Be Still My Swirling Thoughts

So, I got a few more great questions today.  I have not been able to do much real thinking because of all the swirling thoughts.  However, I’m going to attempt to answer a few of the simpler ones – mostly to occupy my brain and fingers until I get tired enough to actually fall asleep.

Is your husband capable of being honest—does he even know how? That is the fundamental question. He may want to be honest and he may hate himself for his lies, but if he doesn’t know how, is that something he is capable of learning? Is it really a choice he can make?

That IS the fundamental question.  I’m not sure I know the answer.  I would like to think he is capable, but if I really examine that I can see it is magical thinking – I want it to be that way, so I convince myself it is.  Truly, there is not much evidence to prove that he is actually capable of being truthful and fully honest.

Whether or not he can LEARN honesty – overwrite his old behaviors, replace them with new ones, have truthfulness be his first reaction instead of his last – is a question someone else will have to answer.  I think only a trained psychiatrist can even say if that is possible.  Whether or not it is probable considering his history is a completely different question.  Again, using history as a guide, he tends to not put forth the complete effort and follow-through that a huge change like that would likely require.

What is his pattern?  Has he ever admitted to a lie when you’ve discovered it, but before you’ve shown your evidence?  Does he always or almost always continue to lie in the face of evidence or until you show evidence?  Think about that.  Admitting he has lied when faced with evidence is not a sudden burst of honesty—he doesn’t get a positive check mark for it.

To answer this question I have to admit that he does have one basic, overriding pattern.  That is to lie, then lie some more, then stick to that lie even when it is no longer a reasonable, feasible story that any rational human-bring would believe, then finally cave when presented with irrefutable evidence that cannot be explained away.  So, yes, in that regard he does not deserve a check mark for finally fessing up when to do otherwise would be tantamount to absurdity.  It would be like pointing at the sun and calling it a coffee mug – you can do that all you want, but no one will ever believe it because it is so obviously false in every way.

That is not to say that he has NEVER admitted a lie before I have found out.  It just rarely happens.  In fact, I think the ONLY time it has ever happened is with his last disclosure where he told me about the random online sex hookups.  I had no way of knowing that.  I had no way of finding out.  I hadn’t really ever asked him about it directly, although we had plenty of indirect conversations where that topic would have naturally come up – like when we talked about how many people we have slept with, whether we have ever used online dating services (technically a sex chatroom isn’t a dating site, I guess), exposure to STDs, etc.

There have also been a few times in the recent months where he has told me something that did not sound true or didn’t make complete sense.  When I questioned him by saying, “Is that really the truth,” he then said, “No, it isn’t” and gave me the real story.  Those occasions felt like HUGE steps forward – mini victories in and of themselves.  Now it seems almost absurd that his level of dishonesty was so high that having him admit to a lie when asked seemed like some ginormous progress.

There are different levels of separation. No Contact is the strictest level and it is only broken for limited exceptions: financial issues, emergencies—one of you is in the hospital. As for how long, that depends on the progress. I don’t think No Contact should be an option in your situation. If your situation gets to a No Contact level, it should go all the way to divorce instead.

Agreed.  Completely.  If we have to get to that point, then there is no way we will ever be able to salvage this marriage.

So for a lower level separation you could start out with No Contact other than counseling sessions and draw up a plan for gradually increasing contact. Of course that begs the question and brings up the fear: without your presence is he even less trustworthy?

Another blogger commented on that as well.  If my presence makes a big difference in his recovery, his level of committment to change, or his trustworthiness, then I think we are already doomed.  If he can’t be a trustworthy individual without me right by his side, then he really can’t be a trustworthy individual, right?  At least not trustworthy enough for me to intrust my life, safety, and future to.

What is progress? What sort of things can prove progress? Is it something objective and measurable or is it subjective?

