(I started composing this entry in November. It will probably be long. I'll break it up.)
IT HAPPENED.
I can hardly believe it, but IT HAPPENED.
Assessment at this point: He's still trying to hang onto the marriage. Not because it's going well, not because I destroyed a marriage that could have been made healthy, and not because he doesn't love me or I don't love him.
And: IT HAPPENED, exactly as I always thought it would have to, exactly as the horoscopes predicted.
Which means: I'M NOT CRAZY. The whole time, I was right. I wasn't crazy!
And this is good. This is all, for the first time in three years, very, very good.
I had agonized over some of this.
And, consider this: nine times out of ten, after a breakup, the other person does not come back to provide answers. Ever.
I can consider myself extremely fortunate on all these accounts.
His attitude is, "I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it." There's not much I can do with that. If a person's stated intention is to remain married, then there's no relationship of any kind that's possible.
Some may elect to have an affair with the guy anyway, hoping to persuade him away from the wife at some point. And there's no doubt it would be possible to do that. All three horoscopes are in agreement: If I chose to do that, I would eventually win.
But the price exacted is terrible. The worst thing you can do with a codependent is encourage him to live any more dishonestly with himself and other people than he already is. If I elected that option, it would take six years, I would get dumped again in the middle of it and get shattered even, even worse than I've already been, and all three people in the triangle remain in arrested development, or possibly even go backwards.
No one changes. No one develops any new skills. No one learns anything. No one gets better.
I go on unable to learn to be happy in the world the way the world is, all on my own. He goes on absolutely convinced that the point of all relationship is that if anyone anywhere in the northern hemisphere is disappointed by his choices for any reason, he has to make them happy no matter how grindingly, wretchedly miserable this makes him.
(What IS the point of relationship? To be known and loved exactly AS YOU ARE, BY STANDING IN YOUR TRUTH AND BEING WHO YOU ARE.)
He never gets out of this "I have no choice but misery" orientation to life, forever and ever unable to state his own feelings and needs, back himself up, and establish boundaries and limits with other people (and might I add, LIKE other people.) And Rory goes right on with...whatever her problem is.
No, clearly, this scenario should never be allowed to happen. If it is, unhealed childhood brokenness and bad habits just wreck our eventual relationship anyway.
But, boy, this sure could happen. He already asked how I felt about him coming back to club meetings, so he can see me and talk to me. He's trying to use tiny crumbs of a relationship with me to make living in the marriage bearable.
And how is that okay? Who condemns themselves to a miserable fraction of the good, happy, healthy relationship all people want, and that he's dreamed of his whole life, so everyone else doesn't have to adjust to reality? (When, in truth, some of these people have USED him quite a bit, and treated him very poorly.)
But, this is the reality to which I must adjust, so I will. There's no point staying in contact. All we'll do is tear ourselves to pieces. Or end up in the other scenario, which is the worst possible result.
And, because I worked and worked and studied and studied and struggled and struggled so hard lo, these past three years, now I see all this. Not only see it, but KNOW it in my bones.
What the affair remonstrators like Anne Ortelee do (See Hiring an Astrologer: Avoiding the Quack) is slap your hand and say, "It's bad. Don't do it," just as people do when another person is overweight.
That's not healing. It teaches nothing. It explains nothing. It leaves people torn and confused and lonely and in pain, and it says, "Just forget it and pretend it didn't happen."
And when we do that, we make the same mistake again. We didn't learn. We didn't grow. We didn't change into a healthier version of ourselves, the person we would have been if our parents and childhood had been healthier.
The last three years have been horrible. Horrible. HORRIBLE. But I wouldn't trade them for anything, because of what I learned. Because of what I see. Because of what I know. When you deal correctly with pain in your life, this is how it ends up.
I now know that there really is an overarching purpose to everyone's life. I now know that LIFE IS NOT RANDOM. Interesting...Simon getting sick took away all faith I had in a fair universe where life had any purpose, and Chi leaving me gave it back.
I now know that there was a purpose for everything that happened to me, no matter how senseless and terrible it looked at the time. And I will never look at life the same way again.
I now know that psychology and astrology reinforce each other, and that if you study both, life makes a LOT more sense, and the most painful things have purpose.
I now know that feelings of pain and distress are life's way of telling you, "You're missing something, the discovery of which would change everything for you."
I now know that running in the opposite direction from the pain of addressing something that's not working out in your life, attractive though it looks, is a bad, bad idea. The painful problems we don't work to unlock and solve today, return tomorrow, ten times worse. How much worse do we have to feel before we'll crack a book and read what the experts who study our problem have to say about it? How much worse do we have to feel before we'll do more than just sit with supportive people and complain?
For all those critics who snort, "You've been obsessed with a married man for THREE YEARS!" Yep, I sure was. And I often felt like I was on some kind of deadline, racing and racing to find out something I needed to know before this time in my life rolled around. And I was ALSO obsessed with finding and fixing what I didn't know, what I didn't understand, about where childhood damage was still crippling me in my life.
And I discovered this: When you've worked with pain correctly, you will know, because you no longer have to fight to escape it or fight to ignore it.
When you work with pain correctly, it goes away, and you are freed to live a new life.
And if it's not going away, you are running from or ignoring or missing something, instead of working with it correctly.
