Standing Still

I have made the decision to leave my marriage. 

 

But I stand still with fear.

 

Fear that I will be alone forever.  But I ask myself, is it so bad being alone?  Given I have really been alone and lonely for so many years in a marriage, being alone and free has got to be better.

 

There is the fear for the children.  How will they cope?  Of course it will be up to the mature adults to be able to explain to them what is happening and to show respect for eachother so the children do not see hatred.  There is no hatred, there is only frustration and stagnation – but friendship still remains and I can only keep a grasp on that and know that everything will be okay.

 

There is fear of the gossip and the finger pointing by others and the speculation and the gaping mouths at hearing the news.  “Why, you had the white picket fence life.”  Yeah, and it was all fantasy.  You never really know what is going on behind closed doors or behind toothy smiles and hearty laughter.  You never ever really know.

 

There is fear of making a mistake.  But….but…. how can it be a mistake when the alternative, staying, hurts so much?  The love is gone.  Can it ever come back?  Was it ever really there?

 

There is the fear of what will happen to him without me.  How will he cope?  Will he cope? 

 

Someone commented a while back on one of my postings that it takes two to tango.  Honestly, I can say that I have put everything into trying to have a happy marriage.  I have been supportive in the toughest of times, and yes I have been a bitch and demanding at times too.  My feelings I have always shared, and spoken about my unhappiness and my needs – that were never fulfilled.  I have listened to his needs and tried to fulfill them to the best of my ability.  My anxieties and fears were never allowed to be spoken, I never had a shoulder in my marriage.  Am I rationalizing?  Walk in my shoes for a week and then answer that question.

 

The numbness has over taken me.  The sorrow wells up inside me at inappropriate times.  I am spent.  I have nothing left to give, and frankly I don’t want to give anymore.  Does that sound selfish?  Walk a week in my shoes and then answer that question.

 

I am angry – angry at myself  for making stupid decisions based on what I thought others wanted.  For spending all these years so unhappy.  I am angry that I have for so many years tried to make something work for everyone else while keeping myself broken.

 

I want to be fixed and I am the only one who can do the fixing.

 

I have made the decision to leave my marriage.  I’m half way there.  But I stand still with fear.

 

Essence of a Relationship

It happens from time to time, sometimes far more often than I would like. I think about and I miss a person that I once referred to as “The most important person in my life”.
This particular woman was either the FIRST woman I ever truly loved or the ONLY woman that I ever truly loved. I believe both are true.
Typically when there is a parting in ways in a relationship there is very little thought (on my part) about the past. Depending on the circumstances I don’t harbour a grudge nor do I pine for “lost love”. The end is the end, simply put.

Maybe it was because of the intensity of emotion in this particular relationship that won’t let me forget. Maybe it was because in most cases my relationships ended on a sour note or just faded away, whereas this one was halted abruptly and without warning.
I have never found anyone that has had any compassion for my situation, during or after this particular relationship as it was an affair.

I think the reason that I keep thinking back is because I never felt that I gave this woman a real explanation as to why I ended it quickly and without warning.
I had an opportunity for growth somewhere else and it took me until that point to finally accept that the potential life that I imagined her and me sharing was in fact just a dream. She once referred to our time together as being the “essence” of a real relationship. Nothing could be truer. That never stops me from wondering on occasion just what the “real” version might have been like.

I feel a great deal of emotional response to a “poignant” romantic situation. If “love” causes me to feel so much joy that it hurts, it will leave a greater mark, a far more lasting impression than a “balanced” love. To me, my relationship with this woman was the epitome of the story of Romeo & Juliet. We were star-crossed lovers, our relationship doomed from the start, yet perpetuated by the fact that the “essence” of our relationship was undeniably pleasurable.

I consider myself to be an intelligent individual and I have “my head on my shoulders” when it comes to most things. Statements like, “She took my breath away” are simply an author’s means of depicting emotion and not something that “really” happens, yet with this woman I think I felt every author’s “impression” of love in real-time.
In the beginning it was two people looking for a friend in the other but over time it became much more. On top of the thrill of being in her presence there was always the excitement of what the future might bring. We used to walk in the park and dream of the day when we would be old and grey, sitting on a park bench, feeding the squirrels and still being very much in love.

