Nobody's Cryin', Nobody's Lyin', and Nobody's Dyin'.

PRESENT


Oh, my God, what a WEEK. I literally feel like I've been bound in front of a firing squad and riddled with bullets.

My eldest stepson. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I've been trying to settle Simon's estate matters, and this person has treated me like a criminal since day one, and I have done NOTHING to deserve it. I have done NOTHING TO this person! Ever!

And he communicates like a goddamned Neanderthal, and then he's angry when I can't read his mind.

And the things this person takes offense at. Jesus Fucking Christ! Apparently the normal way that most people hash out agreement and disagreement is completely foreign to this person.

But then, one needs to consider the source. Mom had a diagnosis of BPD (that's borderline personality disorder, not bipolar.) And we know that BP's often pair up with very controlling people. And, from several reports, Simon was a real asshole when he was younger, with a drinking AND a gambling problem. And there were a ton of arguments and fights. None of those three boys is 100% right. I wonder if the middle one, as detailed elsewhere on this blog, may have BPD himself. 

The oldest one, from all reports, is a long-term pothead who committed welfare fraud, moved into Simon's house and never paid rent so they almost lost it, then tore it all up. We could have been married two years earlier had Simon not had to move back there to remodel it. And the youngest one, well...grumpy, surly, depressed, sarcastic, and bitter. Has he ever had a date in his whole life? God knows.

The whole thing almost ended up in a lawsuit. Fortunately, it didn't, but it's all just taught me a little more about the tenacity of the blinders a bad childhood slaps over a person's ability to perceive reality, and to get their mind around the truth about another person's communication, no matter how desperately they're trying to get it across. And how easy it is to fall into a damnable repeating pattern; even though I had just been told (finally!) what upset the other person, I went right back and did the same thing anyway.

And I know who else had a bad childhood, and how tenacious those problems are, and that is really sobering.

Because that person hides, pretends, and lies. And ACTS, as skillfully as Robert DeNiro. If Chi doesn't want you to know something, you aren't going to know it. A relationship could wind up a long, long, LONG way down the wrong road before I ever had a clue.

And that is very scary.

I've realized my horoscopes are right. I am addicted to drama. 

All when I was younger, there was some BIG drama. 

One day I was gonna be a big, flashy success (or as much as you can be as a minor author, anyway) and prove to EVERYONE I WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR that I didn't deserve how they acted toward me and how they treated me. I was gonna do well enough at something I loved so I didn't have to stay stuck in something I just wasn't good enough at and was unhappy and terrified doing. 

Then when I realized how unrealistic that was, at least I could marry the guy who was that good.

Then I realized how unrealistic that was.

But Simon was such a great guy to be with, that didn't matter. Then--surprise!--I was battling brain cancer with the best guy in the world. 

Then I was battling Rory and childhood demons with the other best guy in the world.

Then I got DUMPED. (Being brokenhearted sure is miserable, but it's also very dramatic.)

Now all I'm battling is Number One Stepson. And I TRULY hope we've seen the last of that...but I doubt it. Something tells me he's going to hate something in the new book contract, jeopardize the sale of the book, and we'll be at each other's throats all over again.

Drama, it turns out, is not all, "Wheee! I'm not going to have a boring, everyday life!" 

That was how I was as a kid and as a young person.

But actually, most times, drama is BAD. And most of the time, drama makes you feel TERRIBLE.

                                                     ***

Soon, there will be nothing particularly happy or exciting going on in my life, at all. Nobody I'm happy to come home to, or just thrilled to stay home and cook Sunday breakfast with. Nobody to swap writing pages with and dream. No belief that anything exciting is going to happen with my writing, or Simon's. Or mine and my writing partner's. Realistically, most books that are published don't sell shit. You have to sell at least 5,000 copies for a publisher to consider you as having done anything worthy of another book contract.

No more Battling To Save My Man. (In any sense of the phrase.)

And, please God, no more battling with Number One Stepson.

It's entirely possible that I'm going to spend the next thirty to forty years just going along and doing my work, and that will be it.

