Hi All,

This writing is a collection of truths that I gained during my reading and thinking about life. I’m formulating my own theory on my view of relationships as I go so please don’t be too judgmental. These opinions will be altered somewhat as time goes on, and as I practice what I’ve learned in all relationships. Think of this as a term paper based on the readings of all of the self-help books that I’ve read over the last two years. You can even grade me on it if you like!

I finished reading “Make up, Don’t break up”. It has helped me to get to the next epiphany that has been so elusive this last week.

As you all know, I have been struggling with where I stand in XBF’s life now that he has decided to move on and deepen his “R” with his new GF. This has been a painful process for me because I very much want to have him to commit to me and to working in the “R”. Lately, I have been questioning whether or not leaving WAS the right thing to do. Now I know in my heart that it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t handle this in the best way…

There is no doubt in my mind that running to someone else was definitely the WRONG thing to do! I’m not justifying the “A” at all. This was completely inexcusable and the coward’s way of dealing with the fear of facing the emptiness that I knew would consume me. My depression was also the coward’s way out of facing this same emptiness. Instead of facing what I needed to, I sought out what I thought was the least painful path for everyone. The fact is that RADICAL HONESTY IS the least painful path. Had I trusted in my partner and myself enough, our family would not have had to deal with so much damage and devastation.

Well, this is what I’ve come to understand:

XBF and I were in a chess match that had basically stalemated. He and I had been living together for over 8 years, and we still had not come to commitment. Both of us wanted one at some point or the other, but it seems that neither wanted it at the same time. This waffling only caused distance because neither of us was able to trust the other’s “TRUE” feelings because we individually didn’t REALLY know or understand what it is that we “WANTED”. We did LOVE each other very much, but the tug of war seemed to be the only thing that we knew how to do to continue the “R”. Our resentments kept building, and neither was capable of communicating because it was something neither of us understood. We were both SO ignorant and blind as to how relationships really work that we really didn’t have a chance to make it.

On several threads I have stated repeatedly that there is supposed to be a time in the relationship where you simply get stuck and don’t know what to do any longer. Most people at this juncture decide to throw in the towel because they are so exasperated by the stalemate that occurs. Most couples don’t understand what is happening because they never learned what relationships were supposed to be about. Instead of seeking solutions, they adopt a belief that there is nothing left and turn to their own methods for trying to deal with the pain. This is where my depression began, and XBF’s workaholic and controlling behaviors began. We both polarized out of protection and the destruction process began.

So you’re wondering why the stalemate is SUPPOSED to happen? The answer to that is based in the origins of your relations to your parents and siblings during your youth. Consider that you have two people that care very much about each other. They each have a unique relationship with the people that raised them. They develop certain beliefs, negative and positive, about themselves in relation to these significant people in their lives. These beliefs are carried with them into their adult relationships in the form of deep wounds and fine traits. The problem is that subconsciously you are looking to your partner to fill the void in yourself that was created by these wounds. Similarly, your partner is looking for the same healing from you.

You partner is put on a pedestal and remains there as long as he/she fills the voids. As you can see, eventually the expectations can’t be met because your partner does not have the tools or understanding of what it will take to heal you. How can they when you don’t even know how to heal you. That is when the protection barrier goes up and the conflict and withdrawal start. The stalemate happens because neither of you can help the other, but you are both wounded because the failure to “fix” the wounds is perceived as rejection and loss of love.

In my particular case for example, I was the youngest of six children. My mother was a closet lesbian and in those days there wasn’t such a thing as GAY PRIDE. She worked third shift, and left us kids alone for most of the time because she had no one else to help her out. She brought in very little money, but did the best she could. My father was a severely messed up individual. He was a very selfish man that believed that women were a subservient species. In fact, he “WON” the right to be with my mother in a wrestling match with her first husband! My dad believed that everyone was placed on the earth to do his bidding, and no one had any personal rights to stand up to him. He molested children, raped women, and got his thrills from having people bow at his feet and beg for things like clothes or money. All in all, he wasn’t a nice guy.

How did all of this affect me?

