Comfortable Inertia and the Chronic Poor Doer

Recent Past...

For the week or so after Richard's outburst and sudden storm-out, I had this very odd sensation I felt unaccustomed to.

That heaviness, that sadness, that despair, that constantconstant knowledge that I am all alone and that this is veryvery bad...

WAS GONE.

Wow. I just felt so much lighter. I just felt so much freer. I just felt so much happier.

Of course, Chi's first two messages to me really helped. First he Facebooked me, "I hope you're doing well." I sent that back to him. For all I knew, he'd seen all these music videos I posted when I was in a sad mood, and he was messaging from a happy marriage, out of concern that I was just imploding. For all I knew, I was going to hear, "I'm so sorry. But Rory and I found each other again, and we're perfect now, and this was just what we needed to impact that to happen and I'm so sorry it had the side effect of inadvertently destroying you."

But the next words, "I miss talking to you," set me free.

Nobody writes that to an ex-affair partner if they have a family they're motivated to save and a spouse they can actually talk to.

I was right. Everything I thought about it the night he broke it off with me was right, everything I had ferreted out since was right, and I had read the charts and predicted correctly (with major help from Alice.)

I WASN'T CRAZY.

"You're better off by yourself," and "You're not nuts." Those messages from the Universe do wonders for one's state of mind.

I got to spend a week or so in that state while waiting to see if anything else would shake out.

And I discovered that I'd be okay if nothing else did.

Far better to know this and just go on alone than get caught in a stable triangle that wrecks all three parties involved. Far better to know this and just go on, than to wrench someone out of a marriage when he isn't ready, enter a relationship with someone emotionally crippled from that experience, and have it end in the disastrous way that's foretold in all our worst transits. When we're seventy-one and eighty-one.

No, clearly, just being reassured that I can make it alone and that I'm not nuts, and moving on with my life would be infinitely preferable.

Not that I wanted to leave Chi in the dust, if he were capable of getting out of that nightmare of a marriage and healing enough to become functional in his relationships. THAT Chi is my ideal guy. I love Chi no matter what, but if a person can't function in an intimate relationship, only he can alter that fact, and hurtling forward to your doom because you still love the guy won't change a bad ending.

If he won't do better, he won't do better. Period. Living with my mother for thirty-eight years has shown me quite vividly that there's nothing worse than trying to live with a chronic poor doer...except, quite possibly, for being a chronic poor doer.

In veterinary medicine, a "chronic poor doer" is that animal out of the herd who just stands around, shabby-coated, thin, miserable, underweight, and sickly, while all the other horses or calves or goats or what have you around it are fat and sleek and glossy.

I see some good signs. He knows he's still miserable. He knows he isn't being treated well. He's still in therapy. He's reacting to his misery by trying to find a way out. And it was HIS idea to break contact for a while in order to think about what we talked about and discuss it in his therapy group. And he's sticking to that. I haven't heard from him since.  Also: He knows he mislead me last time, and he apologized for that. (And I apologized to him--I did have plenty to apologize to him for.) He's being careful not to mislead me again about what he is and isn't capable of. 

I've got to give credit where credit is due. Those are good. Those are good prognostic indicators. However--

--There are still some troubling signs that he may just continue to be, a chronic poor doer.

I understand that he's had a health issue which would keep anyone from cracking a book in the past year or so. But this person hasn't cracked a book in his entire life except the one assigned by the marriage counselor. Nothing on relationships. Nothing on codependency. Nothing on healthy boundaries, nothing on low self esteem. Nothing on being an ACoA. This person doesn't keep a journal. And this therapy group is not encouraging any of the above.

This therapy group isn't actively encouraging learning and work. This therapy group is not actively encouraging progress. It sounds, from what I heard, like a place that allows a person to just come in and complain about a situation, if that's all they want to do.

While I don't go so far as to encourage everyone to become an astrologer in order to solve personal and relationship problems--that may very well be overkill on my part--I am no chronic poor doer, and I DO keep a journal and seek out information to read. 

I understand that healing from childhood wounding by sick, alcoholic, codependent, and/or mentally ill parents is not a spectator sport.


I also noticed other signs in our few conversations.

It's subtle, but this guy really misses me.

He really, really, really, really, really, really misses me.

What he's suffering from is that lack of deep companionship, that deep partner intimate relationship in his life. These are the things he's never had. These are the things he's never had.

Rory isn't able to change to fit that, and she doesn't seem interested in trying any harder. She just wants him being there doing whatever he's being there doing, and I've written about that here in the past.

And he came back to me to find what he's missing, describing this huge void I left in his life. He's very subtle, but I'm starting to know him well enough to hear the signs in his voice that he's REALLY unhappy.

Only...

He's trying to find it by weaseling himself back into club activities he left to work on the marriage. Subtly, but he is. So he can see me every two weeks and talk to me once in a while.

And that's ALL he was planning to do to try to find what he's missing.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

1.) If we have to see each other every two weeks, and we still love and long for one another, how long are we going to be able to stand THAT? First we're going to end up talking in each other's cars after the meetings...then we're going to end up going to lunch (which he already asked me to do)...and then...and then...

Well, you KNOW what comes "and then."

2.) If his stated intention is not to leave the marriage, seeing each other in ANY capacity is NOT going to go anywhere. So...we're going to stare across the table at each other every two weeks for how long? And how is that going to affect our ability to forget this and move on in our lives? Is the deprivation of a normal life for each of us when we inevitably find that we can't, a good thing?

(Can I hear a big, resounding NO?)

3.) And speaking of a normal life. Basically, so that others in the family do not get angry with him and he doesn't have to endure criticism from anyone else, or upset anyone else's idea that life is perfect for everyone the way things are, he's going to restrict his intimate relationship life to a few crumbs of companionship from me for a couple of hours every two weeks.

A few crumbs under the table, when everyone else gets to find a healthy partner relationship of their very own and enjoy a full meal every day that they live? (If they CHOOSE to do their own growth and recovery work rather than stagnate in that relationship, that is.)

When Chi and I first got together, he told me a very personal dream that he had. I'm not going to share it here. But I had to ask myself if this proposed state of affairs would get him any closer to that dream.

Look how unsatisfactory all that is.

Would I be winning a gold medal here to aid and abet this in any way?

*cue Lt. Commander Data* "No, Geordi, I would not."

Which is why I had to say no.

It's my job, and I will continue to do that job.

It may very well be that he can just choose to stay where he is, be content with being that center of his family, and find serenity and peace. And if so, the way I find serenity and peace is not by hanging on, but by letting the dreams we had die and moving on to the next place in my life.

And if it's true that he cannot choose to stay where he is and find serenity and peace, I do not assist him in getting to a place where he CAN find serenity and peace, by enabling him to use tiny crumbs of companionship from me to make that situation j-u-u-u-st bearable enough that he can j-u-u-ust stand it, and is therefore unmotivated to change or grow any more.

And because I've DONE all that hard work lo, these past two years that Anne Ortelee came on here and lambasted me for, NOW I can see all this and NOW I have the strength to carry that out.

What we are seeing here, ladies and gentlemen, is the inevitable inertia of the human spirit when faced with a daunting (and bloody painful) amount of hard work and personal change.

Change is HARD.

I, however, do not ask any more of Chi--or of YOU, dear reader--than that of which I am capable, and which I have actually accomplished, myself.

Don't stagnate in your life and become a chronic poor doer.

GO DO IT. Go do your goddamned work. Go RECOVER from your goddamned childhood wounding issues so you can actually have a loving, functional partnership in your life before you motherfucking DIE.

Nobody's getting any younger.