How To End a Long Term Relationship Without Killing Each Other
It came out tonight in therapy: Steady Eddy and I want different things for our adult lives. We are, for the most part, incompatable....
So how do two people who are--at the basic, long-term core things they want out of life--incompatable fall in love with each other....
You know the Bible passage about love being patient and kind....
Well, that's got a lot to do with it.
I understand now, at this point in life, how some arranged marriages might actually grow into enduring love: patience, kindness, compassion for the other person's humanity....
But, in the grander scheme of life, he and I want different things.
He likes to be alone, likes camping, isn't all that social. He has a family up in the mountains that will take care of him if something happens.
But I'm not a loner. I really enjoy being around people. I like having a social life, and parties and things like that. I want a partner who can enjoy those things with me....
Not feel that he's going out of his way, or that it's an imposition on his lifestyle...
I deal with solitude, but I don't particularly seek it, nor do I like it. It's part and parcel with existence where I live, where many out-of-towners find it difficult to connect with others and make close friends....
So, I'm not alone there. And I need to actually get out and make friends again...
I also need to know that there are people who are going to care about me if I get sick--who genuinely care about me, not that they care about me because I fit into some kind of pecking order in their life-scheme-of-things. Nothing conditional.
I cannot stand people who will only be friends with you because you fit into some kind of narrative that they have for their lives--regardless of how you envision your life. That's the way it was at college, and to some degree at home, and I will NOT tolerate that in the rest of my life...
So, two people, who have grown to love one another in spite of their incompatabilities and inability to construct a long-term plan for their lives together, are now finding that they will have to end the romantic part of their relationship and transform it into a friendship...
Because when all is said and done, they have been through a great deal together and cannot see life without one another....
Just can't see how they can have a life *with* each other either...
This was very hard for me--it's owning the fact that I have needs and that I will no longer put those needs in a box and tuck them away for someone else's benefit, or for someone to fall in love with me.
I can't be the Perfect Woman for anyone. I am who I am. Not a bad person, but way not the "perfect" person....
I used to believe that I'd never meet anyone who would want to be with me, and that because I was so fundamentally flawed that I had to not be all the things that are Me, in order to be able to find someone who might take pity on me and love me...
That's what I was taught at home. That's what I learned about love and marriage from my parents. Marriage is a pity contract because both of you are too awful for anyone else--and you have to not be yourself lest losing that other person...so you stay together and torture and humiliate one another because no one else will have you...
But it's taken me many years to re-discover who I am...who I've been all along...but was never able to be. And it's someone that Steady Eddy loves and admires in many ways...
But, in the long run, can't live with.
And I feel the same way about him: he's steady and dependable and such a wonderful, caring person...
But in the long run, there isn't really much that we share. And I don't think I can live with that.
I don't want to live in a marriage where I have my life, and he has his life, and we come together and do a few things with each other...but our home is off-limits to people we know or we don't have anyone over for dinner, or we kinda miss family get-togethers, or decline invites to here or there....and we don't really do much on 3-day weekends because it's too much of a hassle or we can't agree on what to do...
We've been each other's best friends through some of the worst times of our lives. Yet, over the long-life haul, it isn't enough to sustain either of us.
It's a mutual thing, really. I didn't do anything that really hurt him. And he didn't do anything to really hurt me. We're not mad at each other, and don't want to *be* mad at each other...
It's just that I want to *plan* my life and my future. I want to work things out, have an idea of goals and things...
And he wants to just bump along, figuring it out from one day to the next...
And the last time I did that, followed a man's lead on that one, I got hit with the pop-goes-the-weasel factor of "I want something else," and a declairation that our marriage was over well before I had any indication that it was over...because he kept saying "yes" every time I came up with a direction for our relationship, never saying what he wanted....
Well, at least Steady Eddy is saying what he wants. And so am I. It's just that we want different things....
This hurts really bad. And we've made a deal to continue therapy to try to transition out of the relationship without either of us having a nervous breakdown....
What we have both learned though is that we are both, fundamentally, quite loveable. We are both very good people and we deserve to be loved. And on some level, we will always love one another....
We just can't live with one another.
I remember the boyfriend I had after my first ex-husband. We, too, had some very good years together. And he, too, was a wonderful man...
But, ultimately, we were fundamentally incompatible too...
I spent years beating myself up over the loss of that relationship--kept hearing from family how stupid I was to have given him up...
That's the thing, too--with my family, I'm always the stupid one, the jerk, the desperate person, the one dumped on. It's never that I have needs, that I'm an ok person, that I'm all right and that the other people didn't fit me...
it's always that I'm the pathetic jerk, that I'm "fat" and "no man's gonna want you with no hair like your mother!" as my father screamed at me from his chair one day....
A day I'll never forget.
Thanks again, Dad. Real great supportive father I've got...
(tough to finally admit that my father's a real bastard--now I know why I've looked for substitute fathers for a long time...)
No wonder I don't want to lose Steady Eddy, even though we just can't make this thing work...
no matter how much we love each other...
So, we're taking it in stages. Figuring out how our lives without one another might evolve. Our therapist is very supportive--telling us that we're both very lovable people, and that we deserve someone who's compatable. And that we don't have to not-love each other.
