Posted by Gayle

A client and I were talking about “trust issues” the other day.  We can find so many *good* reasons to abandon our ability to trust. The earliest developmental task of an infant,  according to Erik Erikson,  is determining whether or not he or she can trust his or her caretakers to meet its most basic needs.  That infant has no linguist ability… no speech… no words… no cognitive ability to understand words.  Not being able to express myself verbally or understand the verbal expression of others seems like it would cause trust issues in and of itself.  Of course that is being said by Chatty Cathy herself!  In reality, no words mean… NOLIES!!!!!

Your needs either get met or they don’t. As we develop language, we also acquire the ability to fib and be fibbed too.  It never ceases to amaze me how many of my clients are dealing with self-doubt because they have been told that one or more of their needs are stupid, irrelevant, not really needs, demanding, etc.  When doubt rears it’s ugly head, control is nearby.

I think we learn to substitute control for trust.   When we no longer believe we can trust, we begin trying to control others and/or ourselves.

con – trol (noun):  • the power to restrain something, esp. one’s own emotions or actions •  a means of limiting or regulating something or someone .

The problem is trust is at the core of our basic nature.  Without the ability to trust, we’re basically screwed.  So what happens when you are betrayed?  Surely you’re not supposed to extend trust to the other person and invite them to screw you again… are you?  I don’t have a quick answer for you here.  What I do have are a few questions for you to ponder…

• If someone betrays you, why are you so quick to blame yourself and think you are stupid or a fool?
• Do you take vengeance and revenge in your own hands and if so does it work to make you feel happier in the long run?
• What do you consider betrayal?  Is there room for imperfection in your life? -and- here is the biggie
• Can you trust yourself to survive betrayal?

I’ve been hurt, wounded, betrayed… whatever you want to call it… more times than I care to remember.  That doesn’t make me special.  It makes me human!  Sadly, betrayal is just part of the human landscape.  When it happens, I go through a period of time where I feel like it is unsurvivable.  I’ve spent hundreds of hours with clients who do not believe they can survive the betrayal-du-jour. Perhaps my most repeated phrase is “it’s not bigger than you… you will not always feel this way.”  When they look at me incredulously and ask me how they are going to survive I tell them the truth… “one breath at a time.”  Breathing is highly underrated.  If you are stilling doing it… then. you. are. surviving.

Control won’t fix a thing.  Trusting yourself will.  Breathing will keep you alive long enough to find a way to breakthrough the pain when betrayal knocks on your door yet again.

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
~Mario Andretti

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.
~David Brinkley

Related articles

• Betrayal Sucks (buddhathepig.wordpress.com)
• Book Giveaway: Surviving a Shark Attack (on Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge by Dr. Laura Schlessinger (writer.fitzhome.com)
• NYT: Adultery in marital bed often the absolute betrayal (today.msnbc.msn.com)

You marry him!

(Posted by Gayle)

There had been other loves.  There had even been another husband, but at the ripe of old age of 20 something I fell in love with a man 15 years older than me.  It didn’t seem like a big difference (to us).  But that wasn’t true for some of our friends, family members, and especially his children.

My best friend was also in love with a man 15 or more years older than her.  Our late night wine chats helped me feel normal and really didn’t raise any red flags.  My boss on the other hand thought I was crazy.  I’m not sure how much that had to do with our age difference.  The fact that Ron was hired to take a job my boss wanted might have had something do with it! Read the rest of this entry »

You can run, but sometimes you just can’t hide (and maybe you shouldn’t anyway).

(Posted by Gayle)

My brain usually contains a plethora of ideas.  I told a friend of mine recently that I don’t suffer from writer’s block.  More often I’m stuck in the land of writer’s unblock.  He thought I ought to market it as a product, but I don’t have a method to my madness.  I just have my madness!

Tonight I’ve been feeling pressure from myself to get a post written for tomorrow.  But it was Survivor night and “Grey’s” was on and I just didn’t want to multi-task.  Honestly Facebook seemed a whole lot more interesting that anything in my mind.  I’ve been wondering lately about writing a wandering essay on the use of Serendipity (the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way) as a tool in relationships – especially relationships that have the deck stacked against them from the start  – you know like us May Decemberers.  For Ron and me – 2008 has been one of our most serendipitous years ever. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes dear.  I’m lighting a match and burning my birth certificate!

(Posted by Ron)

You meet someone who is considerably older or younger than you. There is a spark between you, interest, curiosity, attraction. For these and other reasons you begin to get to know each other and before you know it your interest has turned into something much deeper and you find yourself in an age-gap relationship.

I remember the early days of the relationship between Gayle and me. Aside from the fact that there were tumultuous days at times, most were surprisingly normal. Of course there were some interesting issues because of our age differences, but for the most part the progression of our growth followed patterns similar to the growth of any new relationship.

When we decided to move in together we had problems getting used to having the other person in our space 24/7. Read the rest of this entry »

No, but 66 are quite a few!

(Posted by Ron)

• Yesterday was our 22nd anniversary.  Gayle was sick with the stomach virus I had last week and spent almost the entire day in bed.
• We’ve started early on Christmas decorating.  Some years can be quite a production in the Lambert/Luster household.  This may be one of those.  Family starts arriving on Wednesday.
• Nancy came over yesterday to help decorate.  We spent a couple of hours repairing the wiring on the new last year, pre-lit, going to save a lot of time each year, expensive Christmas tree.  Nancy did a beautiful job, by the way.
• I was going to help with decorating but got too deeply into cleaning the garage which had become so cluttered it was dangerous to walk through.  Why the garage?  It’s where the decorations are stored.  I had to find them.
• Oh, I found the laundry out there, too.  I’ve worked on it all weekend.
• Did I mention that I had my sweet little almost 17 year old Cocker/Chow mix put to sleep this weekend?
• Somehow I remembered to go to “Babys-R-Us” today for the “dog” gates we needed to protect the kitchen from marauding babies.
• It’s 10:30 on Sunday night and Gayle just asked if I had written a post for tomorrow.  I didn’t say what immediately came to mind.  Instead I just said no.  After all, I’m very, very tired.

In less than three weeks I will celebrate my 66th birthday.  Gayle, as you know, is a youngster with 15 fewer years on the clock than me.  Otherwise, why would we be writing these posts?  22 years ago I would have been almost as tired after a weekend such as this.  The thought of “writing a post” would have been just as unappetizing then as tonight.

Then I realized I do have a post.  A post about being too tired to write a post.  In the past few years I’ve begun to ponder my aging.  Tonight was one of those times.  I’m almost 66!  I’m tired!  How can you ask me to think about writing?  Then it hit me.  I could change those numbers to 44 and the words would still be much the same.

I don’t “remember” the passage of those 22 years.  I don’t “remember” getting to 66.  Most of the time those numbers don’t bother me and this is one of those times!  They really are just numbers.

I have a feeling this post is going to be used against me when I want to be 66 again.