When my children were small I had a terrible fear of their temper tantrums.

On one occasion, I sat on the edge of the bed, as my two year old daughter screamed and shouted out on the landing during a tantrum in the middle of the night.

My wife, sat resolute and calm next to me on the bed.

I was saying “what are we going to do, what are we going to do” in a voice full of panic, whilst my wife said we are going to sit here and wait for it to stop.

She shouted out, at intervals, “Are you ready for a cuddle yet?”

Eventually, the shouting and screaming stopped, and the little feet came into the bedroom for the promised hug, before being put back to bed.

Worse for me, than the tantrums, was the feeding saga. My child refusing the spoon of food offered to her mouth whilst saying “not that one, that one”

In an effort to placate her, I would swap the food on the spoon for the food I assumed she had selected and would be confronted again with “not that one, that one”

I felt so stressed and helpless by it all. I found much more satisfaction in changing a dirty nappy because I could just get on with it, and feel that I had restored to my child, cleanliness and comfort.

This concept of being offered a choice, and feeling a sense of bewilderment at which path to take has been uppermost in my mind in recent weeks.

I am concerned that as I approach my mid-fifties, I want to take on and develop new skills in areas which are completely different to the ones from which I have made my living.

I could so easily decide to relax and watch TV or go to the pub, but I want to increase my knowledge and have something different to offer the world in the early years of my retirement.

I am finding it hard to make a decision, like my child was at being given choices on her plate from which she could not choose, I too find myself torn between the differing possibilities.

The inner struggle is a friend to me, it protects me from haste, and it affords me the space to think it through, accepting that the process of constant inner dialogue and discussion with friends will enable me to say at last “not that one, that one.”

My next blog will be: Time each day to be Me

William Defoe

I have been curious in my recent episodes of silence whether my understanding of sexual intimacy is a response to love or need.

In the absence of love, I suspect that at its deepest level, I have a human male craving for the needs of my libido to be met, and for it to be met regularly!

Despite my middle age, this intensity is not diminished!

In the presence of love, this deep and complex human need is fulfilled more fully as an expression of deep intimacy and closeness with another human being, in my case with my wife, in our marriage which has so far endured through good times and bad for thirty years.

There have been periods of my adult life, in which I have felt overwhelmed by my physical need for sexual fulfillment, however the cycle of my moods both within my own mental capacity and feelings of love towards my wife have not always been aligned.

Into this void space, my needs have been denied by either me or my wife in rejecting intimacy, or they have been fulfilled by hand which has maintained at least in my marriage the promise “to remain faithful until death do us part.”

Attached to this need, met in a void space has been feelings of immense hurt, feelings of rejection, loathing and guilt.

In recent weeks, having emerged from silent thoughts on these issues, I have spoken to my wife about the inner destruction I have suffered in responding to need without love.

I have asked for, and I have been granted a renewed level of intimacy and I have experienced the most fun, the most laughs and the most intimacy I have experienced in very many years, despite being a man in middle age.

I have arrived at an understanding, through my silent thoughts, that being curious about love or need and entering dialogue in the form of openness, honesty and truth have secured for me in the present, both love and need.

My next blog will be: “Not that one, that one”

William Defoe

Traffic control systems occasionally cause me to feel a little frustrated.

It’s as if the traffic lights sense that my car is approaching and deliberately change to RED to stop me from progressing further to my destination.

As I was waiting at a set of traffic lights on my way to work earlier this week, I thought about this concept of control in the traffic light system, and how it had something to teach me about managing my own propensity to push through in situations where it would have been better to wait and think.

On Sunday, I made a resolution during Mass to tell a choir member that I was fed up with his condescending tone to me which has been irritating me in recent weeks and then I planned to go and resign from the choir.

Lovely Christian thoughts surfacing in my over-wrought mind during Mass.

But something else was at work too.

It was an inner voice of control, demanding my attention to refrain from such a course of action.

I know this second voice – it is my new-found inner control traffic system and it is my friend.

Deep down, I knew that I wanted to create a scene, to let off steam, put people in their place and alleviate the tension building up inside of me.

At the end of Mass, I went to light a few candles (a normal activity – part of my routine) and I told myself to walk as the light in my head turned GREEN.

Tonight, as I write this post, I am grateful for the control I exerted over my desire to rush through my inner traffic lights.

I am grateful that the control within me turned my inner momentum to make a situation worse, momentarily RED.

