Category: Emotional

I woke up angry and upset today because of a situation caused by my SO. My SO, who knows I need constant reassurance because of my emotional issues, calls me once I get off work yesterday and says, “I want to be alone tonight; I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” No warning and no explanation given, I babble some okays and the conversation is ended.

My first reaction was to be upset, almost ready to cry. Did I do something wrong? Was my SO offended by a stupid incident we had last night? (Aside: I keep a small pair of scissors in my robe. We were on my couch, my head in my SO’s lap. They notice and pull out the scissors. I feel a pull on my hair and say, “Don’t you dare cut my hair.” My SO reacts by saying, “Do you really think so little of me?” My response, “You pulled scissors out of my robe and I felt you pulling on my hair.” It’s stupid and ridiculous, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I started to think my SO’s self imposed isolation may have been my fault.)

My next reaction, about thirty seconds later, was full on I-want-to-kick-some-ass anger. My toothbrush, my hair brush, my deodorant, and other important items are sitting by my SO’s bed because I was not given any warning. No explanation, just a phone call. How is that fair? How is that caring? How is that reassuring? It’s not.

As a person who is trying to wrestle with emotional issues and find a better way to deal with the feelings inside me, I thought I did really well choosing to not go to his work and yell at him or call him while I was angry and scream profanities.

All kidding aside, I mostly felt like I was put in an impossible situation. Either I bow to my SO’s desire and spend the night worrying and upset or I call and leave myself open for the clingy partner assault. I felt betrayed. I felt like I’d been slapped in the face.

It is our plan to move in together towards the end of the year. What happens when this urges comes over my SO then? Being as the apartment we want to live in is 35 minutes away from work and my SO has no vehicle, will I be asked to drive home silently and not speak for the rest of the night? Will my SO just not come home, leaving me wondering where they are all night?

My SO’s actions do not breed trust, they breed fear. They do not breed understanding, they breed resentment. How are we to keep sharing a life together when I am left feeling tossed aside? I love my SO, but this is the type of behavior that makes me worry about my choice to stick it out and baby step our way to the life I want for us, the life I thought we both wanted.

So that is how I’ve spent the past 16 hours. My SO didn’t call when they got home, like they said they would. A text message sent at 9pm got me a two word answer, confirming at least my SO is alive and was walking to their home. There has been no other contact since.

I’m sad, but, mostly, I’m angry. I know tonight I will try to not be mad. I will try to explain why I believe my SO handled yesterday in a poor manner and, with my SO, try come up with a way to better handle the situation should these feelings come up again. Mostly, I’m trying to keep it together. I’ve already gotten upset about a simple task at work, transferring my frustration from one situation to another, which is not productive nor is it mentally healthy.

I don’t want to feel this way, yet my SO has done this to me. WTF!

Yelling is too good of an excuse to give my SO. I don’t want to yell. I want to get my point across and correct the situation. I don’t want a blow out, but my anger is so great currently, I’m finding it difficult to keep things in perspective.

For now, I’m just trying to breathe. Just breathe and some how make it through my work day in hopes that I will get an explanation of why I’m being treated in such an unfair manner.

It is what I need more than anything.

I feel comfortable saying this here because, well, this is just a box and only reflects my life as much as I’m willing to reveal.

I’m a needy person. I’m clingy. I’m emotional. And my distemper as of late has centered around the idea of reassurance.

When my SO and I had our financial conversation, ending in a less than secure way, a fury was bubbling inside me. My mind went where my mind often goes, down a long path that leads no where I want to be.

By refusing to hitch a ride on my plan of action, by saying, “Hey, maybe we should slow down,” my SO had, in my mind, said he was not fully committed to us. In my mind, the house was a symbol of his pledge to the life I want for us (house, marriage, kid). By not giving me a detailed explanation of how he would clean up his finances and make himself ready for our home buying adventure, I thought he was backing out of the relationship. The whole part about a shared lease for a year, moving in together, that went over my head.

After two and a half years, my SO has finally learned some of my nonverbal emotional cues. And after a week of no sex, less physical affection, and general ill mood, I was asked what as going on. Unfortunately, this came on the way to dropping my SO off at work. In a less than reassuring way, I said this was a conversation we should not have before a gig. It was later settled that I would come by during my SO’s very long lunch break and we would talk about it.

I don’t know why we seem to have important conversations in my car, but this was yet another one of them in my Civic. We sat in a strip mall parking lot, hot from the spring sun, me trying to explain why I had been so distant this past week.

