Update on an update

Aw Write it all down and keep it in a journal. One day down the road when the kids are screaming and he's doing whatever and you're at your wits end you can pull it out and read it to remember what makes your relantionship so special.

submissivegirl83;bt27291 said:

Aw Write it all down and keep it in a journal. One day down the road when the kids are screaming and he's doing whatever and you're at your wits end you can pull it out and read it to remember what makes your relantionship so special.

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LOL! That's actually the reason why we went to the weekend couples workshop! John Gottman is a psychologist who has amassed more data and research on relationship longevity than any other researcher in the field, and his own research has found that the period of time after the first child is born is a very stressful and "dangerous" period for couples, so we decided to attend one of the Gottman Institute workshops to learn techniques to help us get through the tough times and maintain the strength of our relationship before we have all the predictable problems that couples have after they have children. We thought that focusing on making our bond as strong as possible right now is the best thing to do for our happiness now and in the future.

Keeping my journaling public is part of my self-manipulation technique to make sure that I write.

My entire life I've tried to maintain private journals. The only things I ever wrote in them were the things I never wanted to tell anyone else, like venting when I was angry, or sharing secrets with myself, but I never seemed to stray from those themes of "privacy." As a result, those journals are missing all the parts of my life that aren't secretive, the parts I didn't need to vent about.

I kept a public blog for years and I was a faithful contributor to it, writing posts several times a week, even though I had very few readers. For some reason, knowing that someone might be interested made me feel obligated enough that I regularly wrote non-venting/non-secretive posts in it that I thought might entertain someone else! And I'm so glad that I did. The time period that I had a public blog is the time period when I recorded the most memories that I genuinely wanted to keep. While it's no longer online, I cherish those entries.

When I took it down, I promised myself that I would continue writing, but I didn't even though I felt guilty about not writing and I knew how much I cherished the posts I had already written and put online. I just wasn't motivated enough to do it, and now I regret it. There are so many things I wish I had written about.

So I've learned that about myself. I like recording my thoughts because years from now I will want to look back and read them, but I know that I don't actually write unless I feel obligated to maintain some sort of regularity for the sake of others, so that's what I'm doing. :smile: