Oh my gosh I need to delete more of my emails.  I was searching for something in my email and kept hitting the next arrow until I came across an old conversation with my ex.  It was this chat session from when we first started dating again and it is just total sweet sadness. 

I was so scared going into that second chance.  There are so many things I could say here, but if I couldn't say it to him back then I'm not going to broadcast it here now.  I wish I had gone back to therapy to sort out my feelings at that time and I wish I had asked him to join me.

One of my new friends brought up therapy the other week.  She has one therapist she sees by herself and one she sees with her fiance for the recommended pre-marital counseling.  She found therapists she really likes and had no problem talking openly to me about her therapists and why she likes them so much.  My friend is such a cheerful person, which most people don't normally associate with therapy, but that makes so  much sense to me.  I always felt so much calmer and organized and aware after my own sessions.

What did surprise me though is for pre-marital counseling she said they went back to the couples therapist they had seen previously.  We talked about that for a bit and it caused me to really reflect.  After the first time I dated my ex, I thought we might get back together in the future when he was more matured.  I was so blind to how immature I was in our relationship, how much I needed to change.  Which I didn't as much as I should have.  I feel bad about the whole experience.  It was my first real relationship, I had no real personal experience to compare it to, and my interactions with guys in the past had come to sting sharply at the end.  So whenever things looked bad I closed up.  I thought about seeing a therapist for myself, and I should have.  I had so much more going on, so much I unloaded on him, so much more I kept to myself.

What stung at the end of this particular relationship was how much we had fallen in love with each other.  Because you see, love can come to hurt worst of all.  Looking back, I really wish there was someone else before that who could have taken all the crap I did and let me rid myself of all my childish ways, but that's not how my story goes.

Anyway, my friend said that her couples therapist sees them each separately and then together.  I like that concept of couples therapy.  On tv or in books you see two people struggling to fix problems, one person doing all the talking, one person calling it a waste of time.  Working together to make a stronger connection before a problem arises makes more sense. I can understand her logic so well.  I think that's something I'll need to try in the future.

I need to continue to be more positive.  Maybe then the past won't hurt as much.  Maybe then the future will be better.

Labels: be positive, healthy decision making, processing, therapy