I would go about my days upright, getting things done, feeling okay. Until we made love. Then somewhere in the middle, memories of my dad would visit me. I was awash with waves of anger, frustration, and love. I needed to be held.

It is more difficult to grieve alone. Something in us wants to be witnessed. Having someone to hold you and hold that moment for you to feel and fall into helps to let it dissolve and pass. At times I would do anything to not feel that grief on my own. It feels like it can swallow me, that I would drown in it. Sometimes I can manage it, sometimes I need help, or to turn away entirely.

Today I am facing the end of my marriage. Waves of conflicting thoughts and feelings, mixed memories and emotions come over me. Some days I’m barely functional. Talking about little things that irritate can lead me to underlying sadness; that’s a relief. When I have identified that I’m grieving I’m less likely to blame others for annoying me, less likely to distract myself or stop the process, to get lost in circular thinking or complaining. Being held makes it easier for me to hold my discomfort.

Do you have a friend or loved one to whom you can turn, who won’t try to “fix” you but can hold you in your despair? If not, please contact me. You don’t have to manage it alone.

National Grieving Day is http://nationalgrievingday.comNovember 22nd, 2014.

Do You Fantasize During Sex?

Is it possible to have fantasy enrich your sex life? Detract from it? Replace it?

Looking into the content of our fantasies, we can learn about our needs and motivations. Do you fantasize about things you actually do, things you want to do, or things you would never do? Understand that your fantasies have a life of their own; for example, fantasizing about rape doesn’t mean that you actually want to rape someone or actually be raped. The content of your fantasies is largely unconscious. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the kind of person you are, and many, many people have similar fantasies. Chances are if you’re thinking about it, someone else is too.

Do you fantasize during sex? Does your partner? I recommend having a conversation with your partner about sharing fantasy. You may not want someone in your head with you! But if you are willing to talk about it, you could use your fantasy to add excitement to your sex.

However, if you are busy with your fantasy instead of paying attention to your partner, your connection will suffer. You may get off, but your partner will likely notice you’re not actually there with them. Have you ever had sex with someone who was distracted and obviously not paying attention? It’s a drag.

If sex is best when you pretend you’re somewhere else with someone else, call me; I can help you assess the situation. We can see if there is some way to shift your dynamic. Your preference to ‘be somewhere else’ might be your discomfort with vulnerability, or might signal a deeper issue.

Strangled by Sleepwear

I’m at the Rack on Sunday afternoon, wandering through the last-chance discounted lingerie. I’m pawing, looking for nothing in particular. Well, maybe a new sports bra. My menopausal body is shapeshifting, and not in helpful ways. I pause by the Shapewear. (From Wikipedia: Shapewear is an undergarment designed to temporarily alter the wearer’s body shape, to achieve a more fashionable figure. The function of a foundation garment is not to enhance a bodily feature (as would, for example, a padded bra) but to smooth or control the display of one).

There’s a python-print slippery slip-thing, it almost looks cute/sexy. I grab it. It says Medium. I used to be a Medium. It’s stretchy, right? Should work fine. I pick up a couple more pieces and add them to my cart of random tops and sports bras and head to the changing room.

First I try the tops. My meno-pooch bothers me, and I pass on all of them. Who needs a white tee shirt, anyway? And color is over-rated. Back to black.

Then I get to the shapewear.

I pull the cute python over my head and … I’m being eaten by it, devoured in a tiny changing room by an unforgiving snake. I tug it down past my arms over my torso and realize the fool’s errand this is. But the snake doesn’t let me out as easily as I went in, which was not easy at all. I bend over, hoping that somehow gravity will help me, that I can shake myself out of it. After three minutes of panting, tugging, and swearing under my breath, I wriggle free.

Then I pick up another piece and pull it over my head. What the hell was I thinking? Immediately I am stuck again, my elbows folded in front of my face. I can’t move. I consider calling the attendant for help, but am embarrassed by the thought. I got myself in here, I can get myself out, right? I can’t move my left arm. My shoulder—which has had me in physical therapy for months— is screaming at me. I wonder briefly if I will pass out before I get out of this. There’s a headline; ”Middle-aged woman with soggy midsection is found unconscious in the Rack, strangled by shapewear.”

This is ridiculous. Once again I bend over, shaking and wriggling, and eventually get the slippery piece of lycra back up to my shoulders. Hooking my chin under the edge, I shove it back over my face. Fleetingly I wonder if maybe a bigger size…

The woman who invented Spanx (the most popular brand of shapewear) is brilliant and now is also a Billionaire, according to Forbes: according to Forbes: http://onforb.es/1gRIRBi thanks to throngs of women like me who are uncomfortable with the jellybelly but are not winning in the diet-and-exercise-it-away department.

Then — inexplicably — I pick up a sports bra, and I’m not even making this up. At this point I can’t move my left shoulder, but am willing to shove myself in a sports bra? I regard myself in the harsh fluorescent light of the Rack’s dressing room; pooch, red face, bewildered-looking hair. Just go home.

On the drive home I’m thinking. I’m embarrassed by having gained weight, slowly over the years and occasionally in small chunks. I call it the Battle of the Bulge. I think I should be slimmer, more toned. Where do these thoughts come from? Partly from remembering my younger body (an ever-ready trap). This week in yoga class I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror as we sat in Cow pose. I can still easily manage Cow pose. This time my stomach brushes my thigh. I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. My belly is just sitting there, comfortably bumping up against my thigh. I can feel a compulsion to do sit-ups and crunches to get it back where it belongs; OFF my thigh.

When I read about a model or celebrity who, for special occasions doubles up on the Spanx, I feel sick. I wonder about the word “model.” Model what? Why do we call the people who embrace eating disorders as a lifestyle “Models”? Shouldn’t we rescue them instead of taking their picture and then photoshopping them even thinner? (Before you message me to stop hating on models, that not all models have eating disorders, how you personally know two models who are healthy, muscular, and eat well, save it. Even models joke about starving themselves and living on coffee, cigarettes, and cocaine. It’s a thing.)

My mom’s girdles come to mind. My mom, who, as a twenty-something was thinner than I ever was— even in high school — and she wore a girdle. When I’m getting dressed these thoughts don’t feel like insecurity, they feel normal. Dress to hide the bulge. Dark colors, clean lines; an elegant esthetic.

Maybe it was those minutes hanging upside down trapped in the Rack dressing room that have given me a sliver of clarity. It has to change, doesn’t it? We no longer wear bustles and corsets. (Well, most of us don’t.) It’s about control, yes, but control of what? More like the illusion of control, of me over my life and body. I’m fooling myself and you into believing that I am in control.

At home, I decide to spend a minute with my belly. When I place my hand on my bare tummy and try not to think evil thoughts, when I sit quietly with the physical presence of my belly, something entirely different happens. I notice that my skin is sooo soft, so smooth. I want to keep my hand there. I want to kiss my own tummy, to press my cheek into it, it feels so nice. The jellybelly that, when confronted in shapewear is repulsive and wrong, here is velvety soft and wonderful. I remember hearing Zsa Zsa Gabor say when a man puts his hand on a woman’s stomach it should be soft there (her excuse for not working out like Jane Fonda). My belly didn’t change between the Shapewear Incident and now. Only my perspective has shifted a teeny bit.

I’m not so silly that I would think I will never have a harsh, unforgiving thought about myself again. The best I can hope for is that the next time it happens, I will remember my tummy and find a way to be nice to myself eventually. Even if I get the idea that shapewear is the answer again. In my very good imagination I can imagine accepting shapewear for a specific event without self-loathing. Kind of the same way that I know I can stick to a diet or do extra workouts while loving myself, no matter what happens.