I was basically the invisible child. I developed the idea that if I hid enough, they would forget that I even existed. I grew up thinking that I was inferior to everyone. This was due to the fact that I emotionally abandoned by my parents and was also abused mentally and physically by my siblings. It taught me that I had no right to feel, that I was ugly, and that I was not loveable. The only outlet that I ever had was school. I was fortunate enough that I had great writing skills and an awesome memory. Although I was an outcast, I had the pride of being one of the top students all the way through to college. The second outlet that I happened upon was work. I started working at the age of fourteen, and have not stopped since. Lastly, the escape finally came in the form of a relationship with my OS DAD.

More to come.....

<small>[ December 31, 2002, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: kily ]</small>

Okay here is part II. I seem to be really inspired to get this out. I suppose that it being a new year, I really want to cleanse myself of all of this and re-affirm my committment to loving myself and my XBF unconditionally.

Thanks in advance for following along. I know that it is difficult reading, but I promise there are some really healing things coming...

My partner had a very different experience. He was also raised the youngest, but there were only three boys in his family. There was an eight-year difference between him and his middle brother so in some ways; he was raised like an only child. From what I’ve learned in our history together, his mother was a very demanding woman that depended heavily on him for things. She was very strict and at times ruthless with the things that she needed or wanted. His father spent a lot of time with him teaching him all that he knew mechanically and about “fixing” things. I had the sense that there was never any deep conversations about life, or any real “play” time for him in his youth.

I can’t draw many conclusions about the wounds that he received during his youth, but I can say that in my experience with him, he has an extreme need to “FIX” things. There also seemed to have a very strong need be in control of everything around him. He was definitely a giver, but always expected something in return. He gained his personal value through his job and meticulous house, and rarely had time for recreational things with the kids and I. It seemed that his goal in life was to impress his parents with all of the “right” things and that everything else was secondary. Everything seemed to be based on his mother’s approval.

How did we get to where we are now?

When we got involved with each other, I was in need of a savior and he was looking for someone to take care of. I was looking for the protector and provider, he needed someone to protect and provide for. It WAS and still is the perfect match! We fell for each other and really were the perfect couple once we overcame the hardships that were in our path of being together. I wanted nothing more than to be this mans wife, and every day I welcomed his calls, and the attention that he gave, and I willingly gave him everything I had in return. We built a home out of a house, and looked forward to the time when we would be married. This I guess was our honeymoon stage.

Then the wounds took over. He would run at the slightest call when his mother needed a hand with chores. Every weekend it would be the same thing, Saturdays were spent taking care of the parent’s rental property maintenance, and Sundays were spent taking care of our homes maintenance. My dreams and desires were dismissed as he upheld the responsibilities that his parents required from him. My wall started to go up. I specifically remember the day that I chose to put that wall up. I still believed in our feelings though and tried to hang in there, hoping that things would change. They only got worse.

As time went on, my resentments grew because I was expecting things and not getting them. Due to the situation of the need to take care of his parents, I was forced back into the mindset of being invisible and having my feelings dismissed. Instead of supporting him, and helping him in his endeavors, I withdrew and continued to perceive his treatment of me equal to the treatment that I had received from my family during my childhood.

By now, I had very little self -esteem, and was raising a child without the involvement of his father. I had left him to be with this person because the situation was simply horrific. My guilt was eating me apart because I broke up that family to start this one, his father’s way of dealing with the situation was to completely disappear from the kid’s life. The guilt came from another wound that I had gained as a child in relation to my dad, so I decided to do everything in my power that I could to restore the relationship between father and son.

I will stop detailing here and just summarize by saying that I successfully reunited father and son, at a great personal cost to the relationship with XBF. We did manage to get through this and move on, but I recently learned that this event triggered childhood wounds in him. He carries resentment towards me today for those choices, and never communicated this to me until after his new relationship started. Basically, the walls were being built over the years over the same old topics. No resolution was ever made so the damage became unbearable.

Okay, this got way off tangent, but there is a method to my madness…

My illustration here is to demonstrate that there were wounds, expectations, things taken for granted, things withheld for fear of communicating pain, actions taken from guilt, lack of respect, lack of trust, and plain old selfishness. Yes we were a typical couple with typical problems.

