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“I love you”.
It was the end of an innocuous conversation discussing which cable package he should get for our apartment, but she said it to him followed by: “I miss you and can’t wait until I see you.”
He said, “I love you too.”
I was sitting on our couch staring at the words on his phone and being taken over by a wave of insecurity. It crashed over me and my feet fell out from under me as my certainty was stolen from me.
I felt like an outsider in my own relationship as if I was peering in a window viewing their intimacy. She was being confided in and being let in on his thought process about the details of our household. He hadn’t even discussed this topic with me. I felt betrayed in ways I wasn’t prepared for. I had suspicions there was someone else, but until then she was an abstract idea. As I stared at the screen, she became a flesh and blood reality that things would never again be the same and I could no longer pretend we were something we would never be. Everything I knew about us was washed away and I was left with questions.
A wave crashed against my knees and I felt like they would buckle. Did he love her? The words played over and over in my mind, but denial refused to let them soak in.
When I confronted him, he didn’t deny anything. He had been with her for four months of the five months we had lived together. She knew about me. He had told her that we weren’t together, but we still lived together. He didn’t love her, but she loved him. They had slept together.
Another wave crashed against my knees and I felt myself sink deeper. I pictured him holding her the way he held me. I pictured him making love to her and listening to her breath as he brought her to orgasm. I wondered what she did for him that I didn’t do. I wondered what he liked about her that he didn’t like about me. I imagined what attracted him to her in the first place. I didn’t want to. But, my mind wouldn’t stop playing scenarios, comparing and creating stories as to how it all happened without my knowing.
It was a boundary I never thought he would cross. We had been together for almost six years and I thought moving in together was the sign that we were on the same page. I thought we were finally moving towards being the couple we always talked about being. I was playing happy homemaker and doing everything I could think of to let him know that I was ready and committed. I saw little signs, but nothing glaring.
In the beginning, we did everything together. Slowly, he became more distant but I convinced myself that we were just getting settled into living together. Then, his patterns changed completely and I knew something wasn’t right.
The final wave crashed and I fell to my knees as the water washed over my head. I didn’t even try to swim or save myself. I just let it take me under. I surrendered. I stopped fighting. I had been fighting for us to stay together for what felt like the whole relationship. I was exhausted. I had no trust left. He moved out and left me with all the pictures of the future we would never have. Surprisingly, he had saved me from me.
As I look back now, I realize he had a pattern of never really being fully committed to the relationship. We did a dance where we would spend months fully immersed in the relationship and resigned to being together. Then, arguments would start and there would be some path of escape.
What I understand now is that I was never fully committed to the relationship either. We were mirror images of one another and he wasn’t the only one doing the dance. As long as he was never fully committed, I could continue to pretend I was.
What I was really committed to was fixing him, which was really a misguided attempt to fix myself. What attracted me to him was that he seemed like a dreamer. He talked about all these things he wanted to do, but I didn’t pay attention to the fact that he wasn’t doing them.
I was doing exactly what I said I was going to do, but I found that it didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would. I wanted to write and I actually had been writing part-time. But, the job kept asking me if I was going to dig in and focus only on the job. They wanted my full commitment.
Many nights, I was too exhausted to do both. More and more, I had to work after hours and log in from home. Along comes the dreamer, I see all these doable dreams so I focus on helping him achieve his dreams. I gave him endless encouragement and tried to find resources to help him accomplish what he wanted to do.
In my mind, I thought if I could help him get what he wanted, then he would take care of me while I pursued my goals full-time. It almost seemed to work. He would experience a small success, but then would sabotage it somehow and end up right back at the beginning again.
Love is blind so I never saw this pattern and I didn’t see how selfish I was for trying to force him into being an achiever so I could finally get what I wanted. And, he would rebel against me because I was trying to force him into my plan. Maybe, he sensed what I was oblivious to.
On the day that I found out he had cheated on me, I was devastated, but I was freed. Maybe, a part of him knew that it was the only way I would give up on his “potential”. The betrayal was hurtful, but it was the only way I would walk away and feel no remorse. It was the only way I would stop trying to turn him into someone he didn’t want to be. It was the one thing I couldn’t fix. When he left me in the apartment with no way to afford the rent on my own, I had to confront what I really wanted to do with my life. He was no longer a distraction. I was forced to face myself for the first time. I didn’t have anything to hide behind.
When I looked at myself, I saw that I was terrified. I was in a relationship, but I hadn’t picked a partner. I hadn’t picked someone who was strong on his own and who could support me in my dream because he was already pursuing his own without my coaching. The truth is there was a part of me that was sabotaging my own dreams. I delayed pursuing what I wanted and was using him as the excuse as to why I couldn’t have it. As long as I was trying to push him and help him get established, I didn’t have to focus on myself.
My underlying fear was that I wasn’t a good enough writer. I was afraid I wasn’t a good enough partner if I chose someone ambitious who would see my weakness as a liability. I chose someone who wouldn’t challenge me. I was also afraid I would choose someone who forced me into a life where I didn’t have enough time for my writing or who saw it as a frivolous hobby, instead of understanding how important it is to who I am. Ironically, I wasn’t treating it that way. I was the person treating it as a frivolous hobby and not honoring it as a need in my life. I was already sacrificing it.