Personal growth – The girl who mistook her chair as a pulpit for the soles of her shoes

If I’m not worth it to him, am I at least worth it to myself?

There are boundaries in every relationship. Sometimes these boundaries can change, both by who erects them and why, and who challenges them. The boundaries set out for me by Stephen can shift depending on moods and circumstances. This can bring insecurity, since generally my coming close to these boundaries is met by him disconnecting and emotionally distancing himself. Disconnecting makes me insecure in my relationship. I feel unstableness in the connection and unstable in the relationship. No complex analytics needed to follow that one.

There are very few topics I would consider safe or free of boundaries that aren’t just ephemeral and light. If they are heavy or have negative (real or perceived) emotions Stephen has said they “just won’t end well for me.” His boundaries are concretely there for me and oh boy – they can be painful to run into.

But my promise to him was to address those boundaries and anything else calmly and with kindness, even if I feel hurt. Not to shriek in anger, pout, hide my face and cry. Not to hold a silent and anger packed grudge for hours, days and sometime longer. Ok I do yell. I have yelled here or there. Just the other day I screamed incoherently in the car out of pure frustration. I’m not perfect, I’ve fucked up some times. But I admit it. Both in the moment (or soon thereafter) and here and now.

So I shared that my boundary shifted Friday and he first exploded at me. It settled after a few hours and some decent and constructive conversation. Then the next morning he woke up at 6:30 was silently angry and me most of the morning. Not overtly pouting or slamming things like the previous afternoon, but he was down overall. He didn’t try to see me and how much I needed his support. How he needed to dig deep in himself to give me what I now need.

So, what I know is this … everything I give to him is welcomely received. Calmness. Kindness. Admitting when I make a mistake as many times as needed. When I ask for the same in return it is not openly given, but met with passive aggressive hostility and sometimes lies.

My question now becomes should I be bound to someone who doesn’t feel the same about me? And should I continue to be patient and wait for him to catch up?

I think he is worth it. Is it worth it to him?

Love and know thyself…

I’ve been thinking a lot about my expectations and needs around emotional support… but I’m trying to do this thinking with more transparency. Transparency between my partner and myself. Doesn’t always work when any need for emotional support that I bring up is met with “old marriage” bias by my partner.

I need someone interested in building something that can weather storms and be flexible to last a lifetime. Not something that’s a mask we put on for ourselves and others. I want the ugly. I want the beautiful. I want the painful. I want the joyous. I want it all.

I want my partner to want the same. If he doesn’t… then it really doesn’t matter what I want, does it?

The work.

I have not been writing much and therefore sharing anything at all. I’ve made a few posts… thought about how I felt and reread them only to find I wasn’t interested in sharing after all. Why? I felt like where I was when I wrote them had shifted. Everything continues to shift lately. That’s a really good thing, since the place they’ve shifted to is one of contentedness. And I’ve shared that the place of contentment isn’t always a place I can write from so nothing flows easily.

But I’m content now and sitting down to pick apart where that’s coming from. It’s from the work. The work is something I do a lot of.

What is the work? Its something that takes a great deal of effort some days, and none others. It’s as easy or as hard as you make it… but if the work is around a relationship then it’s as easy or as hard as you BOTH make it. It’s changing your perspective; it’s looking at a problem or situation from every possible angle, not just the one most comfortable to you. (Often that’s the delicious negative one we all like to cling to!). It’s about choosing a path that’s constructive, not destructive.

The work is hard to do on your own and almost Herculean if you’re doing it in the face of a destructive partner. That has happened here and there, but thankfully it’s not the norm. It’s an outlier. A destructive, nasty, insecurity inducing outlier.

After one particular situation where Stephen was destructive or really more insecure in his own way, as I saw it — I explained the work. I shared that it took a lot for me to view things in a positive way in the face of his destructiveness. I explained that what I drew upon were all the positive things that outweighed the immediate situation before me. I had to draw those memories around me like a blanket to change my view. I had to hold one after the other like a talisman. Examine each moment where I knew he loved me and showed that overtly. Each of those things added up to allow me a fresh perspective on his bullshit. I was able to see it as just that — bullshit. This is the work. It’s hard AF.

The downside is that every time you use a talisman you weaken it; you need to find fresh moments, strong in the memory of love and not worn thin over time. This is part of his work. Showing me these things overtly and without question.

Faith is not tangible.

