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Re: Re: It seems there was much illusion, therefore much disillusionment

Having followed this blog since the beginning, I know well how much strength you must have to still be functional after nearly 30 years of such a relationship, and to be healing instead of curled up in a corner gibbering!I understand, also, how putting it all into words is part of a healing process. 

I grew up in an atmosphere that undermined every enthusiasm, every development of my own individuality and personality, and prepared me for dealing with the world with the knowledge that the only way to be myself was to cheat, to sneak it in, between giving or seeming to give everyone around me what I thought they wanted of me.   All my choices in life began with those influences and imperatives, and have been tainted with a profound sense of shame for everything that was me, the shame fed over the years by all the unhappy consequences of poor choices.

Yes, it takes time to learn to trust others... and to learn how to not need to trust so much--to not need to lean so heavily that when someone ducks out, we go crashing to the ground. Somewhere in the programming Western culture gives little girls and maybe little boys, too, there is something about how the Perfect Man must be a mighty oak, someone who can be utterly depended on--and yet, no one is really like that. 

I don't know if you need to hear these things, if they benefit you as much as it benefits me to put them into words.  These are all things I have had to learn, and am still absorbing.  If any part of it clicks for you, unlocks any doors, then, hoorah!  If not, thanks for helping me to open up and see, and say these things.

 

posted by Ciel on June 21, 2009 at 7:37 PM | link to this | reply

Re: It seems there was much illusion, therefore much disillusionment
Ciel, thank you so much for your thoughts here. 

Before my involvement with this person, who has been only my second relationship in twenty-eight years, I was in a long and turbulent marriage, and often I was quite unhappy. I didn't have a lot of options, we were here and my whole family was in England.  The children grew up here.  It was my lot, but not one I willingly embraced.  I had learned to manage a difficult husband by, mostly, denying my own needs.  He was insensitive and generally ill-mannered and inconsiderate, demanding and controlling.  I was often insulted, not least by his use of profanities.  He had his good points, but his behaviour worsened over the years.  He eventually pushed me too far when my health began to slow me down, and around about the same time this person came into my life. I've had extensive counselling to deal with the fallout of separation, mostly from my husband's behaviour, which was more about losing a possession than about love. 

I dealt with being broken up with; I couldn't quite cope with being around him again.  I was doing a lot better until the rapid advance of this new relationship of his, and the way he broke this news as if I were just another friend and well-wisher.  I guess he has no idea what he has put me through, what it cost me to be with him and what I have lost as a result of trusting him.  It never was about obligation -- I just believed he was more committed.  I have said as much, and he knows how I feel. I can't be just a friend.  I did try. 

My difficulty has been his own uncertainties; the mixed messages and then a very sudden change.  It hurt me more than my husband had ever done; I expected selfish behaviour from him.  Not from this man.  If he was in two minds he should have been honest about it and let me go sooner. I loved him and I trusted him.

I don't feel like committing, ever again.  I am not going to spend my years weeping or anything like it, but I do need time to recover from an extremely chastening experience.  I doubt that I will willingly trust again, it will take time.  I trusted my husband, and he took advantage of me too, in making decisions without consulting me, and leaving me foundering in a strange environment while he got on with his career.  I am much stronger than my posts suggest, or I will be when I can feel like I am back to something like my old self again.

God places good people in my path when I need them; at the time our relationship began I needed someone to treat me well, and he did.  Perhaps there is some purpose at work that I don't know about and I have to try to trust that all things work together for good.


posted by mneme on June 21, 2009 at 5:47 PM | link to this | reply

Whatever the situation...
you have to find the strength to realize that if someone can treat you that way, then they really are not worth being with anyway.  I have been where you are, but time will heal (or at least minimalize) some of the pain and open new doors for you to be able to find new, and better, loves.  Be strong!

posted by maggieowen on June 21, 2009 at 11:48 AM | link to this | reply

I hope you can walk from this situation and have the life you deserve! sam

posted by sam444 on June 21, 2009 at 11:23 AM | link to this | reply

It seems there was much illusion, therefore much disillusionment

but you are still in love with what you believed in and needed to believe in with all your heart. 