I talked about how I felt. I spoke about how I was worried, ever since our last hefty conversation. I spoke about how my mind took the leap that if my SO hasn’t made a plan for his finances, what happens when I want to move into a house or have a child. One misstep had sent me on an emotional landslide, scared that the life I thought we were going to have together was falling apart.

My SO, obviously strained, talked about being unhappy. My SO talked about how, in the past few months, it felt like I was hot and cold, happy and sad, exuberant and then done. And this back and forth was weighing on the emotional health of our relationship. My SO put it bluntly: if they didn’t want what I wanted, they wouldn’t be here.

At the end of our financial conversation, my SO had just needed a break. It was too much to think about, the burden that still needed to be dealt with and the plan to deal with it. Now, sweating in my Civic, there was talk of opening up a savings account, making automatic payments, us both saving and working towards the goal of a home. And the medical debt will be paid, but $10,000 takes time. My SO reassured me; he will pay it off.

At the end of this conversation, I talked about my constant need for reassurance, how I often, with no hard facts whatsoever, jump to big conclusions and hurt myself and those around me in the process. I suggested emotional check ins, where I could ask the “feelings” question and my SO could do the same. We hugged. We ate Subway. We were both happy we had had the conversation.

Since then, my therapist has chided me about not speaking up long before my SO said something. Allowing my emotions to fester for a week did no good and hurt the person I care about the most. Yes, my SO needed a break from the financial conversation, but, because I still had concerns, the conversation was not over. I should have given it a day or two and then revisited with my concerns, not accusing, but saying how it made me feel and why.

As part of my SO’s new campaign of my emotional reassurance, I now wear a necklace that was purchased a few years ago. My SO loves it, but asked me to wear it. Around my neck, 24/7, constant physical reassurance.

Just last night, my SO told me how much better it has been in the few days since the car conversation. I agree completely. The emotional weight of my doubts have been lifted.

So from this, I have to learn that it is okay to talk. In fact, I must talk to get the bad out so the good to can flourish within. And STOP STOP STOP assuming the worst!

I overreact, especially when it comes to anything going on with my SO and I. I know this. And because I know this, I try to not rush to judgment on us. I try.

But, I just don’t know if we are going to have a “happily ever after.” And before you think I am being naive, I am not talking about perfection. I know there is no perfect. I’m talking about a happy, healthy relationship where both partners feel fulfilled in the situation. That is my happily ever after.

So to the rub. My SO has very poor financial habits. Previously, my SO spoke about us getting a home together. I, being cautious, have always put “if” in front of statements concerning anything about home buying. I didn’t want to possibly jinx the situation, but I always remained truthful and earnest.

I made an appointment for us to talk about the particulars of home buying after I finished taking notes on a comprehensive book about the subject. I wanted to know what I was talking about before I delved into this. I mentioned it on a Wednesday. We were to talk on Saturday.

So the day comes, we talk about it, and my SO says they’re not in the position currently to move forward with this. I ask if my SO plans to stay in the current roommate situation we deal with at their place (crying children and an unfinished basement). My SO indicated no desire to follow the current roommates to their new home, and us getting an apartment together would be good.

All this is logical and satisfactory, except for what came before and after the apartment compromise. Me wanting a house is not enough. My SO needs to want this as much as I do. Of course, this just is not so. My SO, in fact, seems to care about very little when it comes to finances, which frustrates me to no end.

My SO owes about $1500 to the MVA for back insurance payments. Since I’ve been in this relationship, my SO has haphazardly paid off this debt, and the end is near (it was previouly much larger). Unfortunately, my SO incurred yet still more unnecessary debt by not having health insurance and needing an appendix removed at 2am one very long and scarey night. My SO’s medical bills now total around $10,000.

It is not the debt that worries me. It is the nature of the way my SO deals with it. Rent being my SO’s only bill (and not in his name but paid to friends), my SO doesn’t feel the need to take this debt seriously. It isn’t that it will never be repaid, for the want is there. But the poor habits of not paying every month or any consistency whatsoever is infuriating. In the time we’ve known each other, my SO could have paid down so much of that debt. It would have never gone to collections, and, even if it had, my SO would still have the credit record of earnestly trying to rid the blemish.

Instead, in our Saturday conversation, I heard an attitude that does not gel with my tendencies. I heard procrastination and denile. I heard all the things no one wants to hear from someone they are thinking of tying themselves to for life.

I couldn’t understand how a 37 year old could have such poor habits. I have the life experience of seeing a parent cut up cards in a trash can to understand the importance of good credit. I pay around eight bills a month. My SO pays one. And yet I am in a better situation? This does not make sense to me.