One thing's for sure, I didn't ignore ANYTHING these past three years. I split hairs and split hairs and SPLIT hairs. And I learned so much I'm so grateful I know.
Which brings me to an...
Which means: I'M NOT CRAZY. The whole time, I was right. I wasn't crazy!
And this is good. This is all, for the first time in three years, very, very good.
I had agonized over some of this.
And, consider this: nine times out of ten, after a breakup, the other person does not come back to provide answers. Ever.
I can consider myself extremely fortunate on all these accounts.
His attitude is, "I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it." There's not much I can do with that. If a person's stated intention is to remain married, then there's no relationship of any kind that's possible.
Some may elect to have an affair with the guy anyway, hoping to persuade him away from the wife at some point. And there's no doubt it would be possible to do that. All three horoscopes are in agreement: If I chose to do that, I would eventually win.
But the price exacted is terrible. The worst thing you can do with a codependent is encourage him to live any more dishonestly with himself and other people than he already is. If I elected that option, it would take six years, I would get dumped again in the middle of it and get shattered even, even worse than I've already been, and all three people in the triangle remain in arrested development, or possibly even go backwards.
No one changes. No one develops any new skills. No one learns anything. No one gets better.
I go on unable to learn to be happy in the world the way the world is, all on my own. He goes on absolutely convinced that the point of all relationship is that if anyone anywhere in the northern hemisphere is disappointed by his choices for any reason, he has to make them happy no matter how grindingly, wretchedly miserable this makes him.
(What IS the point of relationship? To be known and loved exactly AS YOU ARE, BY STANDING IN YOUR TRUTH AND BEING WHO YOU ARE.)
He never gets out of this "I have no choice but misery" orientation to life, forever and ever unable to state his own feelings and needs, back himself up, and establish boundaries and limits with other people (and might I add, LIKE other people.) And Rory goes right on with...whatever her problem is.
No, clearly, this scenario should never be allowed to happen. If it is, unhealed childhood brokenness and bad habits just wreck our eventual relationship anyway.
But, boy, this sure could happen. He already asked how I felt about him coming back to club meetings, so he can see me and talk to me. He's trying to use tiny crumbs of a relationship with me to make living in the marriage bearable.
And how is that okay? Who condemns themselves to a miserable fraction of the good, happy, healthy relationship all people want, and that he's dreamed of his whole life, so everyone else doesn't have to adjust to reality? (When, in truth, some of these people have USED him quite a bit, and treated him very poorly.)
But, this is the reality to which I must adjust, so I will. There's no point staying in contact. All we'll do is tear ourselves to pieces. Or end up in the other scenario, which is the worst possible result.
And, because I worked and worked and studied and studied and struggled and struggled so hard lo, these past three years, now I see all this. Not only see it, but KNOW it in my bones.
What the affair remonstrators like Anne Ortelee do (See Hiring an Astrologer: Avoiding the Quack) is slap your hand and say, "It's bad. Don't do it," just as people do when another person is overweight.
That's not healing. It teaches nothing. It explains nothing. It leaves people torn and confused and lonely and in pain, and it says, "Just forget it and pretend it didn't happen."
And when we do that, we make the same mistake again. We didn't learn. We didn't grow. We didn't change into a healthier version of ourselves, the person we would have been if our parents and childhood had been healthier.
The last three years have been horrible. Horrible. HORRIBLE. But I wouldn't trade them for anything, because of what I learned. Because of what I see. Because of what I know. When you deal correctly with pain in your life, this is how it ends up.
I now know that there really is an overarching purpose to everyone's life. I now know that LIFE IS NOT RANDOM. Interesting...Simon getting sick took away all faith I had in a fair universe where life had any purpose, and Chi leaving me gave it back.
I now know that there was a purpose for everything that happened to me, no matter how senseless and terrible it looked at the time. And I will never look at life the same way again.
I now know that psychology and astrology reinforce each other, and that if you study both, life makes a LOT more sense, and the most painful things have purpose.
I now know that feelings of pain and distress are life's way of telling you, "You're missing something, the discovery of which would change everything for you."
I now know that running in the opposite direction from the pain of addressing something that's not working out in your life, attractive though it looks, is a bad, bad idea. The painful problems we don't work to unlock and solve today, return tomorrow, ten times worse. How much worse do we have to feel before we'll crack a book and read what the experts who study our problem have to say about it? How much worse do we have to feel before we'll do more than just sit with supportive people and complain?
For all those critics who snort, "You've been obsessed with a married man for THREE YEARS!" Yep, I sure was. And I often felt like I was on some kind of deadline, racing and racing to find out something I needed to know before this time in my life rolled around. And I was ALSO obsessed with finding and fixing what I didn't know, what I didn't understand, about where childhood damage was still crippling me in my life.
And I discovered this: When you've worked with pain correctly, you will know, because you no longer have to fight to escape it or fight to ignore it.
When you work with pain correctly, it goes away, and you are freed to live a new life.
And if it's not going away, you are running from or ignoring or missing something, instead of working with it correctly.
One thing's for sure, I didn't ignore ANYTHING these past three years. I split hairs and split hairs and SPLIT hairs. And I learned so much I'm so grateful I know.
Which brings me to an...
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