When I look at the two of us realistically as opposed to romantically there is a much colder reality. I had met a woman who was only living under the same roof as her husband, they had no relationship, nor had they for 5 years previous to our meeting. She said they were staying together because her husband was sick and needed someone to take care of him. As time went on, her tolerance of his abuse started to decline and she was talking about moving out on her own. I was really excited about her doing this for her own peace of mind as well as this being an opportunity for “us” to have greater freedom to grow our relationship.

It never happened. She told me that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to “make ends meet” and didn’t want to be in a situation where she would lack the luxuries that she was accustomed to. Instead they would sell their house, pay off any debts and put themselves in a far more “liquid” situation where future decisions could be made without having any “baggage”.

It turns out they bought another house together, then an investment property, then a new car and finally they went away for a trip to Bali for her husband’s 50th birthday. It does take me a while at times to realize the “truth” of things and in this case it took me far too long. When I “woke up” I realized that our “relationship”, this relationship that was by far the most emotionally intense that I had ever experienced was just like she had said, an “essence”.
I don’t blame her for her choices. I can understand her rationale, there was far more at stake from her side than just a simple decision. She was used to living in a house of cards where her decisions were based on the “financial” better good of all involved. She was used to the potential fall-out from her family should she step out of line when it came to life choices, there was a huge cultural difference between the two of us. She once told me that money was on the same level in the hierarchy of needs as food and water. According to the graph that I looked at, love doesn’t even make the same grade.

I was not in a position to offer her any financial stability nor in any way would I meet her family’s expectations. In the movies the actors would throw caution to the wind and follow their hearts. In her more down-to-earth thinking she chose to remain within her comfort zone, regardless of how (emotionally) uncomfortable it made her feel. The only thing that I could offer her was the one that I had given her all along…love. In the big picture, what is love? An essence. It doesn’t pay the bills.
So I found myself in a very sad situation. I was in love with a woman, one that I knew loved me as well, but she would not take a major risk for that love. I had no choice but to look elsewhere or remain in a situation where I always have to be a third.

It happened rather suddenly that I had an opportunity to form a relationship with another woman whose hierarchy of needs was more closely matched to my own. Where I would have loved to maintain my friendship with the first woman it was impossible. Impossible because it would be unfair to the woman that I am with, impossible as my current partner is VERY jealous and would never accept that I was “just friends” with a former lover and impossible because I never stopped loving the one I was no longer with. ( I don’t think I could handle the emotional strain)

I miss her. I miss our friendship. I really wish that there was a way that I could still have a connection with her, one that didn’t cause any harm to others in our lives but I can’t see it. She said once that some people “search their whole life for what we share” in our bond, our friendship, our love, yet never find it. I would like to add that some people that have experienced what we shared spend the rest of their lives fondly remembering that friendship.
So here I am almost two years later, my current relationship is good (great even) yet unlike any other past “love” this particular woman haunts me. I deliberately do not think of her but at times her “essence” invades my thoughts and I let my mind wander back…to a time when my dreams were unfettered and real. To a park, walking hand in hand with the woman that I so loved, everything was right with the world and nothing could stop us, nothing could break our bond or diminish our love….except reality itself.

Share your thoughts: Have you ever fallen in love with, had a relationship with someone that you couldn’t keep it going with regadless of how much you wished you could?

12 reasons I dumped you

You are a nice girl with a good heart, but I honestly couldn’t stand being your boyfriend anymore. You will probably never read this, but I think you deserve an explanation. Here are the REAL reasons I broke up with you last month:

1. I don’t need to be on your daily download list. You would think the hourly calls to your mom and sister would give you your fix. Please understand, guys just don’t do this. I really don’t need to hear about your sister’s dental exam. I have no vested interest in your mom’s car troubles. Your office politics are important, yes, but I think an update once per quarter would be enough. And the stories about the guys your gay roommate brings back to your place kind of turn my stomach.

2. At age 31, you have to have some ambition in life, beyond paying off your parking tickets. Sleeping in until the moment you leave for work, then getting drunk every night the moment you leave work, are not the best ways to lay the foundation for your existence as a human being on this earth.

3. Your apartment is disgusting. I hate to be blunt, but I gave up the “college dorm” scene when I left my college dorm. One bathroom for a house full of roommates and their fuck buddies is more of a gamble than I want to face when I wake up in the morning and have the racehorse urge. And the fact that you still live with your college roommates a decade later pretty much says it all. Get your own pad, or share with one cool person, but at the least, hire a maid once a year. Normal people beyond the age of 21 shouldn’t live like poverty students in an unaccredited community college.