I was listening to a public radio program where the financial expert said all married couples should join their personal finances. If not, they would always have a “safety net” in case the relationship dissolved, thereby never fully committing to it in the first place. Sitting in my car, as my SO was in the convience store buying cigarettes and soda, I knew I would never have my finances tied to this person unless they changed drastically.

So I’m left with the thought of our demise clouding me. I intend on getting the two bedroom apartment for the simple fact of finance: it would cut my monthly rent by $400. And I know, even if we no longer are a pair, I could still live there. We are friends, if nothing else. And I can’t assume my SO won’t change in the time between our cohabitation and my decision to end it, “it” being either the relationship or the lease.

The road I have been on with my SO has never been easy. So much has changed, yet so much remains the same. I am constantly worried something I will say will bring a truth from those lips I will not like and will find myself with abundant reason to leave. And yet, I always want to stay.

I can’t burn the house down, even with this fire smoldering. I have to give my SO the benefit of the doubt, a chance to prove my fears wrong. I know there is a good chance the simple fact I am “testing” my SO will doom me to an ending I will not like.

For now, I just want a roommate in a nice apartment that I know and like, even if this person turns out to not be the love of my life.

It is hard for me to fully explain the complexity of the 2 hour conversation my SO and I had last night. So, I will cut to the chase: We are good. We are together. We are still an us.

And now, what happened:

I made sure to start the conversation in neutral territory, my car parked outside his home. This gave either of us an easy exit strategy option, which I feel is important when having difficult conversations.

Though I made have picked a good place to start, my choice of introduction was flawed. I tried to immediately cut to the chase, without giving much of an explanation. I said the fundamentals of our relationship needed to change, or, more succinctly, No Sex No Sleepovers. I said I still needed him in my life because he was such a good part of it. I didn’t want to loose that.

He, feeling completely shoved off guard, didn’t understand what this was coming from. I began to explain what I was feeling and why, but he said “Okay, you have made your decision.” This, I thought, was going to be the beginning of his shut down and walk away tendency. Oh, was I wrong.

He began to talk about all he had gone through in his life, from his first sexual encounter (which still effects him today), to his angry youth years, where he had nothing but hatred for the world, and ending in his life now, three years of trying to create his own peace in action and mind. He talked about how he is a better person, what he wants to become, and the path in which he is trying to get there. I was dumbstruck that he spoke so much.

As I interjected here and there, things about our previous conversation were cleared up. I explained to him that I felt I had no choice but to change the nature of our relationship, NOT that I wanted to. I explained I couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give me a full life. I broke down the conversation we had, point by point, to try to make him understand. But it was I who did not fully understand what had happened.

That night, when I brought up marriage and children, to him seemingly out of the blue, he felt pushed and manipulated. He hates that feeling. He thought I was laying down an ultimatum. I thought he was rejecting me. Neither of us got it right.

He said he didn’t want to get married in two years because he would rather us let it come as a natural progression of the relationship. To him, in a long view of us together, he sees us married with a family. But, that night, he couldn’t explain that. He went into reactionary mood and, when he thought I was pushing him, pushed back.

I thought he was killing my hopes for our future. I thought he was telling me the best I could hope for was all that we had now and nothing more. Instead, he wants us to grow together without the pressure of deadlines and need to do’s. He is a go-with-the-flow type guy and wants that for us.

He thought my “ultimatum” and my instance came from a place of “this is what you are suppose to do.” He thought it was peer pressure from my friends, a sort of keeping up with the Jones thinking. I explained to him that my wanting a husband and children had nothing to do with my friends or my past lovers. I want a full life with him, not a half life. My mother never had my father. Her life was less than what she deserved because of the situation she found herself in. I don’t want that. I want a full partner, a full family, a complete life.

I hurt him. He literally said his chest was in pain. It was hard for him to look at me. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t know that he wanted this, why I doubted him. I offered for us to go back to my place and just chill. He said he needed time to think, to ruminate over all that was said, and figure out where to go from here. He got out of the car and said he would call me on Monday, give it the weekend. When the door was closed, I started to ball. Full on snot and tears were streaming down my face. My wails were loud and throaty. I felt I had made possibly the worst mistake of my life. I had unwittingly thrown away the best thing that had happened to me.

And then my phone rang. It was him. He asked me if I wanted to come inside for a little bit. I said yes, and hurried to his front door.

We sat. We talked in the dark of his bedroom. He said he didn’t want me driving the way I was. He said neither I nor Slick, my car, deserved that.

He said that on previous occasions he had just walked away from relationships. He didn’t want to this time. He made a choice. He wants me to stay.

