Just to preface this, it feels weird doing this here, because I know that if I were in her position (and if I were reading my ex's blog), I would interpret all of this stuff as stuff meant for her to read and constructed as such. You'll just have to take my word for it that this is not that. This is for me. Another attempt to clarify what I'm feeling on the topic record the thoughts I've been having. As it relates to the last post, this is me getting my "secrets" out into the open so I can deal with them, either through dialogue or the process of getting them out of my head. Like it or not, this girl (woman? it sucks that there's no easy term that sounds right; I think the closest is "lady" but that still has a connotation of "ladies and gentlemen" like it's formal or something) still occupies my thoughts pretty regularly. I'm doing pretty well about it recently. I don't really feel that sad anymore. I have regrets, sure, but the abiding sense of loss, of clinging to the memories I know are overly-simplified or idealized has faded. Which I'm also not sure is great, but I'll get to that.
When I was talking to Sarah S about relationship stuff, we talked about a bunch of things, but a couple of items really stuck after the conversation ended. The first is that I shouldn't have gotten back together with Rebecca after she cheated on me the second time. Yes, this is likely a gut reaction of "I should have ended things on my terms rather than experience what wound up being painful," but there's more to it than that.
More specifically, when talking about my attitude toward her after she cheated, I realized that what led to problems down the road is I took her mistake as license to take as long as I wanted to get over it. I thought this was reasonable. I'm still not sure it was unreasonable. But I obviously remember things pretty well for a long time after they happen, so the process was not short. And I thought my "willingness" to put in that work made me a great boyfriend, even though what actually happened was that I made it impossible to actually move past the problem. I don't like moving past things. I like solving them, coming to terms with them, or at the very least, eliminating the possibility of their re-occurrence. And when it's a major event, it (obviously, as evidenced by this post) takes longer for me to wrap my head around. The fact that it was the second time she cheated on me made it impossible for me to write off as an isolated occurrence, and rather than drag both of us through the process of me figuring stuff out, I should have done the easy thing and ended it.
This didn't happen, obviously, and because I had never resolved the core problem, anything extra that I became frustrated with seemed even more burdensome. On the one hand, this probably sounds like an excuse I'm making just to avoid taking responsibility for my reactions and shift the blame; on the other hand, I'm sure it was obvious that I was bothered by her cheating for a long time. Her desire to go to the bars with her friends, for example, was made even more bothersome because I still didn't quite trust her. Not only was it something I couldn't relate to because I didn't have a desire to join in, it was also something I couldn't understand because I figured bars were places people went to meet girls. Even if she wasn't going to meet guys, it was obvious that guys were going to hit on her, and she had "fell for" that before...
I know she was probably going to the bars to have fun with her friends because I wasn't that much fun to be around. That makes sense. I had obviously changed. I will try to explain. Again, this will probably come across as making excuses. I felt, not only that I had the right to change, but also that I should change. Obviously the person I was wasn't good enough. That person had gotten cheated on. So I changed, but in the obviously-wrong way. I became less attached. I figured it might hurt less if it happened again. On some level I'm sure I was hoping that if I didn't seem that committed, it might make her work even harder to make me happy.
See, here's the thing: I knew things would go back to normal eventually. I had absolute faith that as long as we "stuck it out" we were good together and would be happy again. I knew my "getting over it" process was going to be a long one. I'd read plenty of books that talked about people struggling through counseling for years to get over this sort of thing. I had this idea that it was supposed to be hard. I don't know what her conception of it was. I know that between me bringing it up all the time and her own feeling of guilt, it probably seemed like she had gone through enough "penance." She certainly had. But it's not like I was constructing some test. It wasn't "If you can tolerate me bringing it up and feeling insecure about it for "x number of years" you win the prize and we can go back to being normal. I was processing it in the only ways I knew how, which (and this may be weird) was to bring it up a lot in an effort to acclimate myself to the new fact.
(Sidebar: I do this with everything I consider to be a major change in a relationship I have with someone. For the first few weeks after Sarah Schreitmueller starts dating someone (not that this happens that frequently or something), I constantly bring up her boyfriend. I ask her what her boyfriend thinks of her hanging out with me, not to make her feel uncomfortable or make it seem like it's an issue he should be worried about, but to reestablish that something how I think about her has changed. If anyone tells me something about me that bothers them, I am guaranteed to bring it up the next few times (every single time) I do whatever that is. I will start prefacing my actions "I know this bothers you, but..." It will annoy the crap out of them. But I'm doing it as much to remind myself that something has changed or needs to change as anything else. It's my way of reminding myself, and it's probably the worst way ever, because it by its very nature reminds them too.)
So the next problem that happened stemmed from the fact that once we were back together, I didn't feel appreciated. I still felt entitled. I felt like I was always going to have the status of "being the bigger man" by agreeing to be in a relationship again. I don't think I was ever the person who took much initiative in planning for us, but what little enthusiasm I had was nowhere to be found. I assumed that if I was the person who was doing the hard thing (deigning to go out with someone who was unfaithful), I was absolved of putting further effort in. This was only a small facet of my (at the very least perceived) laziness. (It was also easy to be happy when I didn't have to work, I did basically what I wanted, and was generally content cuddling and watching TV shows.)
I knew my process of getting over her cheating would change things, but like I said, I took the long view. The "in a few years, we will be able to be happy, and in the meantime, this is better than being apart from each other." Obviously, she disagreed with that last bit. So because I wasn't putting work in (other than sitting around trying to come to terms with it), and she felt like we were drifting apart and that I was constantly judging her, things got worse rather than better. And you know what? There's a cliche about that, so I figured all was as it should be. Things are supposed to get worse before they get better, or that phrase wouldn't exist. So I didn't take that as a sign to reexamine or make any drastic changes. I just kept trying to "tough it out."