Because we really can't.
We just can't do it together.
So how do two people who are--at the basic, long-term core things they want out of life--incompatable fall in love with each other....
You know the Bible passage about love being patient and kind....
Well, that's got a lot to do with it.
I understand now, at this point in life, how some arranged marriages might actually grow into enduring love: patience, kindness, compassion for the other person's humanity....
But, in the grander scheme of life, he and I want different things.
He likes to be alone, likes camping, isn't all that social. He has a family up in the mountains that will take care of him if something happens.
But I'm not a loner. I really enjoy being around people. I like having a social life, and parties and things like that. I want a partner who can enjoy those things with me....
Not feel that he's going out of his way, or that it's an imposition on his lifestyle...
I deal with solitude, but I don't particularly seek it, nor do I like it. It's part and parcel with existence where I live, where many out-of-towners find it difficult to connect with others and make close friends....
So, I'm not alone there. And I need to actually get out and make friends again...
I also need to know that there are people who are going to care about me if I get sick--who genuinely care about me, not that they care about me because I fit into some kind of pecking order in their life-scheme-of-things. Nothing conditional.
I cannot stand people who will only be friends with you because you fit into some kind of narrative that they have for their lives--regardless of how you envision your life. That's the way it was at college, and to some degree at home, and I will NOT tolerate that in the rest of my life...
So, two people, who have grown to love one another in spite of their incompatabilities and inability to construct a long-term plan for their lives together, are now finding that they will have to end the romantic part of their relationship and transform it into a friendship...
Because when all is said and done, they have been through a great deal together and cannot see life without one another....
Just can't see how they can have a life *with* each other either...
This was very hard for me--it's owning the fact that I have needs and that I will no longer put those needs in a box and tuck them away for someone else's benefit, or for someone to fall in love with me.
I can't be the Perfect Woman for anyone. I am who I am. Not a bad person, but way not the "perfect" person....
I used to believe that I'd never meet anyone who would want to be with me, and that because I was so fundamentally flawed that I had to not be all the things that are Me, in order to be able to find someone who might take pity on me and love me...
That's what I was taught at home. That's what I learned about love and marriage from my parents. Marriage is a pity contract because both of you are too awful for anyone else--and you have to not be yourself lest losing that other person...so you stay together and torture and humiliate one another because no one else will have you...
But it's taken me many years to re-discover who I am...who I've been all along...but was never able to be. And it's someone that Steady Eddy loves and admires in many ways...
But, in the long run, can't live with.
And I feel the same way about him: he's steady and dependable and such a wonderful, caring person...
But in the long run, there isn't really much that we share. And I don't think I can live with that.
I don't want to live in a marriage where I have my life, and he has his life, and we come together and do a few things with each other...but our home is off-limits to people we know or we don't have anyone over for dinner, or we kinda miss family get-togethers, or decline invites to here or there....and we don't really do much on 3-day weekends because it's too much of a hassle or we can't agree on what to do...
We've been each other's best friends through some of the worst times of our lives. Yet, over the long-life haul, it isn't enough to sustain either of us.
It's a mutual thing, really. I didn't do anything that really hurt him. And he didn't do anything to really hurt me. We're not mad at each other, and don't want to *be* mad at each other...
It's just that I want to *plan* my life and my future. I want to work things out, have an idea of goals and things...
And he wants to just bump along, figuring it out from one day to the next...
And the last time I did that, followed a man's lead on that one, I got hit with the pop-goes-the-weasel factor of "I want something else," and a declairation that our marriage was over well before I had any indication that it was over...because he kept saying "yes" every time I came up with a direction for our relationship, never saying what he wanted....
Well, at least Steady Eddy is saying what he wants. And so am I. It's just that we want different things....
This hurts really bad. And we've made a deal to continue therapy to try to transition out of the relationship without either of us having a nervous breakdown....
What we have both learned though is that we are both, fundamentally, quite loveable. We are both very good people and we deserve to be loved. And on some level, we will always love one another....
We just can't live with one another.
I remember the boyfriend I had after my first ex-husband. We, too, had some very good years together. And he, too, was a wonderful man...
But, ultimately, we were fundamentally incompatible too...
I spent years beating myself up over the loss of that relationship--kept hearing from family how stupid I was to have given him up...
That's the thing, too--with my family, I'm always the stupid one, the jerk, the desperate person, the one dumped on. It's never that I have needs, that I'm an ok person, that I'm all right and that the other people didn't fit me...
it's always that I'm the pathetic jerk, that I'm "fat" and "no man's gonna want you with no hair like your mother!" as my father screamed at me from his chair one day....
A day I'll never forget.
Thanks again, Dad. Real great supportive father I've got...
(tough to finally admit that my father's a real bastard--now I know why I've looked for substitute fathers for a long time...)
No wonder I don't want to lose Steady Eddy, even though we just can't make this thing work...
no matter how much we love each other...
So, we're taking it in stages. Figuring out how our lives without one another might evolve. Our therapist is very supportive--telling us that we're both very lovable people, and that we deserve someone who's compatable. And that we don't have to not-love each other.
Because we really can't.
We just can't do it together.
posted by Tish Grier at 10:52 PM
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