The time to think averted an embarrassing episode which by now I know I would be regretting.

The issue itself is not resolved, perhaps some words will have to be said, but perhaps they will be delivered calmly, friendlier or with humour which averts a fall out and a scene.

My next blog will be: Love or Need

William Defoe

I am in the unenviable position of being able to let you know that I failed the Advanced Level Economics paper on 5 separate occasions when I was a young man.

I think I understood the concepts of the subject, but I could not translate these into coherent responses to the questions in the exam. These skills took a little longer for me to master.

A few of the terms which I picked up in my unsuccessful study of economics have a certain resonance in my life and the term “opportunity cost” is one of them.

Opportunity cost refers to a benefit that a person could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action.

In recent years, readers of my blog will know, that I have been journeying through Integral Coaching techniques to unravel the intertwined aspects of my life which were causing me to be unhappy, unsatisfied, frustrated and in difficulty in the relationships with members of my family.

At the heart of these difficulties was the truth about my gay sexuality and its apparent incompatibility with being married.

On my journey I have come to know and love self in much deeper and life fulfilling ways, but despite the huge movement forward to a deeper, calmer life, I have been struggling to live a life which does not consummate fully my sexuality.

Throughout it all, I have wanted to maintain my marriage, and although there are ways I am sure, of having my cake and eating it, to betray my marriage vows of thirty years duration seems to me to be totally incompatible with my moral compass and values.

To put it in economic terms, the opportunity cost I have given up to remain in my marriage is the fulfillment fully of my intensely gay sexual feelings.

In recent weeks, finding time anew to think over this inner dilemma, I have found it helpful to think of my choice coming at a cost.

To have made the alternative choice would not have been cost free and would I believe have been at a cost which I am not prepared to pay.

So, despite a full and active and happy sexual life within my marriage, I experience my sexuality in its fullness in my mind through the acceptance and acknowledgement and enjoyment of it without fear or loss.

My next blog will be: Traffic Lights

William Defoe

Last weekend I dropped my adult daughter off at a major regional airport for her 7 hour flight to Abu Dhabi. She was travelling alone.

When I arrived home, I connected to a flight app which enabled me to track the movement of her plane as it left the UK over The Wash and flew over continental Europe, over Turkey, and Iran and the Gulf before arriving at her destination.

Of course, she was able to let me know that she had arrived safely and had been met at the airport by her friend.

During the week we have had an array of photographs and messages indicating the highlights of her holiday.

It is strange how when we create a physical distance between us, there is something within us which draws us closer together.

In a strange way, I have felt more connected with her during this absence than I would normally have experienced in the everyday  normality of life.

Its not that I don’t love her deeply, it is just that I am not normally so conscious of it.

The experience deep within, has somehow been forced up to the surface throughout this separation and reminded me of the enormity of my love for all my children, now grown into adults and how, despite occasional difficulties which we experience in our family, my ability to experience and demonstrate my love for them will never fade.

My next blog will be: Opportunity Cost

William Defoe

Dear Dad

There has been so much that I wanted to say to you which has remained unsaid.

In recent times, I have felt within me a necessity to hold back the things about me which, if are already known to you, are unacknowledged between us.

Sometimes when I am in your company, I feel a sense of anxiety because between us there is a gulf which I have created in response to an unmet need which I have perceived.

I have been curious in recent visits to see you, to quietly traverse that gap, to focus on you rather than me. It is the only way that I can heal the unspoken rift between us.

I see in you, a man of immense courage, deep gentleness and humility and I have come to appreciate the limits to your capacity which I have previously failed to recognise or acknowledge.

I needed a father who would confront my gay sexuality at a time when your intervention would have helped me to bear its weight, but to blame you for not doing so, as I have done, is to have missed crucially the support you have offered me in ways which you were capable of.

I have come to understand that this gulf between us, of my making, is the gap between my needs and your capacity , which were limits imposed on our relationship which were not designed by you to hurt me.

Whilst driving home from work one night last week, I experienced the very essence of you, strongly in my heart.

Of course, I felt ashamed for holding you at arms length from me, in a slightly superior way,  which had hitherto failed to credit you in my mind and heart ,for all that you have done for me.

The example you have set before me during your long life, and your many virtues of honour, faithfulness in marriage, faith, modesty, strength, gentleness, patience and above all love.

My truth unspoken will not be a gulf between us of my own making in the time we have left, be it long or short, rather it will be accommodating in experiencing your life as a gift from which my own life has its origins and its onward path.