                                                      ***

You just have to live what life gives you. 

You're not going to be the "best" at anything, and even if you do, you're just going to die and it won't matter in the great cosmic scheme of things, anyhow. It's just not that important. Nothing is, when you think about it.

Two years and six days ago, Chi called me and left me. And I've had this sensation ever since then that I was in a race against time, struggling and struggling to grasp a number of things about it before a deadline, before something else that was going to happen.

And now I feel like I've gotten there. I've achieved all the knowledge from it that I was supposed to. 

I can poke around it some more, sure, and the astrology is fascinating, but there's no more feeling of urgency about it any more, like there's something I really need to know and I haven't found it yet. 

I'm done shoveling shit, I'm a very different person than I was when I started, and now it's just time to relax. To just go along doing my work, and that will be it.

I won't have a dramatic life any more, or even have anything much happen to me at all--except for getting old and dying.

                                                      ***

And I remind myself that there are VERY good things about that. 

I have a new saying about my new, getting old, getting bald, getting fat, solitary, little-old-lady, almost-fifty life: 

"Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'."

All my young life, my mother was whinin' and cryin'. "So-and-so did this to me, and So-and-so did that to me."

"Oh, you poor baby," was the only way she knew to feel self-worth.

If somebody done her wrong, and you were telling her they were wrong and she was right, that was a safe way, and the only way she knew how, to feel the validation she needed. Always from other people, because she was abused as a child and still all tied up in it, 

and she still felt worthless.

I don't have that in my life any more. I had to cut that influence out a long, long time ago due to some unbelievable behavior. 

(I haven't missed that behavior one little bit.)


And Chi. Sweet, handsome, smart, sharp, funny, incredible Chi.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. NOTHING!

He is, always was, and forever and ever will be, a lovely, lovely person.


But, he was an abused child, 

and he still feels worthless.

And the only way he doesn't feel worthless is if he's making everybody else happy all the time.

And if that isn't making him happy, he stays all walled-off and fortressed-up, shutting everyone out of his reality, not letting anyone see the real Chi, unwilling to BE the real Chi, resentful and self-denigrating and telling himself he's unlovable, repulsive, and that Fate has it in for him (those, sadly, aren't my words)...

while hanging a beautiful mural outside the walls of his lonely little fortress so no one knows anything is wrong.
This is known as "smiling depression," by the way.

And "smiling depression" is one big lie. One big lie to the world about who you really are, and one big lie in your relationship about what's really true within it.

And if I'm with Chi, and I love him the way he really is, and his trust is the most precious thing I have...

He basically just shuts you out. Quietly, with no notice, and acting flawlessly as if nothing's changed. 

If you are Chi's relationship partner, one day, you are no longer his best friend. 

And he JUST DOESN'T TELL YOU.

You won't find out about it for TEN YEARS.  At LEAST!

And the whole point of my relationship with Simon, and my relationship with Chi, was that we were best friends, and we trusted each other, and I knew their real hearts. 

Simon would never have done this to me!

If Chi and I ever really were together, and he walled himself off and stopped sharing, and he basically just cut me out of his life and went on living in the same house with me and pretended like nothing was at all wrong...

I'D WANT TO DIE.

I really, really would. 

I'm not Rory. I'm no wicked witch with an attitude problem, to hide away from in the Fortress.

It's one thing if every time you stick your nose out of the Fortress, there's a wicked witch out there throwing lightning bolts at you. That would scare anybody back in. But I am not that wicked witch, and if I am hurling lightning bolts, it may be that there is something seriously wrong with me, or going on in my life. Maybe I need the support of the person I am with, not to be walled out and left while he's still living in the same house, giving an Oscar-worthy performance that nothing is wrong.

I don't know how I'd ever be with Chi, and not be absolutely terrified that he was walling me out like that--and turning in such a good acting performance that I'd think everything was okay, and never, ever know until ten years later when he wanted me to know.

That would be much, much too late.

My whole world would just shatter into pieces.

