Get Your Fight On!

Naively, I thought that I made peace with the aspects of MH's personality that are dissimilar to mine. In fact, I would go as far to as to say that I embrace them in a yin and yang, new-agey kind of way I normally dismiss as hogwash.

Emotionally, MH and I are very different people. I am extremely emotional and extremely pessimistic...I can find 20 gazillion reasons why something will, absolutely go wrong. I think part of this is just my general personality. The other part is the severe anxiety and the obsessive-compulsive thinking patterns that began plaguing me in my early twenties.

One of my therapists said something profound to me that I try to repeat in times of crisis (real or imagined.) She said, "Just because you think it doesn't mean it will happen. You don't have that kind of power." My problem is two-fold. I honestly believe (in the irrational part of my brain) that I can keep things from happening if I worry about them enough, and that I have some kind of supernatural power that when something pops into my head it will happen. For example, if I am casually reading the paper and come across and article on ovarian cancer my mind goes straight to 'this must be a sign, you are reading this for a reason...you must have ovarian cancer.' Then I go straight out and research this, and convince myself through any twinge I have felt that "Yep, I have cancer." Then I worry myself sick until I go to the doctor and find out no I don't have cancer. Then I am convinced that the worrying about it actually made it not happen. Repeat with every illness/situation ad nauseum.

MH on the other hand is super rational. His mantra would be "Worrying is useless. Why would I do something that makes me feel worse?" He believes that whatever happens will happen in the manner in which it supposed to and when it is supposed to. Needless to say he doesn't believe I have any psychic powers! I did tell him that many of my worst case scenarios have happened to which he replied, "Of course they have...you have thought of so many worse case, bizarre scenarios that some are bound to happen, but you didn't will them into existence with your mind." Maybe he should be a therapist!!!

Well, last night these emotional differences came to a head. I know that in my previous post I made a resolution that I would stop the fester cycle, but once again it caught up to me. I laid into MH about not feeling like he cared what was happening to us, not really wanting to have a baby, and other things that will remain private. Finally, we had a more rational discussion. He is worried about his health and why this is happening, and he does want to have children. We talked about our differences, and about how he let me deal with things my way, but when he was trying to deal with things in his own way I attacked him.

I realized this is true. I need him to feel and experience this in the same way I am. I need him to feel the despair, the devastation, and the primal desire to have a child that I have, but he can't. He isn't wired that way, and it isn't some kind of personality defect. It isn't a statement of how much he loves me, or his commitment to me. It is just who he is. He can't worry about things that may not even happen. This is hard for me to accept. I think of myself as being so accepting and non judgmental, but maybe I'm really not.

It has also been hard to accept that MH doesn't think about having children the same way I do. I feel motherhood is my destiny. It is my raison d'etre. It is something I know I will actually be good at. The desire and the ability to have children is something that defines who I am as woman and a person. Having children is not something that defines MH at the core of who he is. In some ways I don't think men (yes, I am going to generalize here so put your big girl panties on and deal) can understand the need to have children. It isn't as deeply rooted in them psychologically. Girls are conditioned from the time they can hold a doll to be mothers. Most men never even had dolls. Girls grew up taking care of their dolls, feeding them, playing house, and playing school. I can remember people saying to me as a little girl, "What a good mommy you'll be." Boys don't grow up with this pervasive message of being a good daddy. How can men understand that an infertility diagnosis will change and disrupt something women think of as the very essence of being a woman?

I truly have to find a way to come to terms with this because our journey whatever it is will probably be hard enough without locking horns over our philosophical views of parenthood and self. I want to be a good partner. I don't want to grow apart or continue to get angry because MH isn't dealing with this situation how I want him to. The reality is, unfortunately, there is nothing MH can do to comfort me right now, and even if he were reacting the same way I am it probably wouldn't be enough. I think along with being an emotional slut; I am emotionally insatiable.