Quote from: Dena on January 09, 2017, 10:02:34 PM
A thought comes to mind. It's possible that your wife is uncomfortable viewing your feminine items while you are around but is more able to deal with it when you are not present. She may fear an unwanted reaction in front of you so and by doing it in private, she her reaction won't be visible to you. For her it could be a baby step toward accepting you. Possibly what you could do is leave your new purchase where she can inspect them before you put them away. Maybe in time she will accept this better but for now it appears she can only take this in small dosages.
We talked about this situation and how it made me feel in our counseling session today. Without any priming from me at all, my wife expressed almost verbatim what you described here Dena. Basically said it's hard enough for her to look at my things and that it'd be even harder if I were there with her because she knows she'll react badly and that her reaction will make me feel bad.
She also clarified that she doesn't rummage through my things but will just open the closet door and take a "peek". So she now understands how her activity makes me feel and I better understand why she's doing it. There's still definitely a trust issue that drives it, so we're talking more about how to get beyond that.
In the end I did tell her I'm encouraged that she's at least able to look at my things and that I hope it's a step in the direction of acceptance. The counselor challenged her to really think about what it'd be like to have me there with her when she looks at my things and consider how that might even bring us closer together in the long run. Based on the tears at that point, I'm not thinking it's going to happen anytime soon, but right now even baby steps of progress feel like huge leaps.