In my early years, I gave my whole heart to such an illusion, and spent half of my life (back then, 15 years) believing he could love me, if only he understood, if only he knew me better, if only I persisted in loving him.  I wrote a lot of letters.

It took 15 years for me to see that he was, in fact, and always had been rather a jerk to me, was not only unstable himself, and not the rock I so needed and wanted him to be, and was at best tolerating my pushing myself into his life, not valuing it in the least.  I realized finally that I didn't actually want what I had been trying so hard to create. That what I thought I had lost was not something I had ever actually had.  After gripping so tightly for so long, I opened my hand, and found it was empty.

I haven't connected with him since, and really never missed him, once the dream was dispelled.  Found him on facebook a while back, but didn't send a hello.  Nothing to say.  No point in re-opening that door.

It has been a pattern of mine, to pursue dreams of love singleheartedly--if only he understood, if only he saw my devotion and was moved by it...That is such an anguished path, and there is no reward at the end of it, except freedom from it, when it is finally abandoned. The reward, finally, is yourself loving you too well to put you through such unrequited, painful, pointless effort.

Love happens.  Or it doesn't.  We can't make it happen, we can't force it, we can't bring people around to being what they are not.  And really, truly--would we want to?  I eventually decided never ever to work again at trying to make any kind of relationship happen. If I open a door, express a welcome, and it is not responded to, so be it.  If someone knocks, I take a good look at who they really are, before inviting them in.  I have been too much the victim of my own needs and dreams, too ready in the past to project my Perfect Prince onto anyone who even slightly resembled him.  If someone wants to leave, I don't prevent them or try to convince them.

I have never understood why no one has ever wanted me in their lives the way I hungered to be wanted.  There are those who love me, of course, and I am secure in that love--my kids particularly.  But that's a different kind of love, of fulfillment.  There are some who love me, but have never seemed to much like me; there are some who love me but don't want to be involved in my life.  (That's family for you!)  I do finally get it, though, that if the kind of love we're talking about here--of shared life, companionship, welcome, emotional and physical intimacy-- is ever going to come my way, it will come to me, it will not be captured. It will recognize me, know me before I see it coming. It is not something that can be hunted or trapped or held against its will and its nature.

 If it is not mutually desired, there is nothing in it but heartache and endless hunger for a feast one sees behind the glass wall.  

 Mneme, when I read your posts here, your yearning, your pain--I want to shake you awake, out of the nightmare of love denied, love rejected.  I want to save you the further years of pointless anguish!  Because in waking, there is a new day, there is joy and happiness possible, there are things to do, places to go, opportunities to choose from, dimensions of the world that in sleep we never dream of! There is even the possibility of real love, real connection, once we clear the falseness, the illusions of dreams and hungers out of the way.

We have to love ourselves the way we want to be loved.  To reject any bullshit that tells us we can't or shouldn't, that we aren't worthy, that our love for ourselves is somehow wrong.  We can know ourselves better than anyone else can, we can appreciate, and enjoy and validate our own existence, foibles and frailties and failings and all--because they are all essential parts of being human.  Maybe our hunger for someone else to give us that nurturing, healing regard is because we have not learned to give it to ourselves.  Perhaps we were taught to believe that it has to come from outside ourselves to be real, to be significant. 

But rescue isn't love.

posted by Ciel on June 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM | link to this | reply

Re: mneme:
Thank you so much justi - it is very sad, however it's what he wants.  Home is England. Here (where I am now)  is Australia, where we lived for much longer than I ever wanted to.   Sometimes I feel like such a complete fool to have believed in him, he is so kind and gentle and is always very courteous towards me.  But I need to protect myself now and not see him at all, which most of the time I can do.  It comes as a shock when someone you trusted does something like this.  

posted by mneme on June 21, 2009 at 12:24 AM | link to this | reply

mneme:
I am so sorry this is so painful to read. I am not privy to all that has gone one but this is a sad situation. Where are you and where is home?

posted by Justi on June 20, 2009 at 11:28 PM | link to this | reply

Re: ... wishing you well.
Thank you, Chilitree.  I'm often reflective on a Sunday.  And I miss him, every day.

posted by mneme on June 20, 2009 at 9:15 PM | link to this | reply

... wishing you well.

posted by Chilitree on June 20, 2009 at 9:03 PM | link to this | reply