Full Relationship

Yuko,

I saw my therapist today. I saw (let's call her here as) Judy two weeks after your death for the first time, right in the middle of my crisis, and keep seeing her once a month, so this is our fourth meeting. 

I said I am doing fine to Judy today.

I am not saying I got over with the mourning process. I am still working on my pain and saddness. But I am fine in a sense to keep my life going. I am doing fine as a father of three kids, as a professor for my students, as a therapist for my clients. I am also caking care of myself catching up my mourning work, I guess. I am not in a hurry as I used to be. I just take time as a long term commitment. As a matter of fact, I have made appointments with Judy until August. 

I am not in a crisis any more, nor am I depressed. But it is very nice to have someone who take two hours of time just for me to explore my feeling. I did not have to cry any more today. Instead, I explored my feeling and also foresee my future in my personal relationships and my personal career.

 Judy asked me a good question; which part of my relationship with you, Yuko, I liked most. By answering her question, I could deeply reflect on our 21 years of relationship. I made two points. One is our physical and sexual relationship. It used to be very active to each other and very fulfilling for the first seven years, I would say. But it was not very active any more in the last ten years or so especially after you became a mother. But in a sense we did not have to have that kind of physical intimacy, because our relationship was stable enough to challenge excitement.

Another thing I liked most with you, Yuko, was our conversation when we have the arguments. We verbally fought a lot, didn’t we? We did not particularly yell or shout, but used every means of words to persuade or reason to each other. We may hurt each other and were in bitter feelings most of the time. I remember most frequent theme of our arguments was our time management, or more precisely MY time management. I was trying to be a nice and present father/husband in the family, but in fact I spent less time than you would want me, or I would want myself to be at home. Another subject may be your worries on your new job or your relationship difficulties. Those were the times I recall that you and I are very honest and straight forward to each other and true to be with our deep feelings. We may argue our big gap and difference of our attitudes, values, etc. and we may fight for one or two hours. But at the end of time, I believe we could manage some kind of agreement each time. I felt very satisfying and emotionally close to you, Yuko, after we became straightforward to each other and said everything we want to say.

 I love to see you becoming more positive and assertive in the 21 years of our relationship. I think you were not very confident in the beginning. I was 30 and you were 23 when we first married. I could easily win our game most of the time during the first few years of our marriage. You were following your bright brother, but never could win. You were always second best that you fail the 東大 exam, and the best bank you wanted to get in for recruit. You had difficult relationship with your mom, and you could never become independent from her.

But as I spend more time with you, I could see you changing over time. You became a good mother of three children. You manage two demanding works beautifully; one at home and the other at work. You also manage to achieve to be an interpreter which you always wanted to be.

I never wanted you to be a housewife. I know many of my friends are chauvinistic husbands who want to be a boss of their servant wives. I may feel nice at the beginning, but I know it would be boring and may stat having affair. I want to be equal footing with you, Yuko, so that we can share freely and equally everything we have. I was wining most of the time in early days when we were young, but you became very much more assertive and confident enough to win the game, say, in the last 5 years or so. It is devastating for me to lose our fight, but at the same time I felt so much satisfying to see you become more matured.

 This is basically what I said to Judy today.

Do you know what she said about my description of our relationship?

She said among lots of people that she had seen, it was rare to have such FULL RELATIONSHIP to each other as a couple. I think she was right that our relationship was so satisfying at least to my part. In this sense, I do not have any left-overs with you, Yuko.

西の魔女に会ってきたよ。今は、もうだいぶ落ち着いたんだけど、ゆっくり自分の話を聴いてくれる専門家がいるって、とても安心するんだよね。優子と僕との関係をしゃべっているうちに、ああ、そうだったのかと、ふと目からうろこが落ちたりして...