We found a way to make things better. And we’re okay. We had sex last night for the first time in about two weeks. I just couldn’t be that intimate lately because of my conflicting feelings towards us. We laughed while watching stupid tv. And cuddled last night as we slept.

And as he got out of the car for work, we kissed like usual, he told me to drive safe like usual, and I said I would, him waving at me as I spoke, as usual.

This feels right. I’m glad neither of us let it go.

When one is in a heightened state of emotion, little things can spark an unintended reaction. Everything you see and hear suddenly feels like it is about you. It doesn’t matter how mundane or silly it would be normally. Rational seems to escape your every day.

For instance, every since Bad Night, I almost cry about 3-6 times each day, sometimes more. And by almost cry, I mean my eyes start to flood and I make it stop. I have to intentionally pause whatever it is I’m doing and take a breath. This proves more difficult while I’m driving. However, if my SO is sitting beside me, I am able to distract myself from reality.

Every day, since we had our talk, I have thought about how it is going to end. And I know this is what is causing me to have the emotional stability of a teenager. But hey, thems the breaks.

I think it’s going to happen tonight. This morning, when my alarm went off, I was already in a bad mood. He could sense it. (I think this may be the first time in our relationship he was able to pick up on my emotions.) I brushed it off as not wanting to go to work, as being tired from working the inauguration, as just wanting to go back to sleep. I suppose when my snoozing didn’t do the trick, he knew it was something else.

I’m trying to be better about when I bring up serious conversations. As we are getting ready for work, or while I am driving for an hour in rush hour traffic, did not seem the right time to talk about this. Especially since, if things go too wrong, he may have gotten out of the car on the highway rather than dealing with the situation.

When we got to his work, he asked me why I was so poopy. I told him we would talk about it tonight. He gave me a look and got out of the car. He told me to drive safe. And, unlike other days, didn’t wait for me to say “I will” as he closed the door, literally shutting it while I was in medius phrase. How very ironic.

I think he knows what’s coming.

All I want is a soft landing. I want my gym buddy. I want my theatre buddy. I want my friend, even if I can’t have my husband and my child with him. But, I honestly don’t know how he will react tonight.

Scenario One: He shuts down.
This seems to be the easiest and most likely to happen. He will just say, “Okay,” and let me go. He has said previously that he thought he would live out his days alone. But that was before me, before us. I suppose everyone falls back on what they know.

Scenario Two: He actually tells me what he’s feeling.
This seems the most unlikely to happen. He almost never divulges what’s going on in his head. For me, that has been the most frustrating part of the past two years.

I’ve tried to find out why he doesn’t want to marry or have kids. He’s never talked emotionally about it. He has talked about how he is fine being alone. And he’s told me about his Dad, for whom he has mutual indifference and hatred. Being that his father is dead, I suspect there is more simmering under the surface that he is unwilling to confront.

Scenario Three: He may say a little of what he is feeling.
I think there is at least a chance he will tell me something of substance, but I’m not expecting much.

Unrealistic Hope: He asks me to stay.
He says he will talk to someone. He says he will try. He says we can find a way to be happy together.

Slightly More Realistic Hope: We can still be friends.
After a month, after things have cooled down…maybe.

My SO and I fit in a way I have not felt with any other lover. That is why this hurts so damn much. I’m giving up on a life with a mate who would have made me happy. But he can’t give me the things I need, a loving and growing family.

I don’t want a half life. My mother never truly had my father. I want a partner and a husband, a provider and protector, but also a father to my children. I thought Steven was that man. I was wrong.

So now, I’m just hoping to keep my friend.

I love NPR. Love it so much that I tend to listen to it all day: in the morning, when I’m driving to the gym after work, and when I’m picking up my SO from his job. I even listen to it at work, mostly because I think it is better than the local rock station, which my co-workers love.

Today, while I was the only one in office for a few hours, I decided to listen to some old episodes of This American Life.

In the final hour of my workday, I listened to the episode titled “Breakups.” Now, I had heard this episode before and loved it. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew this was probably not the best time to here those stories again, but I pushed that aside and clicked on the free podcast anyway.

May I just say: I am glad no one was in the office. One of the writers, a girl with the cutest lisp, played songs by Phil Collins, who she subsequently interviews in the piece. You never imagine yourself crying over corny weepy love songs, but that is what I did for about 15 minutes.

The girl played “Take A Look At Me Now,” and the tears just came. Hearing about “empty spaces” and “coming back to you,” when your not entrenched in the situation, seem juvenile. And yet, I had to grab a napkin within a second of the song clip.

