Can you hear what I hear?

I want to thank the individual who commented last night...their thoughts led to my own, as I fell asleep wondering what I might write about today.....

Part of facilitating the groups that I work with and the clients I help is listening.  In fact, that is 50% of what I do and the other 50% is action oriented.  I do this every day...40 plus hours a week and have done so for over seven years.  I listen...I watch the body language...I empathize....I mentally step into their shoes, to help them find a solution.   So, why am I unable to do that in my intimate relationships?  This is not an insult to myself, but it is a serious question.  How is it that I can hear what my clients ask for, beyond their words, and with the ones who are closest to me, I only hear what I ask for?

I believe that I believed so hard, that I created faith, when I was surrounded by faithlessness, as a child, that I am still doing it.  I'm still living in the crisis of my youth, the war zone, where I mentally counted the days, hours and minutes, as I waited to walk through the flames of my home life into freedom at eighteen.  No one knew what I lived in and through....I decided that no one would ever look at me and see the pain, the daily violence and the terror.  I decided that I would create a vision...my vision...of what I wanted others to see, when they looked at me.  That's survival, and I'm a fighter.  In the process, I decided not to hear....at home, at school, at play, in public...nothing would get in the way of my decision and my survival and my creation.  The iron will that it took to do all the things I have accomplished and still accomplish cannot be completely or properly defined.  I was a rock...rocks don't hear...they don't need to know of fissures or cataclysmic events that will obliterate them.

Why am I so surprised every time that my most intimate relationships crumble?

If something soft, new and tender is crashed into by a rock....it breaks...it's killed...it can't survive.  One rock can stand for eternity completely alone...it doesn't need "rock friends" or a "rock lover" to survive.  The very thing that makes it possible for me to accomplish amazing feats for my clients and prove everyone wrong about what I can accomplish obliterates those I care for around me.  I decided a long time ago that I didn't "need" the people around me and for good reason.  But, if you practice a skill long enough and it becomes an integral part of who you are, when does it stop, if you no longer "need" that skill?

I don't know...I don't know the answer.  In the words of someone I care for..."I haven't a clue."  What I do know is that where I am at right now is that I only hear what I want...in everything...with everyone....but, mostly  with the ones I love.  There aren't enough people that I love who have survived crashing into me that I can afford to not answer this question....soon......