These are excellent questions.  How DO you measure someone’s honesty objectively?  How do you measure progress with something so abstract?  My only answer is that someone else will have to assist me in making that call – preferably a trained therapist or psychiatrist.

I don’t think he can make real progress on this issue alone.  I don’t think I qualify as a real judge of progress in that area.  I certainly don’t think it’s healthy for me to be the one who decides when he is being honest and trustworthy.  So that means I can’t accept that progress has been made on this issue until I can see that he has actually worked on it with someone who is qualified and who believes change is possible and has a plan for how to get there.

“Full disclosure with polygraph? (Does it even matter if he’s lying to himself?)” Will this tell you anything new? Sure, it might tell you when he’s lied regarding something specific, but you already know that he is dishonest in general. Can repetition with a lie detector train honesty into a person?

That is what I keep coming back to.  Will a polygraph tell me anything new?  Even if he passes every question I can think of, that will not change his general dishonesty.  It won’t change the fact that there isn’t one “perfect” question I could ask that would ensure he won’t lie again.  It won’t tell me whether he is already keeping something from me that I could never imagine to ask about.  It definitely can’t tell me that he won’t lie in the future.

Can regular polygraphs “train” someone to be honest?  I don’t know.  Some people seem to think it is necessary for recovery from sex addiction.  My thought is that if you have to be strapped to a lie detector regularly to scare yourself into telling the truth then you are probably not a person I would ever want to put my trust in.  My husband seems to think that I want a polygraph, that I have decided that is the only way I can move forward.  The reality is exactly the opposite – I haven’t decided anything yet with regards to a polygraph.  I’m still on the fence, and I’m honestly leaning towards the “what good would it do?” side.

“My goal would be to work towards REAL recovery and reconciliation where we are each taking responsibility for our own healing.” A noble goal, but only part of it is within your control. Your goal is for you to take responsibility for your healing; your desire is for him to take responsibility for his healing, but that cannot be a goal of yours because it is not within your control.

Very, very true.  Again, I have to be reminded of what I can really control.  I may be able to ask for something from him, but I really can’t control if he does it or not.   I can’t set a goal for our marriage that relies on his actions right now because I do not know what actions he will take.

I often wonder if my go-getter nature enables his lazy, passive side.  I do the research, I read the books, I make the lists, I look at the details, I set the goals, I figure out the plan to reach them – so he thinks he can just sit back and watch.  Since that is my nature and it is not his, I tend to become the only one really taking a hard look at things.  His move is to say “here’s a decision that needs to be made, let me know what is going to happen.”  He certainly did that in this case. 

I have realized that I cannot control or dictate how he does the work, or even if he does it at all.  I can’t ever say that “my way” would be the best way for him – it probably wouldn’t be since we process things so completely differently.  He needs to figure out what HIS way would be – or he needs to stop trying (or pretending to try) altogether.  Actually, I need to stop saying that HE needs to do anything.  What really has to happen is I need to figure out what my bottom line is…

That last part is where I have been trying to get.  That is where all of this thinking, list-making, questioning, and soul-searching has been leading me.  I have to figure out what MY needs are, what plan of action I will take, and at what point I stop waiting for him to figure things out on his own and just keep moving forward without him.

You have been focusing on your development with hope that he will too. As I said in my previous post, you have been earning way to reconciliation or divorce. But at some point you need to say you are there. What is the reality of your situation?

Yep.  I can feel that I am getting closer to discovering the reality of my situation.  You would think that “reality” would be easy to discern, but, funnily enough, it has been one of the hardest processes I have ever been through.  We shall see what tomorrow (really today at this point) holds as I take yet another step closer to wherever it is this journey is leading me.

Related articles

• What’s Next? What SHOULD We Be Doing? (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• When we choose honesty (heidicvlach.wordpress.com)
• On Honesty (nikotheorb.wordpress.com)
• Good Liars: Their Characteristics and Why They are So Hard to Detect (workplacepsychology.net)
• [link] Why giving polygraph tests to sex offenders is a terrible idea (slendermeans.wordpress.com)

What’s Next? What SHOULD We Be Doing?