Simon would never have done that to me. He knew that I'm a good woman, and he trusted me.

That is one scary scenario. ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

Who wants that to happen to her? Especially after fifty.

At least if I'm alone from now on, I don't have to be afraid of that.

And brain cancer, well...

Life is peaceful now. Nobody's cryin', nobody's lyin', and nobody's dyin'.

There are good things about being alone.

                                                    ***

I just have to keep reminding myself of that, I suppose.

How Can I Trust You Not to Hurt Me, When You Can't Trust You Not to Hurt You?

PAST

I’ve realized in perusing prior blogs that I need to correct one statement:

“To me, love is not only when you can put the welfare of someone else above your own needs—you don’t love someone if you will cause them pain to get your needs met—but also when you just love who they are.”

Well. I don’t need to correct it. I need to amend it.

The reason I need to do that is, Chi would have read that and said, “But I AM putting the welfare of someone else above my own needs! I won’t cause them pain to get my own needs met!” while at the same time sitting there with a wife who’s on Facebook for hours all night and doesn’t even appear to notice he’s in the house. 

So, let’s be a little clearer about that.

It’s important to include yourself among those whose needs count. And it’s important to make your needs AS important as other people’s. NOT, “more important than,” AS important AS. There’s a difference, and it makes a big difference to the quality of your life and to all your relationships.

The codependent says, “I can’t do that, because other people ARE more important than me. I can’t see it any other way because I know that I am not good enough. I am subservient to other people’s needs and wants because I am so unworthy that this is the only way I can make myself attractive enough to other people to even have any other people around me.”

But there’s a problem with that.

And that problem is: If you are doing that, you are hurting yourself.

And this is how it works. You have a lifelong dream, say it’s to write a novel. You’ve had this dream almost twenty years. Yet, you’ve never done it, because your significant other does not support that. When she wants to go do social activities or participate in some club you first met in, you WANT to say no, “I really want to stay home and write.” But that person attacks you in some way. “What do you need to do THAT for?” Or, “But everyone will really miss you. What about X, Y, and Z that we used to do together? I will really miss you.” And you go, Why am I doing this? I am just being selfish. (Especially if
you’ve just had an affair. Now you really feel guilty.) And you put the pleasing of the other person and the fulfillment of their needs above the pleasing of yourself and the fulfillment of your needs. 

And you and she agree that in so doing, you are a good person.

And the problem with that is: You’ve just hurt yourself. 

That lifelong dream meant something to you. It was really, really important. It was fun, it was fascinating, you’ve been collecting research for that project for years. You’re not going to be here forever. When are you going to get to DO it??

If you keep saying yes when you need to say no, the answer is never.

Sometimes it may be that you come upon that carton of your old research on the floor, shoved up into a corner. And when you see it, it hurts. Oh, well. I guess that will never be me. When will I ever get to do that? I guess never. Others want me to do other things instead, and I don’t want to hurt them, so I guess that will be never.

Now, let’s get real, here. Is your relationship getting a bit one-sided? And who really is being hurt the worst? Yep, I did the same thing, but my husband was dying. Dying. This is a little bit different. What the two of you are trying to do is live. Harmoniously.

Think of your relationship like a seesaw. In the perfect marriage the seesaw balances in the middle. My needs; your needs. They balance on the fulcrum. When you give up your lifelong dream so the other person gets to have you around in the way they want you to be, you move a weight from their side of the seesaw and add it to yours. Now the other person feels “up” a bit more in their life, and you feel a bit more “down.” Look at the gift of understanding you’re giving. That person is sad not to have you with them. You feel the empathy with that person’s sadness. But when you ask for some empathy: “But this is my lifelong dream. I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life,” what are you met with? “What do you need to do THAT for?” With the subtext, Don’t you know you are supposed to be just like me? Like what I like, want what I want? Be my absolute companion in absolutely everything? Be me with me, and sometimes even FOR me??