The interviewer talked about how she wanted to write her ex a love song to try to get him back. All she wanted was for them to be together. And all I could think about is how I’m probably going to tear my heart from my chest soon. I still have that damn song stuck in my head, too.

Listening to her story made me wonder how I will be when it happens. Am I going to end up on the floor of my apartment in my pajamas listening to sad love songs and balling for hours? I’m not a songwriter, but will pages and pages of bad poetry or endless blog posts soon find their way on my computer screen?

Or will I chicken out again, and stay. For now, I’m going to the gym, listening to NPR. Denial girl has not made her last appearance.

For some reason, my SO and I went back to my place Friday night and decided to drink a little. We each had a shot of Grand Marnier and an Amstel Light to chase it. I sat there on the couch, savoring the moment before my shot. He was wondering why I was taking so long to drink it. I tried to explain to him that this drink and I have a history. For a chunk of my life, it was the drink that got things going.

Unfortunately, I forgot it was the drink that got things going. It has this elixir quality to it that makes my mouth and brain disconnect. Or, more correctly, it connects my brain and mouth like concrete, not letting anything stay up there.

I asked him point blank, “So, two years enough time for us to get married?” He did his shut down thing.

One immediate sentence he spoke was true. I brought up this conversation seemingly out of the blue. But, for me, it doesn’t feel like that. I think about this everyday, all day. Part of it is because I tend to worry a lot. The other part is that every time we have had this conversation, it has always been left up in the air. There has never been a fully concrete answer.

Well, I got one on Friday. He said he defiantly did not want to get married or have children. Yet another slap in the face to my dreams. I tried to get him to tell me why. The best he could come up with was “I never saw myself getting married” and “I just don’t want a child.”

We ended up straying away from the conversation, again. I was softly crying and I think that has become my defense machanism. If the conversation is going south, I find a way to not be talking about it.

Some how I ended up in my bed, sobbing. I told him I was going to sleep, and I tried. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t deny what he had just said and the situation that left me in.

I kept imagining what had to happen next. I imagined having to drive him home. I imagined getting all of my stuff really quick from his room. I imagined driving back and crying myself to sleep. I imagined having to tell all my family and friends. I imagined having to call up my insurance company and take him off my life insurance plan. I imagined how we would try to still be gym buddies, how I would try to keep in touch, but knowing it would hurt so much. I imagined having to drop back into the dating pool, hating the way I look. I sobbed and imagined, and tried to get up the strength to do it.

I walked back into the living room and sat back next to him on the couch. I turned off the tv and quietly said, “I think I need to take you home.” I talked about how he had just reversed the hope I had been holding for him to change. I talked about how I didn’t know if it was fair to me to stay in the situation we are in now, knowing I will never have what I truly want. I talked about how, though I had hoped, it didn’t seem to have changed the situation at all. He stood up, grabbed a plastic bag, and said he would just be a moment.

And then I asked him to sit down. I asked him to hold me for a moment. He didn’t understand why I would want that. I told him I know this needed to happen, but just not now. Just hold me.

I told him how this felt like a mistake. I asked him why he couldn’t just let himself be happy with me. I told him I didn’t want this. I wanted to go to sleep with him beside me and wake up with him every day. I asked him if he would’ve ever broken up with me. He said he probably wouldn’t have.

He said things had in fact changed. He acknowledges the relationship we have to the people in his life. He’s begrudgingly called me his girlfriend to others. He’s been looking at property, in hopes of one day buying a home. He wants to have his family there, his mother, sister, two nieces, and, yes, me.

And I asked him why he hadn’t said this before. To me, this was progress. This was a reason to stay. This was a reason to keep trying. And it is the reason why we are right back into our routine, like nothing happened. My denial kicked in and I’ve been pretending since then everything is okay.

The difference this time, however, is that I know it’s not okay. I know I shouldn’t be in this relationship now. If I stay, I need to accept the fact that marriage and a child are not a possibility. And I’m not sure if I can accept that.

I’m looking into seeing a therapist. I have too many emotions and conflicting desires to flush this out objectively. I need some guidance. But mostly, I need somewhere to cry and talk.

There is a post script to this entry.
This morning, for the first time, he told me his father was a heroin addict. He’d told me about his father’s promiscuous ways, his numerous siblings, and the fact that he died of a heart attack in his 50s. My SO keeps opening up and seemingly letting me in, but I don’t know if what we have is enough, if it will ever be enough. Is it his Daddy issues? Is he just a stubborn unrelenting person? Why doesn’t he want the life I know we could have together? I am too close to the situation to understand it.
It’s just hard.