He said he had not realized he let it stand in the moment. I said that may be true but the goal is for the accurate version to be his first instinct, not something he has to consciously remember to do. He said he was working on it. I said I know, and I do know, and I also need to be able to say when I have noticed the working on it is not fully there yet.
We are not going to resolve this in one conversation. We are going to resolve it through accumulated behavior over time, and there are going to be moments like the October dinner where the behavior is not yet what it needs to be, and I am going to notice those moments, and that noticing is something Daniel is going to have to receive without defensiveness.
He is getting better at receiving it without defensiveness. He is not all the way there.
Dr. Watts says this is normal and that the timeline for this kind of behavioral change is measured in years rather than months. This is not the timeline I would have chosen but it is the realistic one and I am trying to orient to it correctly.
The other thing that is unresolved: I have not fully decided whether the eighteen months is something I have processed or something I have accepted without processing. There is a difference. Accepted-without-processing has a way of surfacing later, in unexpected moments, and I do not want to be surprised by it. I have been in conversation about this with Dr. Watts independently — I have done two individual sessions in addition to the joint ones — and her read is that I am doing the processing but that it takes longer than the linear narrative of events suggests.