I still wonder what would have happened if we tried to really work through things (like with a counselor or something). I doubt it would have ended well. I'm pretty argumentative, after all, and I doubt that setting would really change anything. I know the times we tried to talk about it on our own it usually degenerated pretty quickly into one of two situations: Either we would be talking past each other as I was stubbornly convinced of a point I was trying to make and kept reframing it in a slightly different context until she agreed (though I'm sure her "assent" was never genuine, since it was more the result of bludgeoning than persuasion), or she would get sad and I would try to cheer her up (either by backpedaling slightly on my view (while somehow still trying to get my point across), or by dropping it and hugging her). That was a pretty big thing looking back at it. It happened a lot where she would do something that frustrated me, I would express the frustration, and before the frustration was even resolved, I would be trying to console her. So she would be feeling miserable, and I would be in this weird state of half-sorry, half still-frustrated. This even happened in Toronto when she was talking about breaking up with me. So what happened was, she aired the idea, I got offended, defensive, and upset, and then, because she was crying already, I set those things aside and hugged her and tried to be nice. It happened all the time, and it was terrible for actually getting to the bottom of anything. But I couldn't make myself ignore how miserable she was feeling (or acknowledge it and press on, or whatever the "correct" reaction is), and she certainly couldn't help feeling miserable, so many of our discussions amounted to nothing.
What it boiled down to was this: I wanted an unlimited amount of time to come to terms with her cheating on me. I figured nothing I was doing was as bad as what she had done, so I got a "free pass." This was obviously the wrong mentality. I don't know what the right thing to do is. I guess that's why people get paid a lot of money for counseling couples. "Working through it" seemed like an exercise in futility, and after a while, it took on an air of "well, I guess it's stupid to bring this up yet again." I'm sure it felt that way to her after the millionth time. The fact that I was still bothered seemed to mean less and less as it became a "yeah, yeah, I get it, I cheated on you" sort of reaction (that's an oversimplification, in case you were wondering). So things got worse before they got better, and then things ended because they got worse. My "taking the long view" might have been wrong. I don't know. I knew I was ready to spend years (the rest of my life) trying to make it work. So that's my secret, I guess: I am (also) to blame for what happened. I think I've been trying to figure out how for a long time. Because I see myself as "perfect" in a lot of ways, this took longer to realize than it should have. And for all I know, this was obvious to the people around us. But it's good to get it out there. I was confused for so long because I knew there was probably something I could have done differently, but because I place such an emphasis on having a justification for my decisions, I couldn't separate myself from those decisions long enough to really think about it.
Don't worry, I'm not done.
Recently, it's been way easier to look back on this stuff without the stomach-wrenching (or at least, the same degree of turmoil) I used to experience. This scares me. See, I know I dealt with my last breakup by over-rationalizing things. I immediately started resenting Hiwot because I figured if what I was doing wasn't good enough, then something was wrong with her. I mean, I tried really hard to be a good boyfriend, and she still didn't laugh at my jokes. So obviously it was her fault, and I almost-immediately started resenting that fact.
I realized I was starting to resent Rebecca. It wasn't a conscious process; I just realized in the gym one day that I was starting to feel angry instead of sad when I thought about her. I was mad that she had deprived both of us of what was supposed to turn out to be a happy life together. This obviously relates back to the last section in that I still had this idea that once we worked through thins, it would get better. (I was so convinced! I hate that. I hate that I was clinging to something so hard that she was able to set aside. It makes me feel like I had misplaced my effort/desires/love.)
My sister and I talked about this for a bit over winter break. Not, like, super in-detail or anything. I feel really, really awkward talking to her about it. But I value her opinion because she knows both of us so well, that I figure anything she says has some weight behind it. Unfortunately, she always comes across as defending Rebecca. This is probably one of the reasons I don't feel close to her anymore. But we were talking, and I obviously expressed my frustration with the fact that I still didn't quite know why things ended. She said something to the effect of "cheating is an indication of the relationship being over" in the cheater's mind. Obviously I couldn't figure out why we had gotten back together, then, but that's not really the point. The first time it happened, she also defended Rebecca's "right to move on" (for lack of a better term). I still wonder rather frequently why she seems to have this abiding opinion that I wasn't good enough for Rebecca. It might be that she feels the need to defend her when she isn't there to defend herself, but nonetheless, there's a pattern of 1) things got rocky 2) Rebecca expressed doubts/problems (or cheated on me) 3) my sister immediately justified/defended/encouraged those doubts/problems/actions. I don't think I've ever heard her actually say "Rebecca was wrong to cheat on you."
What this condenses down into is that I felt better looking back at my relationship with Rebecca, and that scared me because I knew that on some level it meant I was beginning to justify feeling callous. I know I deal with things this way all the time. It's the epitome of confirmation bias. As soon as a decision is made for you, you start coming up with reasons why that was the way it should have been. I've spent SO LONG trying not to think that. I still don't want to think that. I still want to think that it could have worked, that we could have made it work. I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose the good times we had, the times where it seemed like we would be together forever. I was willing to go through years of struggling trying to get that back, because Rebecca was the first person I'd been initially attracted to, reciprocated, and had that turn into a really special relationship. I wasn't ready to let it go, and it scares me to think that confirmation bias is stripping it from me. Yeah, time heals all wounds. It's probably better that (it seems) I'm going to wind up resenting her. But I don't want to. I don't want there to be that tiny kernel of hate at the core of me that enables me to move on. I wish the process were cleaner, somehow. It doesn't seem like it is, or that it can be. So I guess I'll let time do its thing.
I have to go to class. I'm not sure whether this is done or not. I'll reread it once I get back, but I'm tired of it not being posted.
Thanks for reading!
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