My next blog will be: Flight App

William Defoe

Last Friday, a male colleague finding that we were alone at our desks asked me about my faith in God.

His question surprised me, because although it is widely known that I am a practising Roman Catholic, I rarely discuss my faith at work.

He said to me, “Did you never have any doubts about the existence of God?”

In response, I told him about a row I had with my mother in 1978 when I was 14 years old.

In the argumentative exchange between us, I told my mother that I would not be going to Mass tomorrow – the ultimate and most daring rebuke to her imaginable – or so I thought.

The following day, being Sunday, I remember walking past a launderette on the way to Mass and suddenly remembering that I was supposed to be boycotting Mass.

I stood in the street for a few moments and I recall thinking, you’re not going to Mass for her (I wasn’t very nice in those days!) I was going for myself.

I told him of a second particular moment when, aged about forty in 2004, I drove to Mass and as I pulled up, I had this very strong feeling of faith.

I recall sitting outside my place of worship that I have attended all my life, and saying aloud in the car to myself “this is it, there is no need to struggle in matters of faith, I am a believer.”

In recent years I have had to come to terms with my gay sexuality  – this I did not disclose to my colleague – but I have to my wife and to you, my dear readers of this blog.

There was a time during my journey to fully know and accept and love self when I wanted to keep God out of it.

I didn’t lose faith, but I loosened its hold on me.

I needed to explore intimately the person who is me, and to do that I needed space.

I have come to realise that when I suffer, it is often because my mind is closed in.

My anguish and isolation and fear is manifest in my emotional state because my focus is too narrow, and that to liberate myself from those feelings I need to think expansively.

I think that my belief in God is  a sign of infinity – my infinite faith.

I told my colleague, I could flip a coin tomorrow and say “there is no God” but I choose to live in a state of mind big enough to include my infinite faith.

I think this approach, which is underpinned by my deep love for Jesus Christ and my firm belief in His Divinity, His Passion and His Resurrection, is a way of being in the world bodily, emotionally, intelligently and spirituality, and is a sign for me, of the greatest possible expansiveness that I can bring to my truth.

My next blog will be: Letter to My Dad

William Defoe

This time last year a 20 year old male friend of my daughters died in tragic circumstances.

My daughter was telling me that a school re-union which she had attended recently, her friend was sorely missed and quite a few tears were shed once more at his absence.

A favourite song of her friend was played and my daughter told me that after the tears and hugs and conversation she wanted to enjoy the song, but it was not possible because one of her friends wanted to continue crying and hugging and reminiscing.

I was struck by how each individual deals with loss and separation differently.

The song being played had provoked a response in my daughter to be quiet, to listen and to reflect, whilst for another the song had provoked more tears, more need for conversation, more despair.

Of course, each response to a vehicle for memory, on this occasion a song played at a disco, is valid and right for the individuals involved.

The difficulty arises when there is a clash of approach to handling our grief and our memories and our respect and love for those whom we have loved and lost.

My daughter, put her arms around her friend and listened more to what she had to say. In that moment, she said, although I wanted to enjoy the song and be still, her need was greater for comfort and support.

I haven’t always being able to defer my own needs for those of another, but this empathy and groundedness displayed by my daughter towards her friend reminded me of what a beautiful gift it must be, to be able to respond from that place.

My next blog will be: Infinite Faith

William Defoe

I am a member of a church choir.

Sometimes when I am singing a hymn, my eye will be drawn to the hymns which are located before and after the hymn which we are currently singing.

It seems strange to me to see a Christmas Hymn next to a Lenten Hymn or an Easter Hymn.

Wouldn’t it be better, I muse, if the hymns were placed in seasonal order and this way my hymn book would not look so randomly organised as to make it appear out of order.

Of course, I then remember that my hymn book is ordered in the alphabetic sequence of the first line of each hymn.

There is within it, an inherent logic and an organised approach to the order in which the hymns are prioritised in the hymn book.

This craving for order in my life, at times, is illustrated well in the fact that sometimes what seems out of order and following a path of no apparent logic, can be ordered in our minds if we pay attention and give enough thought to the pattern of our lives.

The logic for me in craving an organised life, is that the apparently competing elements of my life, which demand my time and attention, need to be given a focus in their turn to allow them to have a context which is balanced and reasonable.

My next blog will be: She Wanted To Enjoy The Song

William Defoe