Frozen Nowhere

I am thinking that most of it is the summer and the uncertainty and lack of routine that goes on for everyone in the summer time… 

That being said… this past weekend I took the opportunity to get away with Reg for a child free period of time. 

It has been THREE months since we had a date night, and that night I invited my friend C to hang out with us since I thought she was going to move away in the summer. 

I have to confess… I was starting to doubt my relationship with Reg these past few weeks, and this weekend away was starting to feel like this was a last chance to see if there was any point in continuing to see him.

It’s not that I don’t love him. I do. It’s not that I don’t think he loves me. Because I feel how much he loves me when we are together. The problem, for me, is that with the kids around and us both stressed and living apart (not just in distance, but the fact that we don’t really talk, type or email/text between visits) and that there isn’t time or energy to just be together as a couple. But the lack of communication between us has bothered me for a long time (since February when we stopped spending time chatting on MSN at night) and it has gotten SO much worse since he has been on vacation (being an educational assistant he  works during the school year, so as of the end of June he’s been on vacation). When he was working he used to text me every morning to say he loved me… and he hasn’t texted me in the morning SINCE the end of June. 

I really really MISS getting little text messages. It really made me feel special, it made me feel like he was really THINKING of me, like he was missing me. 

And the silence since then has really been HARD on me. Added to the fact that he doesn’t chat with me online anymore (I loved that, I’m totally an “You’ve got Mail” sorta girl, in that I LOVE getting email and chat online with my boy) and he rarely phones me. He’s gotten SO much better, he usually calls once a week… but with my phone STILL not always receiving calls when I am at home, I do end up missing calls more often than not (but the phone company is not really all that interested in solving my issue either, so I am working on work arounds to getting a landline (which would double my bill, and which I would rarely use))

We’ve both been going through a lot with our ex’s this summer… he’s been forced to start the custody process, I’m still fighting to get my divorce process STARTED (and find out WHERE my lawyer went, AGAIN) and he’s reacted by really closing off on me. I have been really trying to respect the fact that he doesn’t want to talk about what’s going on, or the fact that its going slow… and I don’t push, just hope that he’ll eventually feel comfortable enough to talk to me about what’s going on. 

So, with having no time alone and not feeling like I have a special place in his life lately, I had really started to wonder if I was wasting BOTH our time staying with him. If he was not interested in being with me (and I’m not talking about wanting to push and have a life with him — I know that there is no way that we will be able to live together for the foreseeable future — just not interested in being open and connected to me as a person) maybe we would both be better moving on. I know he’s not the kind to really show anything, and if I said that I was thinking that we weren’t working out he’d likely just walk away without so much as a fight or any show of emotion… somehow that hurts a bit… but I KNOW that I mean something to him. 

This weekend was really good… we’ve been so closed off from each other for the last 2 or 3 months and although he never really talked about his stuff, I really felt a lot closer to him. He cares about me, I see it in the little things he does for me, and the things he does to help me out, the things he lets me do on my own (even when he would do it better), the time he spends with me, the way he kisses me… the little kisses on the forehead or head, the way he runs his hand across my arm to let me know he’s there… all the things that have been hard to do with the stress and the kids and the running around trying to make sure everyone is happy…

It was great… We went had time to talk about our lives and laugh and have FUN without having the stress of chasing kids, stopping fights, dishes, meal planning, tears and tantrums, or having to rush to do something else. We went out for meals together, we went to shows together, we spent time cuddling together, we shopped together, and we had adult time to just relax and be. And while I had a little bit of anxiety, at first, with the idea of getting away together after feeling so shut out from his life lately, I think that mostly I am starting to see things more clearly:

 

He loves me, he really really does, and he shows me that in a lot of really meaningful little ways all the time. He has tried to keep in touch with me, given our circumstances and my lack of reception, and the effort he has made always makes me feel cared about. He’s just a bit more of a private person, and so if I want to know what is going on with him I have to ask him and make him realize that I care about HIS life too.

 

This summer Reg has gone out of his way to help me many times — he has spent time visiting me and the kids with his kids, he has stayed in my apartment (with his girls) to look after my place and my cats while I took my kids to Toronto,  he has always been there for me to call when I needed him, he came with me to Edmonton this weekend not only to get away and reconnect, but also to help me move stuff from Ikea, and I have no doubt at all that he will be right there willing to help me assemble my shelves from Ikea.

 

And things are good for what they are… I guess for now I will stop dreaming about a real future and just be happy with a real NOW with someone who is good for me and loves me…