You’re not getting back that empathy you’ve just shown. Another weight moves to your end of the seesaw. Now you’re even lower. That person doesn’t understand me. I guess I’m really not worth caring about. Down goes your end of the seesaw again. 

Would it really kill that person to go to an event by themselves? “My sweetie is home writing their novel, they’ve wanted to do it their whole life and I’m so proud of them. Multitalented, that one I married!” 

What a gift that would be! But they can’t give you that gift, the gift of being yourself. You give them the gift of being themselves, but in this area it isn’t returned. And their end of the seesaw goes even higher, and your end goes even lower.

Now imagine you are doing this EVERY time there is a decision to be made, in EVERY area of your life with this person. What are you going to do for a living? Other person’s favor. Where are you going to live? Other person’s favor again. How is the inside of the home to be kept, and who performs what labor? Other person’s favor AGAIN. Do we have sex or not? When? How? Other person's favor A-G-A-I-N.

YOU call this “being kind.” “I can’t hurt that other person by saying no.” 

But at the same time, your end of the seesaw is going waywaywaywayway down. And you feel bad all the time.

Does the other person care that you feel this bad? You don’t know, because you won’t tell. If the other person really doesn’t care about your feelings, is this a relationship you should be in or stay in? You don’t know, because you won’t tell. 

You aren’t talking up, and in any relationship, talking up is your job and your responsibility, and this seesaw example illustrates the reason why. 

You are hurting yourself. And you can’t trust yourself to speak up for yourself, be the real you, and stop your end of the seesaw from hitting the dirt.

Let me tell you a little secret. When your end of the seesaw is deep in the mud, that’s when you decide to have an affair.

And that really hurts the other person, more than it ever would have hurt if you had spoken up about all those million little decisions all those months and years before. 

Some of those decisions hurt you way more than they would have hurt the other person to let them go your way. They really, really did. And you let it happen. Worse, you lied about who you were and what makes you happy and what doesn’t. That person thinks they know you when really they do not. Now you’re trapped in a lifetime of role-playing.

That really hurts.

And you can’t trust yourself not to hurt yourself. In a new relationship, when all these little moments come up, you’re still doing the same thing. “I must make this new person happy. I must make this new person happy. I’m no good if I don’t.”

And your seesaw is going down again.

Let me tell you that no one who really loves you wants either YOUR end or THEIR end to go down. And if you give a living shit about your relationship, YOU DON’T WANT EITHER END GOING DOWN, EITHER. Because the end of that road is, somebody’s seesaw seat is knee-deep in mud, and that person in distress finds someone else.

If you can’t trust yourself not to let your end of the seesaw go down, they can’t trust you not to have an affair.

Which is why I named this post, “How Can I Trust You Not to Hurt Me, If You Can’t Trust You Not to Hurt You?” 

Let David Flynn tell it, if you don't believe me.

And Jane's side of the story... 

I Will Accept It If

FUTURE

So I’m listening to Jerry Wise talk about the stuckness of the marriage after the affair. 

After the affair, the betrayed spouse remains permanently in a tizzy. “What happened? Why did it happen? Will he ever do it again? Who’s that texting him on his phone? I’m going to make him let me into his email and I’m going to read it all before he reads it. Oh, no, he’s going to hurt me again. When will that be?” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Not that they don’t have reason to worry. If you’re Rory and you don’t stop behaving the way I’ve described in this blog, you are creating in your partner active unhappiness and the desire to get away from you.

And if you’re a guy like Chi, and you had an affair out of extreme codependency and the inability to talk up, be heard, and fight for your needs in the relationship so your end of the seesaw doesn’t end up all the way in China somewhere, chances are high that you are going to repeat the same thing in the next relationship, should you somehow manage to get yourself out of this one.

Which gives both the betrayed spouse and the affair partner pause. It doesn’t matter WHO gets him, or if neither gets him and some unknown third party ends up with him down the line. This is a codependent person who will bury himself in untold misery and have an affair before he tells you anything.

