All last year I thought, if I'm going to move to California, I need to start clearing stuff out of this house and simplifying my life. I won't be able to afford three bedrooms in California. I need to get this place back down to one before I try to move it.
It never happened, and neither did California. Which is fine, especially since the state is almost bankrupt now (maybe I dodged a bullet there).
And then came one night a few weeks ago where my boyfriend confronted me on the phone, saying, "Is this thing going anywhere? Because I want to get married and have kids and if that's not going to happen with you, I need to move on."
He waits until my best child-bearing years are behind me, seven years that I spent entirely with him, waiting for him to want the same things I wanted, and when that didn't work, trying to bend myself into wanting what he wanted instead, and now that I'm exhausted from it all he finally says, "I want to get married and have kids." And I'm sure he means it. But you know what's funny? I said the exact same thing to him six years ago. Remarkable. But I digress.
No matter how ironic, the question needed to be asked. I had made a decision already and didn't really know it, or maybe didn't want to know it, at least not until I opened my mouth to answer his question. And then it all came out: a year's worth of focusing on my dreams for the first time since I got out of school, a year's worth of rediscovering what I wanted out of life and what it was like to truly take care of myself. I wasn't getting what I needed with him, and he wasn't getting what he needed with me. It occurred to me that I was doing a much better job meeting my own needs by myself than I ever did while trying to meet his too. We were just too different to be able to do both well. It quickly became obvious that we both needed to move on.
Cleaning house takes on a whole new meaning now.
For some reason that relationship carried with it a lot of guilt for me. I think that guilt kept me in it a lot longer than I needed to be there. In fact, one phone call from him last night and I realized this person still has his tap in my guilt keg. I don't fully understand why that is, in the conversation and in the relationship. Maybe someday I will. But since I finally freed myself of it, I've found myself wanting to clean out EVERYTHING in my life from my house to my yard to my refrigerator to relationships that aren't working, appliances that aren't working, thought processes that aren't working (like guilt, and the need to take care of everyone else first). It's like I'm the rock in a giant slingshot and I've been pulled and pulled back for seven years and someone finally let go. Maybe it was me.
In fact, just yesterday I let go of something else that wasn't working. I was rather proud of myself for it too. An old boyfriend of mine tracked me down a couple of years ago and started writing me emails. He's married. No big deal, except when he would say something inappropriate, which he always did eventually. When he did, I just didn't respond. And then after a few months of silence it would start all over.
A few weeks ago he started writing to me from a different address. His reason for this was that he figured his wife would have a problem with us talking, even though (he said) it was silly to have a problem with it, so he just decided it was better to write from an address she didn't have access to so she wouldn't know about it.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?
Now I haven't had a lot of practice setting boundaries, so it took me a few weeks to figure out how to deal with this. But I finally told him that I wasn't going to participate in going behind his wife's back, no matter how harmless our talking was. So if he wanted to be my friend he had to clear it with his wife first, and then write to me from the other address from then on. Otherwise we weren't going to talk anymore. I had to throw in that part about the address. I know this guy. Without that he would have just said, "Oh I talked to her and she's ok with it" and expected me to believe him. And he probably would have been lying. You know the type, "If I can't have what I want by being honest, I'll lie and get it anyway." Otherwise known as, "It's all about ME."
His response? "Odd, but ok. Good luck with things. I hope you didn't see my checking in as anything other than just that."
I've never seen anyone miss the point so completely in my life. The talking wasn't the problem. It was the sneaking around. Is he really that dense? ... I know this guy. The answer is no.
The thing is, I started this blog a year ago to track my progress in achieving my dreams, but also in making a better life for myself, a "three-dimensional" life. I'm finally starting to have that. And when you start to see yourself in three dimensions, you start to see others that way too. And sometimes what you see completely stuns you.
This person basically told me that he would rather never speak to me again in his life than tell his wife we were talking to each other. Apparently his wife's emotions cause him so much anxiety that managing that anxiety far outweighs any moral responsibility he might have as her husband. Yet another example of someone who would rather see what he can get away with in life than see how good a person he can be.
Why was I so stunned? Not because his response wasn't totally in line with his personality, because it certainly was. Not even because I apparently have more respect for his wife than he does. I was stunned that I could break up with someone and then TWELVE YEARS LATER find that they haven't grown as a person even one little bit from where I left them. TWELVE YEARS! And not one little bit. "The unexamined life is not worth living." I guess it really sucks to be him.
So now I find myself surrounded by piles of things that don't work. Bad relationships, bad appliances, worn out clothes, computer accessories that are no longer useful... I have a Goodwill pile, an Ebay pile, and a pile of trash. I have a pile of limbs in the yard and soon I will have a pile of leaves to go with it. But on the bright side, I have a small pile of ideas for paintings and animations, and as I clear out the clutter everywhere else, that pile is finding its own room to grow. And once the others are gone for good, I'm jumping right into the middle of it and rolling around like a crazy person.
