2015-05-21 - 4:38 p.m.
Part Three
After the infatuation period wears off, a couple will start to bring up fears and issues in each other. At this point, you have the opportunity to help each other work through issues and emerge as a stronger couple in a deeper and more enduring kind of love. This is normal and necessary. Many people give up at this point and find another person to be infatuated with.
Undeniably, I have my issues. I have always had serious abandonment issues, which must be rooted in the major trauma of my childhood, which was my dad going to war when I was very young. I was a daddy's girl and he left for a year and could have died. I was seeing soldiers in my daddy's uniform being shot and falling dead on the evening news. At the tender age of 3, I was put on medication to stop my severe stomach pain brought on by the anxiety of watching my father be killed on the news every night. This messed me up for life in regards to saying goodbye to people. I have raging abandonment issues. You may have noticed the word "forever" surfacing a lot in my writings. Cause, yeah.
Another of my issues is being rebellious, feisty, strong-willed, and stoic, bordering on Mr. Spock proportions. I avoid being bossed around or oppressed by peers or partners. I detest the feeling of being at someone's mercy, because it has been my experience that most people don't possess any mercy. I provide for myself to avoid the disappointment of someone letting me down. I'm also blessed or cursed - depending upon how you view it - by logic. I'm very logical. I think he experienced these aspects of me as a sign that I didn't really love him or wasn't malleable in the way he wanted. He may have thought that I could not be trusted to remain committed to him. He didn't realize that the fact that I felt secure enough in his love to buck his system and try to strike a deal I could live with was the truest sign that I was in it for life.
He has his issues as well. "Arrogant" is an adjective I've heard used to describe him many times. I tend to like arrogant people for some reason. I also like over-confidant people. He's not really overly confident, but he is certainly arrogant, ego-centric, and lacking in empathy. I didn't see that as the flashing red warning sign that it was. He is also rigid to a degree I've never witnessed before. I thought he might have Asperger's syndrome, but I thought that as long as he loved me I could certainly accept him, warts and all. I hoped that we would be able to work it all out and that maybe he would learn to allow me some latitude to be who I am just as I allowed him to be who he is. I really required nothing of him, except faithfulness.
He was very different from anyone I ever knew in my life. My strict Christian upbringing was completely foreign to him. To me, he was the very embodiment of excitement. He told me that I was his "hope". He assured me that he loved me beyond all normal boundaries of love. He loved me beyond this lifetime, beyond this world. He always made sure he had the last say in the "I love you more" game. He loved me most, he said. I believed that he was completely sincere. It never crossed my mind that he was playing me or that he would ever cheat or turn his exquisitely vicious temper on me.
After a few years of what I thought was blissful love, we hit a major snag. He wanted to live together unmarried and that was against my Christian upbringing. I loved him, but feared marriage because I'd already had one disasterous marriage. I was healing from that and I knew I would be ready to marry him one day, but I wasn't quite ready yet so I asked him for more time. I didn't want to live together without marriage. I think this whole dynamic caused him to doubt my love for him. I loved him with every last bit of my heart. I would have never chosen to split up. I didn't realize how much this was turning his feelings and he didn't let on.
One day he asked me if we could just live together. He could go home and get some things and come right back! In that moment of total happiness, I said yes. Almost immediately I regretted it, because I started trying to figure out how to break this to my parents in just a few days. I had a daughter living with me. It was just not something I felt was ok.
Eventually, I asked him to wait a couple of months instead of coming right back, and I inadvertently hurt his feelings by asking him to go back home a little early so my ex husband wouldn't shoot off his stupid mouth and get his ass whooped in front of my child. I told my love that I needed a couple of months to announce this new living arrangement to my folks. I meant that. This was the honest truth and my love for him was just as strong as before, but he was angry inside, he didn't believe my reasons, he experienced this as rejection.
He kissed me, pretended all was ok, went home, and started cutting me out of his life. This was the first time he left me. He didn't break up and leave me with any closure. I still thought we loved each other and would be together... in a couple of months.
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