4. Smokers smell bad. It gets in your hair, on your clothes, and fouls your breath. And what are you doing smoking? Even Brad Pitt finally gave it up and admitted it isn’t cool. Come on, you’re not driving a tractor in West Virginia. And since you love to complain about how old you are looking, please realize that the smoking is not doing your complexion any favours.

5. You have a body hair problem. Let’s discuss:

A) First of all, you gotta do something about that stubble on your chin. Please, you can’t claim that you haven’t noticed it. As self-absorbed as you are, you notice microscopic flaws that a trained forensic detective would never detect. There’s waxing, electrolysis, and other ways to get rid of that stuff. If you saved the money you waste on butts and parking tickets, it would pay for itself.

B) Second, the stubble on your legs is like the industrial sandpaper we used to use on the construction crew to remove cement. YES, I do notice it when you try to cuddle just as I’m falling asleep and your barbed wire calves slice open my skin. Maybe it’s not that “I don’t like to cuddle”, but possibly that “I detest pain”?

6. Your friends suck. Granted, they’re your friends and it’s wonderful that you have some, but the drunken bitch you made me sit next to who couldn’t shut up and had nothing positive to say was beyond the indulgence meter. The other one can’t stand the fact that I blew off her on-line advances and hence bad mouths me behind my back all the time. Face it, she flirted with me and never told you; what kind of friend is that?

7. My friends never liked you. I know this is not in itself a justification for dumping someone, but when not ONE of your friends has anything positive to say about your girlfriend, it kind of sends a nice, big, objective, third-party signal. . . .

8. Your almost getting arrested the night I introduced you to my mother did not help your cause. Look, parking tickets aside, you simply have to register your car. And if the three of us are in your car driving to my mom’s birthday dinner, getting us pulled over because a cop notices you haven’t bothered to register your car is just bad potential mother-in-law karma. Believe me, as an only child, and at my advanced age, my mom’s desire for grandchildren has lowered her standards to the point where any breathing, non-crack-whore potential mate will do. This is the first time she has actually questioned my judgment about a girl I am dating.

9. You gotta look sexy, once in a while. Now, I’m not into high maintenance women. But wearing jeans EVERY day just gets a little boring, eventually. I still refuse to believe that every woman doesn’t own at least one skirt. Come on, guys need to see some leg to get the old juices flowing once in a while, even if it is covered in stubble. A dress, skirt, shorts – anything that shows a little skin will do!

10. Your you-know-what is disgusting. Whatever that strange birth control device was that you insisted on using — which caused chronic bleeding and I kept hitting every time we knocked boots — was just not worth it. I was happy to switch to condoms. And please, there’s a reason they refer to trim as “trim”. It really is sexy to trim it. Letting it grow wild, especially with all the dried blood caught up in it, was too much. That’s why I stopped making house calls.

11. If you have what looks like herpes sores, then get them checked out. Even if you claim they are cold sores. Especially when I ask you to. And stop kissing you. Don’t you even care about your health, and whom you might infect?

12. Constantly denigrating the thing I care most about in life – literature – is not the best way to kindle my feelings toward you. What is it with you unevolved women, you always think it’s about you? I love great literature, and you don’t, so please don’t take it personally. This is called insecurity. What you are doing is projecting. You project your insecurity by attacking me. This is not good. This is not what loving, mature people do.

13. (A Free, Bonus Reason) Finally, and this is the big one – believe it or not – but you were just TOO into me. You took all of the challenge out if it. Calling me every day, wanting to be with me every night, telling me too soon how great I am. This is not healthy. This is an inversion of the atavistic male/female dynamic. You left nothing left for me to do. No chasing, no winning, no challenge. Please, and take this as sincere advice, you gotta leave something for the guy to do. If the battle is won, all he can do is look for the next battle. . . .

Heartbreak

Romantic love is a fall-in, crawl out proposition. When you are bonding with that special someone, everything is wonderfully effortless; when the relationship hits the skids getting through an ordinary day seems like climbing Mt Everest without oxygen. Discouragement, guilt.

If we learn nothing from heartbreak we will keep repeating the same old painful subject matter in one relationship after another. If you refuse to love you will guarantee isolation and pain rather than preventing them.

You must master the material, absorbing the crucial lessons about your true self, your true needs and the nature of true love. Investing full trust and openness.