i have read these posts and would like to share a poem with you..and maybe try reading allies in healing by laura davies....go through it with your partners together and discuss the topics hope it helps even if only a little..



LISTEN

When I ask you to listen to me
And you start giving advice
You have not done what I asked

When I ask you to listen to me
And you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way
You are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
And you feel you have to do something to solve my problem,
You have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I asked was that you listen.
Not talk or do
Just hear me.

Advice is cheap:
10 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself;
I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but I am not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and weakness.

But, when you accept as a simple fact that id feel what I feel,
No matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and can get about the business of understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling.

And when that is clear,
the answers are obvious and I don not need advice