I’ve been asked to have faith. Now if you know me at all then you probably know I’ve got faith in very few things. I’ve been a vocal atheist since I was 12… I’m doubtful about anything really. A born skeptic. Faith is something odd and foreign to me. But here I am being asked to have it.

Recently I had to ask for faith from Stephen. But I asked for it with trust as the basis. I wonder the difference aloud. I asked him what he felt the difference was between the two concepts — faith and trust. He said to him they were one in the same. But we both were bothered by the question overall.

He turned to the internet for the crowdsourced definitions of each. Turned out that my unease at faith was well founded. Trust was a more solid construct that humans understand with evidence and examples. Interactions with the world builds your trust in what you can know. While faith is rooted in yourself alone; it’s based on what you cannot know.

My ask for trust meant that I was able to provide evidence of my feelings and beliefs. His ask for faith actually meant trust in the broader, defined terms.

The crowdsourced definitions helped the two of us understand each other and what we were looking for here. We both wanted trust from each other.

Faith be damned.

Observations

I write more when I’m hurting or processing pain. Growth comes from that pain so I think this observation makes sense. However, do I become complacent if I’m content? What growth does contentment bring?

Contentment brings routines, structure to my hours and days. Starting habits I only whined about either not having motivation to do or truthfully never really wanted to do. Like exercising.

I went to yoga class last night. First thought after was “where is my bed and how soon can I go to sleep?” But instead we hopped in the car to head off to a neighborhood we are looking at real estate in. Once there, we stopped at a ramen shop, walked around the ‘hood and generally had a good time.

Contentment doesn’t bring me the massive upheavals that a lot of my personal growth so far has rested on. It needed to rest on that, else the upheavals would drown me. I had the choice of get up and grow or stay down and die. (Dramatic, I know.)

Contentment is a new space to explore and use.

So another habit that I don’t want to fall by the wayside is writing. Sharing thoughts on this new spot I’ve found myself in; figuring out how to move forward in a long term marriage that is not as solid as we thought. Working through issues as they arise so we don’t end up with a mass of resentments and fears. Secure and safe and supported and maybe… content.

What to do when you don’t want to do?

I’m not feeling well. I’ve picked up a cold that will move on shortly, but it’s here now. My head is stuffed up and my sinuses are irritated. I’m laying in bed writing and putzing online… and I stopped for a moment and actively thought about what I should do next. Go online and shop or read blogs or Facebook? Take a shower and get that out of the way? These two things suddenly represented a lot more than what I was thinking immediately.

Do I want to lounge around and be ill? This is not an issue, I can do that. However, I did that Friday and I don’t really think my body needs that, if I’m honest. My emotional state took a hit, too but that’s not exactly the full story there. I do think lounging is a great way to kill time.

However, if I get my ass out of bed, shower and get dressed I can still find time to putz online later – no worries there. The bed isn’t going anywhere, too. I can always lay back down if I need to. But it’s something done, productive.

So the choice is stay down, or get up? Guess that means I’m done here and off to shower.

I cannot make people smarter…

I don’t have a super power to make people smart, or make them grow, or make anyone do anything if I am honest. I have the power to do all those things for myself. I can grow and become a stronger person. I can show that to the world, and maybe fulfill my goal since childhood – to be an inspiration to someone. Any one person.

But that’s not certain; I cannot guarantee I will inspire. The only certainty you get is you are born and you will die. What you get in between is not up to you, in most cases. The sooner you understand this in life, the better off you’ll be.

Here’s a real kicker though… learning it once is not enough. You learn this same damned lesson over and over, if you’re lucky enough to. Or you ignore it and try to make things kowtow to you. Find a guarantee, wait for something sure. (Godot, is that you?) That won’t work and won’t teach you much beyond how to fail. Mind you, failing is not a lesson to disregard, but it’s painful and hard to do, too and most people don’t use it as a lesson.

When you start to see that things, people, dogs (!!) don’t bow to your will you’re a bit lighter. The way to inform the world about what you really need is to give that to the world. Yep. Complicatedly simple, right? Not if you don’t know what you need, there is work to be done to get to that simple point.

So what does that mean in practice? To me, today it means I give my love to my husband. Show him what I have and see what he responds with. Will it be in kind? Will he simply take? I don’t control that, there’s no certainty. What I can be certain about is me, my actions and what that can teach me.

Absolutely. Best wishes.

Sometimes doing what you think is best feels really bad. It’s hard to face doing things that are difficult. I know what I want long term and I’m able to visualize the best outcomes coming from all this work. It’s the actual climbing of the mountains in between your current state and the potential outcomes that are difficult. Challenging is not strong enough of a sentiment.

