Breathing Room

No Tolerance for Ambiguity

We dissected the no panties argument in counseling today. Our therapist says that we're a great couple. More on track than many married couples he works with.
I sort of challenged him on this and he he kept nodding his head.

Yesterday was a good session. We decided to go to counseling because we'd begun taping our arguments to try and show each other that the other is a liar or a hypocrite.

These tapes actually exist.

The tapes prove nothing. We're both liars and hypocrites and we already know that. We wanted/needed a third party to moderate our dialogue or more accurately our yelling matches as well as provide another perspective and if we're lucky, good advice.

So I'm telling Doc my version of the story and he's nodding and shaking his head. "And how did that make you feel?"

"Well I've always worn underwear and so I basically felt like he thought I was cheap. As if I'm going out trying to illicit unwanted attention."

He asked me if I'd asked Dave why he asked me about my underwear in the first place. I hadn't. Only in the rhetorical sense. So he wanted me to turn to David and ask him. I did.

He said upon seeing me, he saw that I had the dress on but it was just left unzipped so that he could put some Aloe on my back and he thought, wait why doesn't she have underwear on and so he asked me. And in turn I blew up.

Dave says that he has a great ideal of me and that he was in no way thinking what I'd suggested. He hadn't looked at the whole situation and sort of jumped the gun, but that he understood my position.

My position was -what kind of question is that? You should already know the answer. Its like me saying to him -do you have on underwear? Of course he does. That's almost insulting. Even if you see me in a dress with no undies on you should know that before I walk out that door, somewhere between now and then underwear will have arrived on the scene.

But we discussed it amicably and Doc told us that we had great adult dialogue. Its all about understanding and perspective. What did you hear him say? Feel better? Great.

Besides that incident we'd had a great week. He asked us where was marriage on our radar. I answered that it wasn't close. He nodded. Looked us both in the eye.

"Too many couples have no tolerance for ambiguity. They rush to marriage. You guys are in a great place. I'm telling you. This is great dialogue."

I liked that. No tolerance for ambiguity. I understood that. Being scared of the gray areas. We're a bit lost in the different shades of gray, but the goal is to go into marriage with a clear understanding and no guessing games. I've always been a stickler for pre-marital counseling, I don't need those kind of surprises.

I've been easily disillusioned by idealism and fantasies. The all or nothing attitude. But too many times I've found that I have to turn to Dave and say, "This is what I heard you say," or "What the hell are you talking about?"

I feel bad for calling Dave and asshole, so I'll alleviate that by calling myself and asshole.

"I'm an asshole".....all better