Two people talk about fear of aging and showing vulnerability to a spouse. One worries his wife Olga would feel burdened if he admitted need, but the other suggests testing that belief. Being cared for, they say, can deepen both solitude and trust.
What's interesting to me is that you seem to be starting with the assumption that I, that my major obstacle to doing that is in me. And you may be right. But the place that I go, and I would imagine most men in my situation would go, would be, well, my wife can't handle this. Her response is not going to be, oh boy, I get to be with him in his fear and vulnerability. I feel more intimate. It's, oh my God, how am I ever going to get done with my work when I got to take care of him? And is this what my future is going to be with? Why did I marry somebody older? So the place that I go and what's interesting to me is that I'm really not clear whether or not those thoughts about my wife are real or more real than whatever internal resistance I have to go into that place.
Well, what's wonderful is you're going to get a chance to find out. Because if your wife, if Olga says, oh no, you're an old man, you know, I don't really want to take care of you, or even non verbally, if you sense her feeling burdened by it rather than actually really wanting to care for you, then you'll prove your theory. But if it turns out that she actually, not only when you tell her, but in the moments of going on a trip or even just a moment where you might be feeling the fear of being old or the fear of not being as mobile as you were or having a lot of aches and pains, if you feel like she actually cares for you, then you'll know that all this time you've been imagining that the woman, quote, couldn't care for you when you were most afraid. Now, my sense of you is you've been a good boy and a self sufficient good boy all your life and that's why you've loved to be alone. And a part of you hasn't opened until now to a place where you'll let yourself be loved in the finest way by others when you're most in need. And I also think another doorway will open which is you'll be able to be frightened inside yourself consciously. And you'll be in a certain kind of inquiry or questioning, how can I really care for myself? Or how can I really find my faith or my trust? How would I do that? And that's where someone would want to have somebody from the outside who has some faith or has some trust. They would want them at their deathbed because you shared earlier that you know, you wouldn't particularly want other people there. Well, what if they would just be able to let you be afraid and they just sit in silence and beam love to you? What if they just beamed love and they weren't viewing you as a burden or as something that they wanted to be apart from?
If they allowed me to deepen my sense. This sounds paradoxical. My sense of being alone and silence. If I could be even more deeply alone and more deeply silent with them present, that would be heavenly.
Exactly.
That would be great.