That’s a whole lot of nonsense I’ve written right there, eh?

Practical application is this… I wrote a letter to the “other woman” involved in my husbands emotional affair. I told her exactly why she was persona non grata for years, how her behavior was seen and how it impacted us. It was a bit of a smack down, yes. I can honestly admit that to my readers here, my husband and most important — myself.

I wrote it as an exercise to purge the events in chronological order, organizing my thoughts around these events. Then I sat on it. I read it aloud to Stephen, first draft. Sent him an email copy of the second draft. Then shared how the final draft looked after I sent it. He saw the whole process. Transparency was important here.

I just pulled the trigger today and emailed her. Something that took me forever to write, to refine to just the right tone and words. I got three words back. “Absolutely. Best wishes.”

Masks are useful… and terrible.

Something I encountered as I started to open up with friends and family was a level of incredulousness at the fact that Stephen and I were not the perfect couple. We had masks we wore and we played our part for others very well. Too well.

But something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

Holding a facade together with such tightness and skill took a lot from both of us. I’m sure he would agree. But the work we put into keeping up the facade took so much energy that there was little left to fix the foundational issues. What was left was the artifices of a relationship.

A while back, Stephen expressed interest in putting work in fixing the facade as a priority. I was interested in putting in the work to the foundation only. We were at cross purposes entirely, both righteous and looking out for what we thought was best.

Turns out we needed to demolish the whole damned structure; maybe now we pull out anything salvageable. Then we decide if we want to rebuild something all together new, and if we include the salvaged pieces from the last 21 years. I think and believe that’s the right path forward.

Date and time; longitude and latitude.

There are a few recent dates that haven’t receded from my head and I’m working on getting out. I don’t need these anniversaries clogging my head and reminding me of what kicked off this sequence of events that brought me to writing out loud. (I’m mainly trying to focus on the road in front of me.)

So let’s purge…

October 22 was the date I found my husband’s affair. We had been fighting and thinking about ending the relationship seriously for several weeks already. But on that date I broke apart and lost something of myself. Something I gave him 24 years ago and he crushed willingly and knowingly. It was followed by a week of pacification and lies about his actions in the affair, taking further toll on my fragile state and amping up my fears to record heights.

December 13 was the date Stephen told me he didn’t want to be with me. He exercised the opt-out function of our relationship that had been in place for those 24 years. (I had asked that this be done before any type of affair was even contemplated, but that’s not how things unfolded.) I didn’t think I had anything else to break but I did. I was decimated. I crashed. I was done.

Life as I knew it was over. In fact, it still is.

This was followed by me leaving Chicago for Northern Michigan and the first time I started to be kind to myself. I was able to understand what led to the above actions and forgive a lot — but how I’ll deal internally with these anniversaries remains to be seen.

Time is my friend in this. I think, I don’t know for certain. But it’s also the enemy with its dates and record. How to reach an accord in my own mind is the work to be done.

Forgiveness and understanding are vital to whatever comes next.

You can’t unlearn something.

Strange and beautiful lily from Cha-am, Thailand

So I spoke with Stephen for over 2 hours and we agreed we both still loved each other. We were also both adamant that things need to be very different for any relationship between the two of us to work. Change is needed on both sides.

My focus is on what I need for me to be happy in a relationship. I need to be involved and accountable for areas I had left solely to him for care and maintenance. I also want to find a new home and focus on that as a near term goal. (Both things that would happen for me in or out of any relationship.)

Something that seemed to cause him lingering concern was the fact that he’d arrived at a spot where he felt ok with being alone. He shared that he struggled with his decision for a while. Thankfully he had support from friends and family and got to a place where he was ok. So then I come along and upset that apple cart. And shit, who knows if I really mean what I say! I’m known for having a way with articulating my points and making this sound simple. All very valid concerns he shared.

All I can say is I’m glad this happened.

Glad for living with pain and suffering I’ve dragged out here for the world to see? Glad I dropped everything and focused on my own growth? Yep. I’m ecstatic that I am ok with being alone. I’m also very happy that Stephen feels that way, too. You can’t unlearn that you can survive.

I also learned that my family and friends care so much about me. I have people that will thrown down to help me up. I have neglected these ties or only put work in when I was needed. What an amazing bit of knowledge to have that people are there and that I can nurture those relationships in both directions.