It never happened, and neither did California. Which is fine, especially since the state is almost bankrupt now (maybe I dodged a bullet there).
And then came one night a few weeks ago where my boyfriend confronted me on the phone, saying, "Is this thing going anywhere? Because I want to get married and have kids and if that's not going to happen with you, I need to move on."
He waits until my best child-bearing years are behind me, seven years that I spent entirely with him, waiting for him to want the same things I wanted, and when that didn't work, trying to bend myself into wanting what he wanted instead, and now that I'm exhausted from it all he finally says, "I want to get married and have kids." And I'm sure he means it. But you know what's funny? I said the exact same thing to him six years ago. Remarkable. But I digress.
No matter how ironic, the question needed to be asked. I had made a decision already and didn't really know it, or maybe didn't want to know it, at least not until I opened my mouth to answer his question. And then it all came out: a year's worth of focusing on my dreams for the first time since I got out of school, a year's worth of rediscovering what I wanted out of life and what it was like to truly take care of myself. I wasn't getting what I needed with him, and he wasn't getting what he needed with me. It occurred to me that I was doing a much better job meeting my own needs by myself than I ever did while trying to meet his too. We were just too different to be able to do both well. It quickly became obvious that we both needed to move on.
Cleaning house takes on a whole new meaning now.
For some reason that relationship carried with it a lot of guilt for me. I think that guilt kept me in it a lot longer than I needed to be there. In fact, one phone call from him last night and I realized this person still has his tap in my guilt keg. I don't fully understand why that is, in the conversation and in the relationship. Maybe someday I will. But since I finally freed myself of it, I've found myself wanting to clean out EVERYTHING in my life from my house to my yard to my refrigerator to relationships that aren't working, appliances that aren't working, thought processes that aren't working (like guilt, and the need to take care of everyone else first). It's like I'm the rock in a giant slingshot and I've been pulled and pulled back for seven years and someone finally let go. Maybe it was me.
In fact, just yesterday I let go of something else that wasn't working. I was rather proud of myself for it too. An old boyfriend of mine tracked me down a couple of years ago and started writing me emails. He's married. No big deal, except when he would say something inappropriate, which he always did eventually. When he did, I just didn't respond. And then after a few months of silence it would start all over.
A few weeks ago he started writing to me from a different address. His reason for this was that he figured his wife would have a problem with us talking, even though (he said) it was silly to have a problem with it, so he just decided it was better to write from an address she didn't have access to so she wouldn't know about it.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?
Now I haven't had a lot of practice setting boundaries, so it took me a few weeks to figure out how to deal with this. But I finally told him that I wasn't going to participate in going behind his wife's back, no matter how harmless our talking was. So if he wanted to be my friend he had to clear it with his wife first, and then write to me from the other address from then on. Otherwise we weren't going to talk anymore. I had to throw in that part about the address. I know this guy. Without that he would have just said, "Oh I talked to her and she's ok with it" and expected me to believe him. And he probably would have been lying. You know the type, "If I can't have what I want by being honest, I'll lie and get it anyway." Otherwise known as, "It's all about ME."
His response? "Odd, but ok. Good luck with things. I hope you didn't see my checking in as anything other than just that."
I've never seen anyone miss the point so completely in my life. The talking wasn't the problem. It was the sneaking around. Is he really that dense? ... I know this guy. The answer is no.
The thing is, I started this blog a year ago to track my progress in achieving my dreams, but also in making a better life for myself, a "three-dimensional" life. I'm finally starting to have that. And when you start to see yourself in three dimensions, you start to see others that way too. And sometimes what you see completely stuns you.
This person basically told me that he would rather never speak to me again in his life than tell his wife we were talking to each other. Apparently his wife's emotions cause him so much anxiety that managing that anxiety far outweighs any moral responsibility he might have as her husband. Yet another example of someone who would rather see what he can get away with in life than see how good a person he can be.
Why was I so stunned? Not because his response wasn't totally in line with his personality, because it certainly was. Not even because I apparently have more respect for his wife than he does. I was stunned that I could break up with someone and then TWELVE YEARS LATER find that they haven't grown as a person even one little bit from where I left them. TWELVE YEARS! And not one little bit. "The unexamined life is not worth living." I guess it really sucks to be him.
So now I find myself surrounded by piles of things that don't work. Bad relationships, bad appliances, worn out clothes, computer accessories that are no longer useful... I have a Goodwill pile, an Ebay pile, and a pile of trash. I have a pile of limbs in the yard and soon I will have a pile of leaves to go with it. But on the bright side, I have a small pile of ideas for paintings and animations, and as I clear out the clutter everywhere else, that pile is finding its own room to grow. And once the others are gone for good, I'm jumping right into the middle of it and rolling around like a crazy person.
