New therapist - old hurts

So. I am pushing my wife away again as I feel that she is needing me. She needs me to take her to visit her friends. She needs me to go walking with her. She needs me if she wants to go into town. She needs me if she wants to go and see her family.

And I do all of that.

Then, she tells me that I am not emotionally connected. That we are not doing anything together. I hear this as "she wants more". And I tailspin. She then tells me that I am not doing x & y. or this and that. And my insides go into meltdown.

And yet I know she is soft. She is not my parents. And yet I react to her as if she were. I need to escape. I am with her all day - or at least it feels that way.

So anyway - I can't do this on my own, nor can I do it with my wife, so I've started to see a new therapist - Valerie. I saw her for the first time yesterday - and she is very different to my last therapist. She wasn't on some kind of power game, was down to earth, put me at my ease.. completely unlike my last therapist - which is good. I see her again next week.

I basically feel like I just want to cry. And cry. And yet I find it so difficult. There's been a couple of leaked tears over the last couple of days, but I still can't go to that place. My insides are boiling, reverberating, twisting, alive, telling me all is not well.

When the therapist mentioned in passing that she has done a lot of work with victims of abuse within the family setting I wanted to cry there and then. And yet I don't really believe I was abused - yet clearly I was.

And so, here I am, wanting to escape from my wife whilst not wanting to be rejected by her. I know I love her, and I know that she wants the best for me. And yet I want to escape, dread the sense of duty I still feel, the entrapment that she can't do anything without me.

What do I do? For I am hurting her by being with her, and hurting her when I pull away. When I am with her I hurt myself, and I feel safer when I am away.

Even just saying any of this to her is a no-no. I realise that I learnt very early on to that I was safe provided I stayed within a safety zone defined and dictated by my dad. If I stepped out of that for any reason it meant catastrophe. So I didn't, ever. Too dangerous.

My wife has now moved away from me, as she has done her therapy - and her zone is not longer aligned to mine. And as a result relating to her is dangerous. She wants me to do things which are not within my safety zone, such as.. relate at an emotional level.

Crap and bollocks.