Oct 16
This is where I put the disclaimer: If you will be hurt dealing with my HONEST to goodness TRUE feelings, see the disclaimer. If you know me in real life, and will feel that this should be fodder for a lengthy conversation, please either stop reading now and find something more interesting to do, or read at your own risk.
Thank you, you may proceed
Recently I have felt the need to make some changes in my life, to wipe some of the cobwebs off the dreams that I had and to start to be more true to myself. One of the things that I was compelled to do was to leave a relationship that I had felt was holding me back and that was progressing against my wishes.
Wow, that sounds sad.
For about 8 months, maybe a little longer, I have realized that my heart wasn’t in this relationship, and yet I fought against it because the guy was SO sure that we were perfect for each other. Every time I brought up a serious reason why I wanted to slow down, why I didn’t think this would work out, he would counter me with reasons why we were sooo good for each other. But in the end it doesn’t really matter if I don’t love him, and that was the one component that was missing. He could wax poetic about all the love in the world, he could put me on a pedestal… or he could hurl insults and jibes regarding what I was essentially LACKING, accuse me of being materialistic, or weigh me down with the responsibility of his happiness, either way the lack was still there.
And so I have been trying, delicately, to separate myself from this situation. I admit that I should have just stated, without remorse, that I didn’t want to see him anymore. But i have a hard time doing that without a concrete REASON behind it.
And therein lies the rub. There wasn’t one single reason for wanting to cut my losses. It just wasn’t “there”. I realized that this was just a rebound relationship, I had started a friendship with this man as a means to seek a way out of a very unhappy marriage. In essence it was a temporary escape that I never really fully enjoyed.
So I felt trapped with this, the more I writhed and thrashed, internally berating myself for staying in something I didn’t feel good about and leading on someone else’s heart, the more he struggled to keep me “his”.
You see, I started dating this man barely a month after I left my husband… and even then I knew that the jump from supportive friend to relationship was wrong. I KNEW it. There was no joy in me when we did things together, I just felt shame and misery with the whole situation. But he went on and on about how much he loved me and how great things would be now that I was “free”.
Only I wasn’t “free”, not really… because I had jumped from being married to being someone’s “girlfriend” before i was ready and never got to experience what it was like to be my own person, make MY choices and not be beholden to the whims and whimsies of being with a man. Just like I had from the time I was 14, I was someone’s SOMETHING — girlfriend, fiance, girlfriend, fiance, wife, girlfriend — I had had no time to discover who I was without a goddamned MAN in my life. And it wasn’t until 5 months after I had left my husband that I had realized this… and it was already feeling like it was too late because he was making freaking PLANS for our lives together and merging our children and meeting families, already introducing me to his family as his “girlfriend” and thinking about where we’d live!!!
And I tried to distance myself from him, because after all I wasn’t married or engaged to him and I never would be (since he is a anti-formal-marriage)… but I wasn’t very good at doing that. I didn’t want to hurt him… and I felt so freaking RESPONSIBLE for his happiness since I owed him so much for helping me when i needed it the most. He was (is) a good person, treated me nicely, and should have been what I should have been looking for — but he just wasn’t.
It’s been hard, because I want to be able to say “I didn’t like him because I found suchandsuch an issue/trait/habit/unforgivable sin I couldn’t abide”… but in reality it just became obvious to me that I liked him, but I didn’t LOVE him. I couldn’t see myself being with him forever as a family. I could see being his friend, for him to be in my life, for us to provide friendship and support to one another, but that I did not want to live with him, I did not want to merge families, I did not want more than just hanging out and coffee. And that was a hard realization.
It seems to have been harder for him than me. Instead of him realizing that i wasnt interested, he tried to fix the things that I was pointing out. The issues that I felt were symptoms of unhappiness with the relationship, he insisted were things that could be fixed to “perfect things”. He felt that I was what he wanted in his life, that I had made his life better, and I don’t know if he could even concieve of the fact that I might not see things the exact same way; he thought that we were good together and how could he see that if it weren’t so?
But it weren’t so. I’m proof of that.
And finally it came to a head. I could no longer deal with the pressure I felt to try and grow feelings for someone who so obviously had feelings for me. It just wasn’t possible for me, and I should have seen that trying to continue on a path like that would just lead to anger, resentment and more escapist behavior. I wanted to break that pattern, I’ve lived it and it isn’t fun.
So I finally bit the bullet and stated (and have continued to state) that I do not see ANY future for an “us” with him. I appreciate his feelings, but I can’t honour them the way that he needs, and that has been and will always be an issue.
Yes, his family likes me. But that’s not enough.
Yes, my children like him. But that’s not enough.
Yes, my family liked him. But that’s not enough.
True, my friends saw me struggling because I felt I had made a mistake with this relationship. That doesn’t make the failure of the relationship the fault of my friends. They only provided me with the ability to balance between what I saw and felt, and what he wanted me to believe. The feelings, and ultimately the choice to quit, were mine alone.
Yes, we have similar backgrounds in life. But that is not enough.
Yes, we have some interests in common. But that is not enough.
The truth, as painful as it is to see, is that the essential feelings were not there for me. There was curiosity, definately. There was friendship. There was lust. There was fear of the unknown, fear of being alone, fear of losing friends. There was shame. There was humiliation. There was depression. There was a great deal of complicated feelings left over from the tattered failure of my marriage and the spectacular pressure of trying to become who I really was. And as horrible as it is to admit, I do not think that romantic love was involved in the mix, no matter how much I tried to create it.
It had nothing to do with trust. It had to do with love.
It had nothing to do with lust and desire. It had to do with LOVE.
It had nothing to do with material wealth. It had to do with LOVE.
It had nothing to do with wanting to be abused. It had to do with LOVE.
It had nothing to do with friends or family or kids or homes. IT. HAD. TO. DO. WITH. LOVE.
It wasn’t, like he stated, that we went from the firey passions of lustful love to the dull ember of comfortable love. It might have been for him, but it wasn’t for me. The fire burned out to reveal that I’d have been much happier just friends without the physical entanglements. I found that there were so many things that were core to him that just made me annoyed, that I couldn’t live with that, because in reality I wanted more.
Not more THINGS, because i’d had THINGS with STBX and at the end of the day I still felt unloved, lonely and overwhelmed with DEBT.
Not more time with him, because I was feeling smothered by the time already, and I knew the issue wasn’t lack of time, or even lack of time ALONE.
Not more discussion about us.
Not more dissecting our relationship.
No… I needed more feeling. And that was something that had to be there to begin with, not something that I could grow with time. Or, if it was a growing thing, it wasn’t taking root, because I simply failed to feel those powerful feelings that I desired and DESERVE.
Tags: as-I-see-it, dating, divorce, feelings, real life, relationships
I’m sorry that the relationship doesn’t have a happier ending, but I’m glad you’ve managed to avoid my protracted circus.
I am glad you’re being firm. You are not obligated to be part of any relationship you don’t want to be in (aside from your kids, perhaps.)
Some men try put us on pedestals, then get upset with us when we’re human. It’s not healthy. It’s a form of misogyny, really.
I’m glad you’re doing what you need to do for YOU. You deserve all the happiness in the world, and you deserve it on your own terms.