If he leaves “her” and you’re the new wife, how the fuck do you live with:  “What happened? Why did it happen? Will he ever do it again? Who’s that texting him on his phone? I’m going to make him let me into his email and I’m going to read it all before he reads it. Oh, no, he’s going to hurt me again. When will that be?” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

For that matter, if he stays with you and you’re the OLD wife, how the fuck do you live with:  “What happened? Why did it happen? Will he ever do it again? Who’s that texting him on his phone? I’m going to make him let me into his email and I’m going to read it all before he reads it. Oh, no, he’s going to hurt me again. When will that be?” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So you adore the guy and you still want to be with him.

Daunting, isn’t it?

How would I live with that?

That’s when I understood: This kind of situation, should you elect NOT to pass this one by and wait on the next car, requires a very distinct and solid fortitude. You have to be able to say, “I knew this, and I chose this anyway because I loved him and I wanted to give it every chance. I knew the risks. I also know that if worse comes to worst, I can and will just pass it by gracefully and live the rest of my life peacefully all alone. I thought it was worth it to me to take the chance, I took it, and this is how it turned out. Now I’m going to do this, this, and this, and this will be my new life all by myself. And there’s no upset, there’s no devastation, there’s no make-wrong, because I saw this with cool eyes and a cool head, this was one of the outcomes, and now it’s the outcome I’m in.”

I’d NEVER have had to do that with Simon, because Simon was a whole different animal. He’d have stood toe to toe with me forever, fighting like a tiger for what he wanted me to give him in the relationship, but he would NEVER have cheated. (I had other problems with him.) 

Chi will cheat rather than fight. It’s called, Codependency and Low Self-Esteem, and it’s raised and trained in. Obviously I’d require that both of us be in treatment for the rest of our lives, but that may fail. I’d have to totally adopt that credo up there if by some chance I ever married this guy. 

So then I thought, Why don’t I just do that now? If I’m so sure I can do it then, what’s the matter with now? Why am I so sure I can do it then when I’ve spent the last two years completely devastated after having him in my life only four months?

Neil Strauss has written this wonderful book, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships. In it he describes his years-long recovery from sex addiction (and some very raunchy and damn near fatal episodes.) Near the end, he finds himself longing for his one true love, whom he left behind after cheating on her, because he wanted to try an open relationship and she didn’t. He’s understandably nervous about crawling back to her and begging her forgiveness, and anticipating how horrible it will be if she says no and he has to face the fact that he’s lost her forever.

Strauss writes,

     Accept what is.

     With one army vanquished, the next attacks, the terror of self-doubt. What if this is how I sound     when I see Ingrid? What if Ingrid thinks exactly what I’m thinking right now? What if she’s right? 

     What if…Today I will expunge those two words from my vocabulary and replace them with, I will accept it if.  

     I will accept it if this is how I sound when I see Ingrid. I will accept it if Ingrid thinks exactly what I’m thinking right now. I will accept it if she’s right.

And I will accept it if this guy leaves me for someone else.

He’s already left me to go back to Rory. It’s already happened. Two years ago. If I can’t accept it now, I surely won’t be able to at any other time in my/his/our/anyone else’s short time on this earth.

And if you can’t accept it, do not allow it back into your life.

And the KEY to accepting it is turning, I’m just going to die if he cheats on me again, it will tear me to shreds, into, I am strong enough to get through it and I know I will be okay.

And if you’re the wife, this same stance might also be useful for you.

And, yo! 

If you’re the codependent, get yourself into individual therapy with the goal of developing a solid core of self-esteem and childhood trauma recovery so that you don’t do this again to yourself or to anyone else.

WHY does the truly nice person cheat?

FUTURE

Currently, this person is incapable of treating me well.

Currently, this person is incapable of treating me well.

CURRENTLY, THIS PERSON IS INCAPABLE OF TREATING ME WELL.

Wow.

I’ve known this person almost twenty years at the time of this writing, and this is the first time I’ve ever been able to see this BIG FACT clearly.

This person, furthermore, is incapable of treating ANYONE well, at least in an intimate couple relationship.

