So last night was one of weirdest of my life. When I told J yesterday afternoon that we needed to talk after G went to bed, he gave me the “The Look” that says “You’re Being a Drama Queen,” which immediately set me off. So easy for him to just chalk all this up to me not liking his mom. So hard to realize it’s much more than that.

I was quiet all night. I wanted to make sure that when I said what I had to say, I said it well so it could be heard. I had a hard time finding the right angle to approach it. We sat in here across from each other for hours, literally, while he folded clothes and I tried to figure out how to start without seeming dramatic.

Finally, he started talking about G and how he worries he’s pushing her away, on and on. I really thought that while he probably did have some worries about this, he was stalling and we both knew it. When I pointed this out — that I thought he had some legitimate concerns about G, but that I thought he was stalling, he got angry and accused me of not liking his mother.

While that is true — and I admitted it — it is also NOT the issue. In the face of his anger and defensiveness, I had a hard time getting my bearings and saying what I wanted to say. Then he said it was about income. Well, sort of. But not really. Then it was about me being jealous of his time. Nope. As I write this, I realize he was working to put me on the defensive, consciously or subconsciously. For a time, it worked.

Then we went to bed and I got back in touch with the place — the black heart. Laying there on my back, I spoke to him in the darkness, “When J died, our Tower crumbled. The Tower of our relationship, the Tower of me and the Tower of you. I have started to clear the rubble and move on. You have not. You don’t know who you are. Before J died, her needs defined you. If you’re not careful, your mother’s needs will define you. This is what I fear. And I am done defining you. I’ve done it for most of our relationship and I cannot do it anymore.”

I went on to tell him that unless I see him working on this — the job and the self-defining — I’m leaving after the holidays. A separation. And I think he knows I mean it.

He didn’t understand at first, tried to go back to the “you hate my mom” thing, so I explained it again. He got it. And he was really angry. Angry because I was right, but really angry. He admitted it.

When I turned to him, I felt the energy of his anger enter into my third eye chakra and travel straight down to my root. I started to be aroused and it occurred to me that maybe I could help him release the energy. Last night, I really felt like I was helping him channel the energy into something useful. This morning, I’m not so sure I wasn’t just turned on and trying to get laid.

Last night I felt led by something other than my rational mind. I trusted that. I wanted to show that anger can be energizing, that fire can transform. More than that, I wanted to be a conduit for it. Selfishly, not altruisticly. And I made it clear. So we had sex and it was rough. And I liked it. I felt completely energized and alive, recharged. A small part of my brain protested, worried that J might misinterpet the sex, worried that I was sick and weird for wanting it. The larger part was simply satisified.

J, on the other hand, did misinterpret something, but not what I feared, which was that he would think it somehow erased everything I had said. No… he looked down at me at one point and thought I might be having a flashback to being raped, which bothered him (though not enough to stop).

At any rate, we talked about it afterwards, and I showed him a technique for taking energy like anger and moving it through your body to make it useful.

This morning feels a little strange. The decision is still there, between us. He is making arrangements to meet with therapists and finding someone to write up his resume and then will be going out to check on apps. I don’t know what is going to happen. Yesterday I felt pretty sure that things were coming to an end. Today I don’t feel sure. Is it hope? Is it delusion? Or has something changed in the path? I just don’t know.