So, this journey I have to heal myself is all about the pain I have suffered, and the fictions I have told myself and believe about my life. I'm trying to uncover so much as part of this journey, and bring a lot of pain out into the light. And, it's really tough.

A couple of years ago the anxiety and fear I was feeling was so intense that I was rude and cruel to my wife. It really was touch and go whether she would leave me, but because she loves me she stuck by me, and has helped me through this intense storm of emotions. I feel so very grateful to her and so now I really feel that I am coming out the other side, and we can get our life back on track.

One of my problems has been that when I feel stressed I stop communicating, I internalise, I get wrapped up in my feelings. And that causes a problem in my relationship.

I wrote a poem last Friday about a person from my old life and how they used to bully me and what I felt, but the poem was also transformative, in that at the end I turned it around and stood strong against them, that they were dead to me and that I let it go. I felt very vulnerable about that poem, and I didn't mention it to my wife until the Monday after the weekend.

I suppose I hadn't realised the significance of the poem either emotionally to myself, it is very heavy going, or to my relationship with the fact I had delayed talking about it. I think the key thing in the argument that followed was: "What else aren't you talking to me about?"

But that raises a big question in my mind: how much should anyone who is going through therapy or any emotionally turbulent times share with their life partner?

Should I just not have mentioned the poem? Or should I have raised it when it happened? Or was I okay to mention it later?

I really don't know and I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts about this?

FairIsle

A Moodscope member.