The first time I scribbled myself this note, as I often scribble down ideas for this blog, I went on about how I didn’t know why I didn’t see this before.

Now I do.

I didn’t know this before because I didn’t know that he was an adult child of an alcoholic. And when I did discover that, I didn’t realize his ACoA problems were this bad.

When I first met Chi, I didn’t hear anything that didn’t mesh with my ideal of what I wanted and needed in a man. He was the sweetest, the nicest, the most darling man. That was what wrung my heart over how unhappy he was. If he'd been a rat, hitting on me, I would have said, "Yuck!" and run the other way. But he wasn't. He was handsome, he was funny, he was ADORABLE. I couldn't for the life of me understand why his wife was acting like such an ASS.

He was unhappy at having a wife who didn’t pull her own weight. Therefore, I concluded, and correctly, I still assume, that he will be a person who will pay his share, do his share. I’ve been so tired in my life of struggling to do everything by myself, and I have had some pretty bad situations dumped on me to handle just about all by myself. I heard tales of a wife who, yes, appeared to be quite a slacker, and when I began a closer relationship with Chi and heard more, I was absolutely appalled at some of the behavior I heard about.

But. What I wasn’t seeing was his complete inability to do the most important, the most important, the most important thing in any relationship: Be himself, and promptly, clearly, and consistently tell the truth about who he is, how he feels, and what he wants.And have a little fucking self esteem of his own that isn't dependent on having someone else bolstering and bolstering and holding him up all the time, moment to moment to moment.

This part, was hiding.

It was hiding behind Rory’s behavior. When you try and try to tell your truth to someone, and that person bites your head off, finds something you feel insecure about and attacks you with it, puts you down and embarrasses you in public, cuts off communication, won’t snuggle, and cuts off the sex, and you don’t feel great about yourself anyway—and you don’t want to leave and hurt your kids—you’re going to just stop talking to the person.

It looked like it was all Rory’s fault.

Especially when he could tell me things he’d never told anyone else EVER. When you see that, you think, It’s her. All he needs is a change of partner. And I’m wayyy better at this communication stuff than she is, so Problem Solved.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

What I didn’t see was such low, low self esteem that this person won’t tell his truth to anyone who gets too close. Because he thinks he’s such a subpar romantic partner that if he disappoints the woman in any way, she won’t love him anymore. All Rory did was get angry for five minutes and blame everything that went wrong in the marriage on him, and she had him back again. Out of guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. I didn’t hear one thing in that goodbye phone call that sounded like, We really love each other, I can’t leave her, she’s my wife, we’ve found each other again.

I heard guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. When, I’m truly sorry to say it, but any idiot could look at the behavior I’d been hearing about for five months and know perfectly well that it was NOT all Chi’s fault. Not by a long shot.

So when I first met him, all the information I was exposed to was all the ways he’d make me a good partner, and during the four months we were in love all I was exposed to was him trusting me and telling me the truth.

I was not exposed to his fear of telling anyone too close the truth until the very end.

While he was with me, he felt good about himself. That made it easier to do the things a non-ACoA person would do: Recognize how deeply painful the relationship was and how it didn’t meet his needs. Notice the hateful way she often acted. Understand that nobody deserves to be treated that way, and make a comparison of how I made him feel vs. how she made him feel. Envision a better life. Know he was worth it.

Until she handed him guilt, and punctured that fragile self esteem again. Bye-bye!

I started out with a picture of him as a much healthier person than he actually was, and I didn’t see any evidence to disprove that until that last phone call.

And my vision’s been clouded still in all the months since.

Clouded by how happy I was. I didn’t want to let go of it.

Clouded by what a terrible thing I did in approaching a married man, and all of society’s mores concerning that. In this society, I am a bitch

                          bitch

bitch

                                                                                 BITCH

                                              BITCH.

So of course I lost him. I am a bitch!

Therefore, it was all my fault.

After all, we all believe the marriage is always best, (unless you’re Hillary and you go back to Bill), and anything that’s not the marriage is therefore bad.