The final post in the series answering questions from a reader about our separation.

And what do you think you should be doing?

This is probably the hardest question of all.  I think I should be really thinking things out.  I have been doing that, for the most part, once my body started recovering (thanks to the amoxicillin).  I have been doing a LOT of journaling.  I’m trying to take this time to decide what it is that I want from this marriage, what it is that I need to be happy, and how I think that can be accomplished.  I definitely don’t have all of the answers.  I have started coming up with the questions, though.  That’s a step in the correct direction, right?

For example, some of the things I have written under the title Questions to Consider in my journal are:

• Am I running and hiding from my own problem by asking him to move out?  Or am I protecting myself?
  • Can an in-house separation work or is that setting us both up for failure?
  • Is separation a way for us both to deal with our respective issues? 
  • How long?
  • End goal?
  • How much contact?
  • What terms?
  • Money?  Bills?
  • Viability of that plan?
  • Avoiding complacency – Does this force us to push ourselves out of our boxes and discover ourselves separate from one another?
  • Does that have to happen before we can work on our marriage?
• I can’t control the outcome!!
• Can he be honest with me?
  • What matters in order to move forward is honesty.  In fact, it’s the single most important factor in whether this marriage can continue
  • He has a choice to make – continue to be selfish and choose himself by lying to me or choose our marriage and STOP lying
  • That really determines our future
  • Choose lying & choose to stay gone and turn this separation into divorce
  • Or work on himself, really dig into the lying, solve that issue, and maybe move home.
• I need him to FIGHT for me (bottom line)

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my stream-of-consciousness writing.  My goal would be to work towards REAL recovery and reconciliation where we are each taking responsibility for our own healing.  I feel like that has to happen before I can say whether this marriage will ever be able to work long-term.  I want it to.  I really, really want it to.  But I’m starting to realize that may not be a possibility unless some drastic changes happen in both of us.

I know that I have made a lot of posts recently (if you were only in my brain you would really know how this is).  For that reason, I will share the things I have gained in the last few days about my own self-awareness in another post.  Probably tomorrow.  Unless something more pressing comes up before I get around to it or I get the urge to share earlier (very specific, aren’t I?)

Related articles

• I Asked for a Separation: The Chicken and the Pig (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• Separation Clarification (What Did Asking For a Separation Mean?) (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• Codependent Behavior or Simply Trusting My Gut? (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• My Internal Debate (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• Poked, Prodded and Cracking… (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)
• Breaking the Negative Codependent Cycle (beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com)

Poked, Prodded and Cracking…

Last night I took a look down my throat with a flashlight and did NOT like what I saw…  This morning I got up and made my way immediately to the doctor’s office.  I was poked, prodded, and swabbed everywhere imaginable.  They did a strep test on my throat, diagnosed an ear infection, and I had them go ahead and run the full panel of STD tests while they were at it.  I could have gone to Planned Parenthood and probably saved some money in the long run.  I don’t care.  I just wanted it over and done with.

Only an hour later, I was walking out with antibiotics, a prescription for a yeast infection, and a little more peace of mind.  I still don’t have the STD results back yet, obviously, but having it taken care of is a relief.

On my (short) ride home I called my Mom.  She said something that really struck home.  She said as women and as wives we do our best to remain vulnerable, to give our husbands the opportunity to protect us.  We let ourselves need them.  We give them the chance to take care of us.  When they blow that chance or squander that opportunity we have to pack up that vulnerability and be strong for ourselves.  When we take that next step to care for ourselves we also end up not needing them anymore.

I tried to need him.  I tried to give him the opportunity to step up for me.  I wanted him to be a man, to protect me, to make my health and safety a top priority.  He didn’t, so I had to take the bull by the horns and take care of myself.  Once I found out he hadn’t gotten tested, it took me only until the next business day to get tested myself.  Those tests, plus the extra ones because I’m so sick, took only an hour.  One hour.

