Projection

Last night I went with my boyfriend to some family friends of his. We sat around a table and three children under five were making a lot of noise. It was deafening. Besides a frustrated feeling on my own part of the increasing volume, I started feeling the familiar kicks of the little thing in me. He was banging away in there and I thought, oh, the noise must be too much for him also!

On the way home in the car I had a moment of talking to the little thing, i.e., "Don't worry honey the noise is gone now. That was too much for you hey?" To which my boyfriend responded, don't project! I defended myself, no, no, he really started kicking when the noise of the kids started. My boyfriend then said to me that I had no idea why the baby was kicking, or why it was different to him kicking like normal (as he always does when I am sitting), and we shouldn't go down the path projecting our own feelings (i.e, the noise was too loud for me), onto our child. I nodded in agreement. And then internally registered that comment on a deeper level. He was right. It is a slippery slope. I want this child to be unencumbered by my "stuff".

Wise boyfriend.