So I beat myself up for several months over that. And I was insecure, and trying to acquire a helpmate in life. User! Manipulative!! So I beat myself up for several months over that. And, of course, all two people in a bad marriage need to do is talk things out, and so I beat myself up several more months over that.

And he’s such a good person. Such a sweet person. He truly is one of the gentlest, kindest souls I have ever, or will ever, meet. He is not a user. He is not a player. He is not a commitmentphobe. He is not a psychopath. He is a dear, darling, smart, sharp, hardworking, fair, sweet, sweet person.

So how can he ever treat anyone badly?

It has taken me an entire year and a half to realize that he will always treat the one closest to him badly, because he’s trying too hard not to!

(Yes, Virginia, you can be too damned sweet.)

When you cannot be honest, you will always,

                                                                                                 always,

                                always,

ALWAYS

hurt the person you love and destroy your relationship,

BECAUSE

you will pretend

                                              and pretend

                                                                     and pretend

                                                                                          and pretend

AND PRETEND

to be what they want until it

HURTS SO BADLY

that you can’t do it anymore.

And, if you are ACoA,

YOU STILL CAN’T STOP PRETENDING.

And that, my friends, is when you start to do things that hurt the other person SO MUCH MORE

than simply TELLING THE TRUTH IN THE FIRST PLACE ever would

that you are a clear and present danger to anyone you are in an intimate relationship with.

If we’d stayed together, this would have applied to me.

I grieved and grieved for a year and a half because I was reacting as if I’d be treated well. And as far as I knew, that was the case. He treated me well for four months. Because we didn’t live together, and he wasn’t afraid of losing me.

I wonder what the odds are that he’s being truthful now. He probably feels so guilty about the affair, and so thankful that the wife who rejected him for twenty years is acting loving again, that he’s doing the whole thing over.

                           AnythingbutdisappointRoryanythingbutdisappointRoryanythingbutdisappointRory

EspeciallyafterthehorriblethingIdid.

If I see him again, it’s because he’s done the whole thing over,

And it hurts too much not to be himself.

It hurts to play someone other than yourself. It really, really hurts.

And WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.

I don't care how Mom and Dad treated you, that doesn't make you bad. There isn't anything wrong with you, and you're supposed to be yourself. If you're not going to be yourself, why have a relationship? If all you want is to play a pleasing role and get your kudos for being other than who you really are, you can go to work and do that. You don't need a girlfriend, husband, or wife. Those are the people who are supposed to know and love THE REAL YOU.



 
Unless and until some people learn that, they will always end up destroying their relationship,

Because they believe it’s good to be someone else, and bad to be themselves

which leads to the WORST BEHAVIOR OF ALL,

which is done OUT OF THE MOST HORRIBLE PAIN.

And this is why Chi is not capable of treating me well. He’s only capable of treating me badly. Because to be dishonest in your intimate relationship is the WORST TREATMENT short of abuse that you can give someone. Because it's a relationship destroyer. It makes your whole relationship FAKE.  And a fake relationship, one in which you can't be yourself, one in which don't get your needs met, is one that's going to have a third party in it pretty darn soon.


But ACoA-ness, codependency, childhood abuse, low self-esteem make you believe that dishonesty is the right thing, because today it makes your partner happy. And this is very difficult to unlearn. Because you believe if anyone knew the real you, they couldn't love you.

This is very sad. But it does make it easier to let go of someone.

And it does make it easier to change your stance toward them to one that will promote health. Before, I was trying to trade love for devotion. “I’ll treat you the way you always wanted to be treated, and in return, you will be…

SO grateful.”

Ugh.

So I'm not talking about the sociopaths. I'm not talking about the commitmentphobes. I'm not talking about the sex addicts, the Anthony Weiners who just CANNOT keep their weiners in their pants.


The truly nice, decent, sweet, loving people who really don't want to hurt anyone? This is why they are having an affair with you.


And it's no substitute for therapy.


It's no substitute for finally learning, waywaywayway deep down, that you are a lovable person.