In that hour I stopped needing him.  I stopped being vulnerable.  I took back my independence.

At the same time, I feel my resolve cracking.  Last night was the first time I really started wanting him here badly.  My codependence started peeking through.  For most of the weekend after his big lie was revealed we had only minor contact.  Last night he texted me with:

Im not sure what things from the kitchen are mine to take.  I know the new cook ware is yours just wondering about the things i was given as gifts.  If you want them they are yours.

My first reaction was something like – Seriously?!?  That is what he’s worried about right now?  Then I realized that I should have been prepared for this.  It’s what I asked for.  Here are some of the other thoughts I jotted down in my journal:

• I’m weak.  I want him here in bed with me.  I want to touch him, hold him.
• I find myself considering an in-home separation.  I just know I can’t do that.  I’m not strong enough.  I would talk to him, laugh with him, fall into those old patterns…
• I want to call him an ass for sticking to business (what he wants, when he can get it), but that’s what separation IS.  He is doing me a favor, really.
• I want him to fight for me, for us, but I want him to be well first!
• I can’t have it both ways – him now & him better because he is obviously not better.
• I HATE THIS!!!!

Those were just my cliff notes version of the things going through my head.  I wasn’t going to respond to his earlier text.  In fact, I held out for quite a while.  Until after midnight.  Yeah… bad decision.  Nothing good comes from texting someone that late.  I engaged in a few back and forth texts, told him the gifts belong to him, and let him know about my strep.

In the morning light I realized that I need to disconnect myself from him emotionally.  Letting go of my expectations for him, his recovery, his health, his therapy, etc. is my job now.  I can’t control him.

He’s going to be coming by at some point today to pick up a few more things.  I don’t know how I’m going to react.  I don’t know if he will even try to talk to me.  I don’t even know if I want him to.

On a completely unrelated note, I now have a Twitter and Facebook account for my blog.  Check them out if you want.  I could use a little distraction.

My Internal Debate

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

I still don’t know where all the chips will ultimately fall, but I asked for a separation yesterday.  My husband has been out of the house for over 24 hours now.  I feel a calmness and relief that I never anticipated.

At the same time, I feel sad.  I watched the amazing space jump today, and had to fight myself not to call or text him.  It was a spectacular event to see, and I missed being able to share that with my best friend.  It’s all those small, every day moments that I will miss more than anything – sitting on the couch, holding hands, talking over dinner, cuddling up at night.  Those losses are hard to bear.

I don’t really think it matters what the long version is of why I chose separation.  The short and not-so-sweet version is that he lied to me again.  It was a pretty big lie.  It was also sustained over more than a week.  He lied about getting STD tested, even though in his disclosure he revealed sleeping with up to 50 sexual partners, some (or many) without protection.  He has endangered my health all along by misleading me about his sexual history and his STD testing status.  This last week of lying was the final straw.

The sad part is that he hasn’t acted out sexually in over a year, THAT I KNOW OF.  It doesn’t matter, though.  That inner circle lying behavior just destroys any chance that we have of becoming a healthy couple.  I can’t do it to myself anymore.  I just can’t.

The thing that sticks out in my head from this past week is how easily and convincingly he lied, over and over.  At one point last Friday I confronted him about a breach to our Boundary Agreement.  He got very emotional, said that he was going to change his way of thinking, and seemed to really “get it.”  He went to his SA meeting the next Saturday and confessed that (relatively minor) lie of omission, tears and all.  Meanwhile, he was hiding this huge lie from me and everyone else.  He lied in our last MC session.  He lied over and over during the week (“I’m just waiting for the test results to come in the mail”).  He lied straight to me, even after I had the proof that he never went to get tested.  He made a big show of going down to the clinic to “straighten things out.”  It just makes me feel sick.

That man is not my husband.  That man is not the person who cares for me when I’m sick and rubs my feet at night.  That is not the man whose smile can light up my world.  That is not the man who looked at me with such love in his eyes on our wedding day that he cried as I walked down the aisle.  That is not the person who has slept next to me at night for over 4 years.  That man is not the person I fell in love with.

The man who could lie to me over and over like that is not someone I can live with for the rest of my life.

I need to check out divorce and separation laws in my state.  I need to go get STD tested.  I need to take his name off of my bank account.  I need to look into getting his car out of my name.  I need to figure out what bills still need to be paid and determine how much money he left in our joint account.

I don’t want to do any of it.

I want him to get better.

I want him to WANT to tell me the truth.

I want my best friend back.

I don’t get what I want.

THAT SUCKS!!!

I Asked for a Separation: The Chicken and the Pig

I wrote the below post on Saturday.  First I wrote down in my journal all of the things that he said to me on the fateful date of the HUGE recent lie.  I wanted to remind myself of how things progressed and what he actually said – to prove to myself that I am NOT going crazy.  I know he will probably remember things waaayyy differently come marriage counseling on Thursday, so I was writing down some of it in shorthand as we talked.

I also added some stuff from my journal that has been bouncing around in my head.  I hoped to make some sense of it.  So far things are still just bouncing around like crazy.  However, now that I’ve had a few days to review what I wrote I thought it might be helpful to share my feelings here.  I’m not angry now, and I really wasn’t angry when I wrote this, but I still wanted to make sure I was fulfilling my “No angry blogging” promise in our boundary agreement.  Even though he’s broken it several times in the last two weeks, it still matters to me for some reason.

Here it is (Warning: it is probably the longest thing I have ever published on here by far, probably because I never originally intended to publicize it).

Saturday, 10/13/2012

I found out about more lies.

After his revelation of up to 50 random sex partners off of internet chat rooms, he promised me to get STD tested.  He told me he did it last Friday, and the results would be mailed in 3-5 days.  It didn’t come this week.  He blamed it on the holiday.

I’ve been feeling crappy this week.  I have an ear infection (lots of pain, pressure, can’t hear well) and a sore throat (my right tonsil is HUGE, hence the pressure in my ear).  I’ve also been having chills, a slight fever, body aches, and have been very, very tired.  I got up this morning planning to go to S-Anon, but the pain in my ear was horrible and my throat looked awful.  He convinced me to stay home (it really didn’t take too much convincing, honestly), and went to his meeting.

I got in a huge sweatshirt, comfy pants, AND a big robe and sat myself down under a heated blanket on the couch in front of the TV with my laptop in my lap.  Netflix had sent me an email earlier in the week that Private Practice Season 5 is now available.  I decided to get caught up, so I pulled up the Netflix streaming account on our internet-enabled TV.

I started from the last episode I had seen, and used my laptop to check my email and eBay listings.  About 20 minutes into the episode, everything froze up.  The internet on my laptop went out, and the TV show just stopped.  I tried the troubleshooting through the laptop (sometimes that can fix the internet issues).  That didn’t work, which meant I would actually have to get up and go into the computer room where our desktop computer, cable internet box, and router are.

Reluctantly I removed myself from my cocoon on the couch, and made my way into the other room.  I disconnected the internet box and wireless router, waited a few seconds, and plugged them both in.  I decided to check the internet from there rather than go all the way back to the den and have to come back to fix something else.  The internet came up immediately.  Suddenly I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I haven’t checked the internet history in months, but I got the feelings that I needed to.

I tried to fight it.  I actually got up and went to the bathroom.  I argued with myself about how looking wouldn’t do anything.  I told myself that I don’t have control over anything, and checking up on him wouldn’t accomplish anything.  I thought I had convinced myself to just go back to my TV show, and I walked into the computer room “just to turn off the light.”  Of course, I noticed I had left the computer up and went over “just to put it to sleep.”  Riiiiggght.  Anyone who has had this internal battle with themselves or deals with codependency issues knows what happened next.