With all of this negativity, you all are probably wondering why the heck anyone would want to stay. The truth of the matter is that we did the best we could with what we had. For all of the negative things that happened, there was so much positive that it made the hardship seem bearable. He WAS my savior and created an environment where I felt safe enough to grow. We nurtured each other’s wounds and learned how to rise above the things that life had dealt us. We worked great as a team and thrived on the positive outcome of a joint effort. We were very great friends with a bond that still exists to this day.

The problems came when the wounds outweighed the growth. We expected to always be the answers to each other’s problems and when that didn’t happen, we reacted in anger, pain, and self-protection. The stalemate had finally occurred. I ran away first from depression and then to an “A”, while he shut off in denial and then tried to control by lashing out in anger. Our relationship as we knew it was over. At first we were horrified by the implications of what that meant. The person that you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with was no longer going to be in your life in that way! What a very overwhelmingly sad thought. The finality was so hard to comprehend that you both sat there and reeled as the meaning of the actions finally sank in.

The WS runs away from the reality that they have been trying not to face, and the BS is left in devastation because they also have been forced to see a reality that they did not want to face. The relationship as you knew it was a failure. In my case, it took me almost five years of struggling, some on my own and some involved in an “A” to finally face that I didn’t know how to fix it and was too defeated to continue to try. I forced the “A” into light because I wanted to truly change the “R” with my partner. I wanted to be truthful. I was tired of hiding and pretending that my feelings weren’t there. I was tired of loving someone that simply didn’t care about what I needed or wanted in life. I was tired of being afraid that I would die living the life that I was living.

I was ready to face the emptiness stage.

Part III. This is all for now. I think I've gotten it all down. Once again, Thanks for reading and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

The emptiness stage is the place that a person gets to when they have decided to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. It is the place you go when you have nothing left, and you REALLY want to start living healthy. This is the place where you let go of the ideas that someone will fix you, and you start to face what it is that is broken inside. You start to examine each individual piece of damage, and learn from it. You learn to accept your faults, forgive yourself, let go of blame and anger towards your partner, and you start to heal. I tend to think of this period as the cocoon stage. You are all wrapped up in your pain and suffering and once you emerge from it you are transformed into something beautiful and completely different.

Some of you have read my post on finding KILY. I have included the link here in case you would like to read it. This experience was the first emergence I had as something transformed.

Meeting KILY
Jump up 3 posts in this link for PART I of this story.

Now I will bring you back to the statement that I made at the beginning of this story. Remember when I said: “Lately, I have been questioning whether or not leaving WAS the right thing to do. Now I know in my heart that it was.” You all must have thought I flipped my wig. Truthfully I haven’t. What I’ve come to believe is that in order for XBF and I to ever get to a commitment, we both have to get through the emptiness stage. The way that I see it is that we were stuck because we no longer knew how to grow together. There is no doubt in my mind that we LOVE each other, we just didn’t know how to love ourselves. I had to learn who I was so that I could appreciate everything there is about me. He needs to do the same. Letting him go in love would have been the BEST thing that I could have done for us if I had not turned to someone else and just trusted in my higher power. I simply didn't know then what I know now and the FEAR was such a roadblock in my life.

We needed to break apart to understand what is really between us. Do we want to commit? Are we just together because it was easier than facing the pain of moving on? What does LOVE really mean? Are we just dependant on the situation? How do we REALLY feel? None of this can be answered when you are living underfoot and resenting each other so deeply. The lost feeling of love is not truly lost, it is so deeply buried underneath all of the other emotional baggage, that it is being held prisoner there in the deepest part of you. The hardest thing is to let go of the old patterns, wants, needs, and dependencies, and learning that you will be okay with just yourself.

What will happen next?

Truthfully, I don’t know. I am okay with this. As hard as the emptiness stage is, it taught me a lot about the person that KILY is. Yes, I am kind of weird and I think much too deeply at times, but I have learned about REAL love and that it is attainable. I’ve learned that I am not UGLY, I’m BEAUTIFUL! I have learned that I am capable of being faithful and that I DESERVE to have the marriage and life that I WANT. I’m learning that I am not ashamed of who I am so I don’t have to HIDE my true self through lies and deceit. I also realize that I love XBF enough to let him learn who he is without interference from me. I am strong enough to lose him if that is what has to happen, and to bless him on his journey. I will always hold to the belief that our love is special and that our bond will always be there, regardless of the people that come and go in both of our lives. I realize that I don’t NEED someone else to validate me; I want someone to share my journey with.

