Express Yourself....

We have the luxury of having "family" marry us. My fiance's, sister-in-law's, father (are you still following?) is going to be marrying us. He is a wonderful man and I can't wait to meet with him (soon) to go over our ceremony and see what kind of input he has. I also can't wait to start our "marriage classes" with him. Unlike my fiance, I'm looking forward to these classes. I want to learn how to have the best marriage possible. I know the basics of marriage, love and family, but I have so many other unanswered questions. My parents are divorced, my fiance is divorced and I've seen a lot of divorce happen around me and I DON'T WANT TO BECOME A STATISTIC......

I think at this point in our relationship we have a few things that we need to work on during these marriage classes....Actually, probably 2 major things. The first being, we need to learn how to fight. Yes, I do believe there is a proper way and a wrong way to fight. I feel that when we fight I tend to say what needs to be said, I listen to what he has to say, and then I just need some time to take it all in and then I'm wiling to offer my apologies (when needed) or to accept his apologies (when needed). I'm a pretty calm fighter as long as I can have that quiet time afterwards to replay what just happened and come to a conclusion on how to make it better and make sure we resolve the situation in the best way possible. I don't like to fight over the same topic more than once. If we are continually fighting over the same topic then it's obvious that our solution hasn't worked. We need to try harder at finding that middle ground in order to make both of us happy. My fiance, on the other hand, is a terrible fighter. He tends to start arguing about one topic and then decides it's the perfect time to throw in a dozen other issues all at once. So what started as one little disagreement can quickly turn into an all out brawl between us. He also tends to speak before thinking. His mentality is that he wants me to be more hurt or more angry then he is, so he tends to say very hurtful things (whether he means them or not) in the heat of the moment. He always tries to take them back or apologize, but by then the damage has been done and those words he has said to me tend to stay with me for a very long time. This, in turn, causes us more issues because now I'm not only angry but I am so terribly hurt....and as we all know, sometimes the emotional damage caused by someone is the worst kind.

The second issue I hope to touch on in our classes is S-E-X......I will take full blame for this issue. I'm not a very intimate person. My family knows this, my friends know this, but trying to get my fiance to understand this is a whole other story. To be honest, I would like to be more intimate with the one I love, but I fall to pieces whenever the situation arises. I have had some horrible, horrible relationships in my past (which I won't get into) and I think that I have learned to associate sex with these horrible memories I have. I have convinced myself that if someone truly loves me, they should love me for the mental part of me not the physical. And even typing this now it sounds silly to me, but I don't know how to re-train my brain to think otherwise. I've lost a lot of weight recently and my fiance is head over heels with the "new me". He wants to constantly touch me or try to love on me and it really almost makes me ill. If I know that we are going to "get intimate" I get almost physically ill. My stomach ties itself into knots and it takes everything I have to not burst out into tears. It's a horrible feeling and it makes my fiance feel so inadequate. It's not something I choose to have happen, but I don't know how to make it better. I love my fiance with everything I have...I've just learned over the years that this is how I'm supposed to feel. It has been embedded into my brain that sex=horrible things!!! Is this how my life is going to be?..........I want to change.....I NEED to change! Our future together as husband and wife is dependant upon this change.........

***I apologize if this post was TMI...but I needed to get it off my chest