I looked.

I opened up Internet Explorer and clicked the history tab.  A list of websites appeared, and my eye immediately went to the myriad of STD pages.  Then I saw the Yellow Pages website.  I also saw (through means I am not going to reveal here) that he had manually deleted those portions of the history, obviously trying to hide them from me.  The feeling in my stomach got worse.

I went to the STD sites and didn’t find anything especially interesting.  I went to the Yellow Pages site to see if there is a “recently searched” feature.  I didn’t find it.

Of course, the first thought on my mind is that the only reason he would hide STD sites from me is that he didn’t get tested.  It could also be that he got the results and isn’t clean, but knowing my lazy husband, he just didn’t go.

I set out to prove my theory. I logged into our joint bank account (his first choice usually when paying for medical care), and took a look over the last week’s transactions.  I did not find the place he said he went.  I even went farther back than I should have to AND did a search.  Nope.  No charge.  I checked his personal account (tied to the same account login).  Again, no medical facility charge.  I logged into his credit card account.  Nope.  I did discover that he is $150 over his limit, which he didn’t tell me, but he might not even know.  Whatever.

I went back and checked the joint account again.  Then every other possible source that he could have paid for.  I think I even checked some a third time.  Nope.  He definitely did NOT go.  I sent him a text message that said, “You’ve been lying to me and hiding things again.  Don’t plan to come home until you are ready to tell me the WHOLE truth.”

That was probably around 10:20 am or so.  His meeting goes until 10:30 am.  He called me around 10:45 am.  He claimed to have no idea what I was talking about.  He made a big show of being “confused” about what I am saying he is hiding or lying about.  He asked me to tell him what I meant.  I told him that I am done giving away the information I find out.  He knows what he lied to me about.

He still claimed absolutely innocence.  He begged me to tell him what it was.  I refused.  I said that unless he wants to claim invasion of the body snatchers he knows exactly what he did.  He said he has no idea what I mean by that.  I explained that unless he is going to somehow say that his body was doing things he doesn’t know about, he is well aware of what he lied to me about.

This back and forth continued.  He offered up some lame thing about using our joint account for personal stuff (coffee, junk food, who-knows-what at work) instead of his personal funds.  I stayed silent.  He asked if that was it.  I said “No, although I did notice that.”  He said he hadn’t been taking cash out without telling me (like he did last week).  I stayed silent.

He said he really can’t think of what it could be.  I told him that he must not be thinking hard enough.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Finally, I caved (I shouldn’t have), and said that it shouldn’t be that hard to remember since it was just yesterday.

Then he said something like, “What, the STD research?”  I won’t bore you with too many details, but his claim was that he was just trying to find out more about STDs and how long it takes to get the test back since his results hadn’t come yet.  He said he was curious, yada, yada, yada.

Again, I gave up information that I shouldn’t have, and asked why he deleted the history and tried to hide that search.

He swore up and down that he didn’t.  He said he has no reason to, that there is nothing wrong with what he searched for.  He asked me why he would hide something like that.

I said something like, “Maybe because you never got tested and you were trying to hide that from me.”

Cue more lies.  He swore he went and got tested. 

I asked, “How did you pay?”

He said, “The joint account.”

I blew that out of the water with my research. 

More lies… 

He finally said he was going to go by there on his way home to “find out what is going on and straighten things out.” 

“Okay,” was my only reply.  I no longer even had the ability to believe the lies coming out of his mouth.

About an hour later he called and said, “You are right.” 

I said, “I know I am.”

He confessed that he never got tested.  He said that it was going to cost $600 because insurance wouldn’t cover it.  He said he was trying to find somewhere less expensive.  He claimed the health department will do it for like $300.