These are things you can only learn through this awful process of separation. And that’s a gift we’ve given ourselves and maybe even each other. Merry Christmas!

A little help doesn’t hurt…

One of the things I am uncovering is a truth I always knew, but hardly ever executed. Help from a variety of sources… helps.

I’ll first explain that I’ve always pushed to be very independent from my family. I have very good friends but was their support when needed; I never asked for much in the way of help for myself. I never considered reading a <shudder> self-help book. I’m smart and made it 45 years by my wits and tenacity alone. Help for myself was weakness.

Turns out help is actually love in a variety of formats. Take for example this here blog. It’s my form of love for myself. I’m taking things I’ve known or thought I’ve known and actually doing them with love for myself. Documenting some of the reactions I’m having to where I am to see changes happen.

I recently finished a self-help book that in looking with an editorial eye, obviously started as one person’s words to themselves. Blog, journal or written in tears – it was a personal account of their own journey after being left by a spouse that they turned around to share. I found so much empathy and love written within that it actually helped. In fact, one point was so perfectly succinct I’m sharing here…

If I am bossy or pushy, people will be rejected by my behavior and avoid me. If I am the opposite, and let everyone push me around, then I will be unhappy and I will ultimately resent them (and myself for allowing the scenario to flourish).

Wow. That was exactly the life I’ve lived with Stephen for years. I was bossy, he was the opposite and resented me. It’s nothing deep down I don’t know but the book shared what comes next and how to find your way to solace while being alone — now and in the future. How to be better in wreckage you find yourself in so you don’t repeat your mistakes in any future relationships. It also exposed that part of me to myself clearly.

If I don’t see myself with clarity, how could I say I love myself? How can I forgive myself for my past errors if I’m constantly hard on myself and maintaining rigid independence? And if I don’t love myself, how can I give anyone else love? I can’t, no one could.

So this 98 page self-help book written by someone who is not a writer was actually helpful! It’s amazing. Without that kind guidance I don’t know I’d get to where I am as quickly. I’m not done or ready to start executing plans… but I’m finding solace and I’m forgiving myself. I’m close to being able to forgive Stephen.

My sister-in-law started a blog a while back to share how she was doing as she moved through widowhood with her three sons. (You can find her blog here if you’re interested: https://thenewdenise.com) She looks for some solace in sharing, perhaps. I get it. It’s helpful and right now, helpful helps.

Maybe one day I’ll have enough back inside me to return the help and love I’m finding in a broader capacity.

Thought retreat.

So let’s look at where I am now at as a thought retreat. A resting place before the arduous tasks before me. Time to stop things I’m actively planning. The plates I’m picking up to plan how I’ll spin them on their respective poles can sit still for now. I can look at them, but they need to remain still. I need to pause and I need to find stillness.

I need all the jumble of thoughts crowding my head to retreat.

I’m spending the next part of my life in a small town in northern Michigan. A very far cry from downtown Chicago. It feels like someplace where one would have a retreat. I’m surrounded by beautiful nature and loving support – both here and a phone call or text away. There’s loads of delicious food, like my mom making me homemade chicken noodle soup when I arrived. My family is embracing my desire to change and want to show me some nature hikes that will immerse me further in this lovely spot. My mom has a spa membership she can share to support my quest to get out of this fog and get healthy. So I can stand taller and see clearer when all is said and done.

So the concept of a thought retreat is very much how this is shaping up.

However, when all is quiet things creep back in… those thoughts that retreat come rushing back. Unloved. Unwanted. Alone. Is this any different from downtown Chicago if I spend the day watching Netflix and wishing Stephen loved and wanted me by his side? These are the thoughts I need to retreat from my mind. One step at a time.

Time is going to be my new partner. Time and stillness here in my north woods retreat.

(And obviously loads of time to write down my retreating but persistent thoughts!)

Kindness and love in the face of pain.

Recently, after many years and sniping and fighting… followed by ultimatums and appeasements my husband bowed out of our marriage. I love him despite these circumstances and his decision.

Right now, today and this moment it’s very hard to find the love for him through the haze of personal pain.

But I can and I will. It’s something I can do from where I am. I can give him that as the final gift of love and kindness. It’s just going to take time for me to get through the pain.

I know where I came from.

After a day working together I’ve lost it. Tried and failed. I can’t do this right now. I need out from under the knowledge I’m not wanted. It’s the kindest way. This brings me here. Kindness.

I started in a good place. A place of kindness. Getting back there will be a good road for me to take.