Fuck you! Fuck your insensitive analogy! Fuck your unsolicited advise! Fuck your request for friendship! You fucked me! Now I am fucked. No wonder you can’t sleep at night. But you do have the ultimate control- just what you need! I will never forgive you for slamming the door in my face with your closed mind and heart.
Robin’s Nth attempt at reconciliation led me to make the analogy that we were like a loaf of bread. We brought the flour, yeast, ingredients to the relationship. Our shared experiences were the heat of the oven. I told her that you can’t unbake a loaf of bread. But that I still love her and would like to remain friends – true friends. The above was her reply.
A friend recently suggested I’m going through a premarital divorce. I laughed so hard I nearly spit my wine. Literally.
I don’t regret calling things off. I feel sure it wouldn’t have been right for us in the end. Except for the times I don’t feel so sure. Like, say, tonight. She dissed my kids. Right? Had Katherine for a sleepover and then refused over and over again for Francis. Never even offered for Kaitlyn. She had one foot in the boat when it was time to cast off. Right? She told me she didn’t want to sell her house. Just in case. I mean, she’s been screwed by guys in the past. Except she interviewed 3 different schools for a spot for her son with special needs. She’s not really family-driven. Right? She didn’t want my kids at her son’s soccer games. Except she did come to the zoo with us and we had a ton of fun. Then again, she came to Great Wolf Lodge with us and pretty well phoned it in.
When I think about Robin, I think about how un-driven she is. How much TV she watches. How she let her career just slip away from her. And her older son too. How, from my perspective, she just lets life happen to her. How she has no health insurance even though she could get it through the state. How she never reads books. How she has literally one friend in town and two long distance ones. She thinks I’m too judgmental. Can you not judge, evaluate, the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with?
Her beautiful, beautiful face comes up on the slideshow on the computer, smiling, and I ask myself what the fuck I’ve done.
Talking last night with a friend going through a rough divorce (as opposed to those smooth divorces, right?) and she told me about having recently hooked up with an old boyfriend from high school. How strange it is to sleep with someone after being monogamous for 15 years. I told her I totally understood that. First couple of times Robin and I slept together I found myself thinking she was from another species or something. Her body is *so* different from Frances’. My friend said the thing she enjoyed the most about the hookup was spooning. I heard that loud and clear. I sure, sure do miss that. I’ve now learned, for the first time in my life, how to share my body but keep my deepest soul to myself. It’s fun and certainly scratches an itch. And my friend is a good friend that I’ve known for many years. So it’s very comfortable. And I do likes to have some fun, so it’s not like I’m necessarily…reserved. But. You just can’t, well, let your guard way down. Which is my modus operandi since Francis died. Kids need me on the ball every day. Can’t let my guard down. I’m a “Principal” at work (i.e. top rung of the technical ladder). Can’t let my guard down there. Now I can’t even let my guard down in bed. I guess spooning, quiet cuddling is a symbol of having found your One Safe Place. Which I haven’t. Thought I had. Maybe I did and just couldn’t handle it.
I love Kasey Chambers’ “The Captain”. The lyrics are, in some sense, reprehensible.
“You be the captain.
And I’ll be no one.
And you can carry me away if you want to.
You can lay low. Just like your father.
And if I tread upon your feet, you just say so.
You’re the captain, I am no one.
I tend to feel as though I owe one to you.”
About as anti-feminist as it gets. Yet I completely understand the sentiment. It’s the same sentiment as Elizabeth has in 9-1/2 weeks. How liberating it would be to have someone make all the decisions, do all the work, bear all the stress, tell me when to eat (feed me no less), when and how to fuck, when to sleep, when to dust the furniture, when to shit. Robin thinks I have control issues. Maybe she’s right. When it comes to my kids, she’s definitely right. Letting go is not a natural reflex for me.
God, I’d like to find someone that is my One Safe Place.
funny, the only word I can think is FUCK.
This blows for you.
It’s likely horrid and shitty and sad right now. I can’t imagine there are any answers either.
But being controlling for your children’s sake? I can’t imagine that’s a bad thing. If she’s so totally different from you, and unwilling to try and be something more, if both of you are stuck in your corners, then it’s not going to work.
Your children are stuck with whatever happens for the rest of their lives-that matters, and you know that. They’ve lost their mother, and you’re damned careful they won’t lose another.
It makes sense to me dude. Hang in there.
You knew in your gut it wasn’t right. You still know. It doesn’t mean it’s not the suckiest thing ever.
I’m with Thor- hang in.
xoxo
I often wonder about that whole control/responsibility thing. As a parent, with the nature of my job, as the primary caller of repairmen and businesses in the house… just a lot of ways, I have to be “on” most of the time. Prepared to take charge, if I’m not already actually *in* charge.
I wonder whether I would want to let go of that control and responsibility, for a day or a week or a month, whatever. As exhausting as it is to always be “on,” I wonder whether I would actually be able to let go and not be in charge.
I tend to doubt it.
And, as a general rule, those who make accusations to others about their need for control… are usually just deflecting attention from their own control-freak-ish-ness.
Thanks y’all. I’m hanging in. The longing gets fairly intense lately. Was thinking it would be nice to have someone to cuddle and watch a movie with sometimes. I am so loathe to just write her off, but I do think there is more for me out there somehow.
Kate – I appreciate your observation about pots calling kettles black. I think there’s a fair bit of truth there. Her means are just more subtle. I mean, we all try and exert control, don’t we? It’s not like we’re just seahorses with our tails wrapped around a reed waiting for the current to switch and send krill our way, right. Anyway, your observation eases my mind some.
Happy New Year.
Peace.