He has claimed that he got STD tested twice in the past.  Hearing that amount and knowing how broke and irresponsible he was for most of his adult life, I asked if he had ever really gotten tested like he said.  After sidestepping and other bullshit, he settled on the story that he had limited testing – just for HIV, gonorrhea, and syphilis.  I still don’t think I believe that.  I believe he completely made-up the time-frame that he claims he was tested before.  I really don’t think he remembers when it was or what exactly he was tested for.

Regardless, he again lied by leading me to believe that he had been fully tested and was completed safe.  There was more than one occasion over the course of our relationship where he made that claim – both at the beginning and more recently.

During our conversation he also revealed that another problem he has with the place he was going to go is that they want to test for everything, that you can’t choose which ones to get.  I practically yelled over the phone that HE NEEDS TO BE TESTED FOR EVERYTHING!!!!!  He said he knows and that the health department will do that.  He said that they aren’t open until Monday.  I reminded him that they have been open all week.  He offered another pitiful excuse about not getting off work on time this week to go by there.

It was right about there in the conversation that I realized I can’t take any more.  I asked for a separation.  I can’t live in the same house with someone who continues to lie to me like that.  I can’t live with someone who puts my requests, my safety, and my peace of mind at the bottom of his list – even after a job he hates.  It was also a lie about the time he got off work last week – he could have been tested if he wanted to be.  I realized that he doesn’t care enough to put forth the effort this marriage requires.  I realized that over the last week I have dealt with multiple breaches to our Boundary Agreement.  I realized that I can’t move forward with someone who won’t be honest with me.  I just can’t.

So that’s where I am right now.  I’m not even incredibly angry or emotional.  I’m not crying.  I’m not feeling vindictive or wanting to hurt him.  I just can’t do it.  Maybe he can change.  I don’t know.  I’m not going to hold my breath.  I have to move forward for me and my emotional health.  I can’t keep doing this to myself.

I told my husband last week about an analogy that I got from Grey’s Anatomy.  It’s about ham (or bacon) and eggs.  Here’s the general gist:

Question: In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig?
Answer: The Chicken is involved, but the Pig is committed!

There are multiple stories about the origin of that saying, but it doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that I’m the pig and he’s the chicken.  Ever since that analogy came back to me 2 weeks ago I haven’t been able to shake it.  I’m committed.  He’s just involved.  He picks and chooses when he wants to be “in” this relationship.  He chooses when to be honest and when not to.  He chooses when to give his all and when to half-ass it.  He chooses the bits and pieces he wants to share with me.  He’s not in this 100%, all the way, every day.  I am.

Last week I wrote in my journal, “Until he can be the bacon/pig/ham I can’t be in this relationship.”  I also wrote:

• It’s not healthy for me to be more in this relationship than him.
• I’m always waiting…
      o       For him to call
      o       For him to ask how I am
      o       For him to put me first
      o       For him to talk to me
• I need to put me first

And that’s where I am.  The past week and a half I’ve been trying to keep going.  I’ve been wanting to look forward, not back.  I told myself that I was emotional, that I needed to wait to make a decision.  Things kept happening that pushed me closer and closer to the edge.

He decided to put off therapy last week, which made me very upset because I wasn’t included.  He told me he was fine about something when he obviously wasn’t – he shut me out, and I told myself that he just needed to learn to let me in.  He broke one of the items on our boundary agreement – we talked about it, and he promised to change his thinking.  Our marriage counseling session was pretty awful, but I rationalized that there were a lot of emotions going on with both of us.  We had multiple other issues.  I kept telling myself to keep working, to stick it out, to stop being so emotional.  I told myself to keep looking forward.

On Thursday I wrote in my journal:
• Feeling conflicted
• What is the crazy part of me?
• The side that wants to stay/hold on?
• The side that wants to separate?

Obviously my gut was telling me something big is off.  It was right, yet again.  He’s here right now picking up some things.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, but I need to do what’s right for me and my emotional health.