Some of my greatest lessons in this journey have been that you can’t expect someone else to fill the void in you. When you choose to love someone, you have to respect that person for who he is and accept him or her for their fine points and the shortcomings. You are responsible for your own actions and feelings. You are responsible to let someone know what your feelings and boundaries are. You have to understand that if the person that your involved in wishes to be free, then you have no right to hold on to them. The greatest gift you can give them is to let them fly and discover who they really are. Chances are, they will fly right back to you…

My flight led me back to my XBF. Perhaps that was only to heal some old wounds. Perhaps it was more. I can only stand by him and love him the best way I know how, no matter what the outcome.

I love you honey, and I want to show you how truly wonderful our life could be together. I'm sorry that I hurt you and I only wish that you find happiness in your life. I will always be here if you need me.

KILY,
What a beautiful set of writings, you've said so much that is of value--and how nice of you to share it here.

I can't respond fully yet, as I need time to think about it otherwise it will seem so trite, as you've said so much. I don't want to say something that will trivialize what you 've said.

So I'm letting you know I've read through it, twice, and I'll reply more specifically on certain parts, later on.

They say when we have a hard life, as a child, that it will either 'make you , or break you" You've made it, KILY. You're intelligent, sensitive, loving, caring, and wanting to make a better life for you and your children--a much better life than you had. Please don't be hard on yourself, ever again.

Take care,
H_P

BEAUTIFUL !!!

Happy NEW Year!!!

You are a wonderful writer.

Pepper <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="images/icons/cool.gif" />

Kily

I'd give you an A++ if that were possible! Your story really touched me, and also rang some bells about my own relationship. Your insight is wonderful, and I hope that I too will be able to get to a point where I can see and understand the whole picture. At the moment, I've started the jigsaw but there are many pieces still to go.

I wish you a very very happy and fulfilling 2003.

Wishing you well from rainy London.

Lisa

kily,

A beautiful writing, I hope BS/WS alike could come to this stage of acceptance ... what had happened we can not go back and fix but we won't make the same mistake and emerge as a better person.

Happy New Years ... I wish someday you will find someone that understand you and willing to share your journey in life ... be that your xBF or someone better.

-rh-

Kily,

This is something that I will have to go back and read. I was going to read one more post before I went to bed and didn't know what would be unveiled here. It's beautiful. I wish that I had the way with words that you do. So many feelings came up for me and I related to much of your story. NOw what you were saying at lunch makes more sense to me - that you can do it on your own.

For now, that is all that I can write. In the morning I am headed back to Fla & need to get some sleep.

What do you do for a living? I guess I am asking cuz you are an excellent writer.

I will send you pix of the NE get together when I get back home.

D.

Hi Everyone - Happy 2003!

Thanks SO much for the kind words and feedback. I wanted to post this whole story because I felt that it was time to give back to everyone that has helped me on this forum.

This web site has helped me keep SANE at times when I thought I was completely alone. I felt that if only one person can gain some insight from my experience, then it was completely worth putting down into words. Again, thanks for reading it. It's very humbling to put your deepest thoughts into words and have people respond in such a positive manner. This is something I am NOT used to.

One thing I want to add is that documenting these feelings and thoughts in this way has changed me. I think Red Hat nailed it in his response and I wasn't aware of it until I read it. I am FINALLY approaching forgiveness. I am at peace with who I am, and where I came from. I have accepted what I can not change and I have recognized that which I can......(serentity prayer). I have ACCEPTED and received the gift that all of the misery has brought to me....The gift of KILY.

2003 will be the best year YET for me, and I have VERY positive feelings about where my life is going.

I have been feeling a spiritual pull over the last few weeks, and up until last night I neglected to listen because I am once again being called to do something that will cause me pain. The difference for me this time is that instead of "fighting" the pull and continuing on the path I've chosen, I am going to listen this time.

There is a plan that is in place, and that journey is going to lead me somewhere I haven't yet considered. I'm terrified, but in a way, I'm grateful because I don't feel "stuck" anymore. I'll keep you all posted as Kily's SAGA continues. Perhaps I may even start looking into that writing carreer that I've dreamed about since childhood... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />