Three weeks ago, I broke up with someone who seemed like the most compatible, copascetic lover of my life. Had to. The relationship really had but one problem, and that was a doozy.
"L" was a widow of about 9 months when I met her (though I didn't know that at the time). We began flirting, and she pushed for a date at Pennsic three months later.
Our time together at Pennsic was weird, and mostly wonderful - still just under a year, and the first Pennsic since her husband passed, so she was understandably a bit quirky and on-edge. But, wonderful.
The only other thing of note about that Pennsic was that I met her 'cowife' "R" there - she had been 1/3 of a 25+ year polyamorous marriage, and though she and the other widow were never sexual, they considered themselves to be still very married. She postponed our first real date, to go to dinner with R, and afterwards, R and I spoke briefly.
For the next 17 months of the relationship with L, R never again spoke to me face-to-face. Never. She would, if forced by society's dictums, face the open air perpendicular to me, or some random person who happened to be standing nearby, and speak words intended for my ears - but she wouldn't face me to speak. Such was the extent of her weird, sad, insecurities.
R hated me. She is friends with one of my exes, which apparently gave her a comfortable position from which to imagine me the worst of monsters. More than this, R feared change. Their late husband was late, and she'd be damned if anything else was going to change. Ever.
I, of course, represented change; a threat to her fantasy of stasis and continuation. More reason to hate and fear me.
At first, L would whisper on the phone when we talked, so that R wouldn't hear from the next room... Yeah, she actually did that.
She eventually grew to a more mature, open behavior about our relationship, but would comment that R would avoid conversations that even indirectly referenced me. Trips to see me where tense topics, even without the mention of me in them.
One more aspect, to impart to you the depth of this problem: I was forbidden to visit L at home. When we left her home town together last Christmas, R delivered her to, and picked her up from, neutral ground at a mall parking lot, lest I physically enter their driveway. Seriously. I'm not making this up.
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So, why did I bother with this PITA relationship? Aside from this one, gigantic, disgusting facet of our relationship, we didn't fight; understood each other completely from minute one; cooked, joked, and dreamed alike; it was by far the most easy, complete companion I've ever had.
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Three weeks ago at an SCA event, L called me over to her to flirt and cuddle in the middle of court, while R was up getting an award from the Crown. When at last R began to return, L dismissed me, not wanting me to be around when her roommate returned. I was sent away like a shameful, illicit affair.
L had assured me that she had told R she was "essentially divorcing her", and planning to move out. There were multiple occasions of this, worded differently and interestingly each time... It wasn't at all clear that she was being 100% forthright, and had actually said this in so many words. "You've just got to be patient... I am leaving my wife, but I just can't right now!" Sound clichéed? Yep.
That was the last straw. The next day, driving home, grinding my teeth the whole way, I called her and told her, "The horrid bitch won." L agreed.
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Moments like this are always tinged with irony, real or imagined. Remember when I said, "For the next 17 months of the relationship with L, R never again spoke to me face-to-face"? That was true, up until the day of the event. Not seeing L in the room, I walked up to R and asked her where they were sitting, as I had a bag of things L left in my car by mistake over Christmas. R faced me as naturally and civilly as any sane human would, and pointed out their table. I thanked her, and dropped off the items.
So, how many of these stupid, crazy problems from L and R's relationship could have been overcome merely by stepping outside of L's reactions? L has been heavily programmed by 25 years of passive-aggressive control by R; L (like her late husband) is notoriously conflict averse. I am not ("No, really, Broom?"). If I had taken matters into my own hands, and forced R to accept me as a real human being, instead of an allegorical threat, could I have forced her to behave like a civil human being towards me? Dunno.
In the end, what happened is for the best. I don't want to be dating someone who would treat the way L has; it's not enough to merely side-step the next few instances where that might happen.
(Hey, that sounded pretty healthy!)
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Those who know the couple best find nothing exceptional about these facts, except how happy I made L (and I can't count how many people explicitly thanked me for that). Many people are banned from their house, due to R's issues with them. Mostly girlfriends of their late husband (poly and open, but R passive-aggressively punished both L and their husband for their extramarital playmates).
When R began her war against me, I knew what no-contact, only-rumored backstabbing would do. I resolved I would find out her good qualities; why people loved her; what her friends thought were her redeeming virtues. I asked around to many people in the kingdom, for just that, explicitly.
Amazingly, I never found a single person who could say a single nice thing about R, without qualifying and excepting their statements first. "You have to remember..." "Well, R has always been... but..." Not even L. I've asked repeatedly
I did find plenty of people who had not a single good thing to say, but that's not surprising: we all have enemies. However, with the exception of R, almost every person I've ever met also had plenty of defenders. Habitual cheaters, wife-beaters, even sexual molesters have a cadre of friends who will stand up for them.
Now, at the event, I found an exception. When the queen called R forward for the award, she gushed about how great R was. OK, so the queen is someone who unabashedly likes R. No problem, but still: wow.
In short, I failed at my mission to find her good side.
Yeah, I'm bitter.
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L repeatedly assured me throughout our relationship that, if I leave her, she intended to fix the problems in her life (that is, move out from housing with R). Her affair with me was hardly the only stitch in her homelife. As you can imagine, someone with the bizarrely insecure issues of R is no gem to live with. I don't recall a week in our 17 months together that R hadn't reduced L to tears (usually, of course, passively released once R was out of the room).
Now that we've broken up, L has reissued the promise that she intends to win me back, after she gets her life straightened out. She has said it to me, and passed this along to people near me.
It's fucking with me. I can't let go. I keep imagining getting back with her, both good (that great relationship, without the horrid bitch in the mix) and bad ("I will so make her pay for breaking my heart!"). Sigh.
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So, three weeks later, and I've gone from sobbing daily to barely crying at all. Until this week, that is, when deep depression grabbed me by the knees as I walked by, and pummelled me in the alley. Fuck depression...
My anger at how I was treated hasn't subsided; it's grown stronger. My little buddy Dexter has suffered from my short temper, as have I.
Anger is certainly no solution to any of my current problems, as I'm not trying to clear a climbing wall or subdue a flesh-and-blood opponent. As the saying goes, it's like swallowing rat poison to kill a rat... and I've begun to develop a taste for the almondy cyanide
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But today I realized that giving up my anger is not my real path on this journey. It's a pleasant and desirable goal, of course, but not achievable, and since it's not achievable, perhaps it is a distraction from a more realistic goal.
My obsession with the dream of getting back with L is, of course, unhealthy, but merely getting over that isn't goal enough. Nope, just a rest stop on the path.
And of course, getting her back, if it were to happen, would be fraught with danger. To go back is certainly a terrible idea; to go forward is the proper idea. People don't change very much, very often, and rarely without a tremendously traumatic shove. Mere breakups, no matter how painful, aren't usually traumatic enough to inspire life changes.
What I'm getting at is: the incidents aren't the problem. The reactions of the players are the problem. And of all the players, there's only one I can change. If I can change any.
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I spent the first 40 years of my life looking for a girl just like Mom: abusive, emotionally manipulative, needy.
Wonderful, difficult, lengthy therapy has helped me overcome that idiom. Of the last six women I've dated seriously, only one fit that description. I didn't have the strength to leave her when I encountered the ego-damage she dealt, but, in my defense: a forty-year habit is S-T-R-O-N-G.
The other five lovers are happier stories. These ladies were supportive of my self-esteem, as are all my good friends, and any lover should be.
At the same time, there seems to be a new pattern emerging from the noise. Each of those five ladies had a reason why our relationship couldn't progress beyond this point, drawn in the sand. Not that those reasons were all bunk - one was beginning her 5-year grad career, another decided that until her daughter left home... Some decent reasons why the ladies weren't ready to commit to a serious, no-holds-barred, full-time relationship.
Again, the ladies are not the issue. My choice of those ladies - those unavailable partners - that is my issue. My pattern.
I don't believe in coincidence (nor do I believe in a higher power directing things, but that's beside the point). I firmly believe that we make unconscious decisions all the time, that hide our patterns behind a smoke screen of apparent randomness and "fate".
Fuck fate.
I gave up selecting for women who abuse me, and moved on to women who have no place for me in their lives.
Fuck that noise.
I want a woman who wants a man just like me in her life, now.
I want to start looking for her now.
Gods below, what a sad state of affairs! As always, wish you only the best on your search and on your choices.
ReplyDeleteLove you, Reed. Thanks.
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