Journal 7/22/09

Had a lot of problems talking (texting) P on 7/21. We were supposed to have a follow up conversation that evening. Texted her that we were supposed to talk. Got a terse response that she would make contact the next day. Just hit me wrong. Texted her back that we were supposed to talk THAT night. Got another terse response: tomorrow. Got very very very angry. Texted her back with “nice integrity”. Was so very tempted to include additional text, which would end up being unforgivable: “your parents would be so proud of you.” Realized that this was going to cause more problems that solve my anger. Somehow (I still don’t know how I managed this), I did not send that text. Next day when we talked she explained that she was told that she cannot talk or text while working with R unless she’s on a bathroom break. Reminded P that I am in a vacuum, don’t know what’s going on, and that this (along with a summation of our attempt to IM) says a lot about the state of our ability to communicate with each other.

Was very frustrated and upset the next day. Was going to put off the conversation until after work when I realized that I should just get it over with. Texted as much to P (call me in 5. let’s just get this over with). The conversation turned out to be rather good. Discovered that a lot of my mental pain, fear, frustration, etc. was more related to other issues in my life: neck, insurance, time off, furloughs, etc. than to P. Also had reached a point where I understood that I could not sit in relationship limbo. Had taken off my rings the night before. Kept the aquamarine & diamond on my right hand, moved the knot ring to the left (feels better to have a ring there). Told P that I was not ready to deal with relationship limbo, that although she felt strongly (told her that she yelled this) that this was individual time, that I felt that there were 3 entities involved: her, me, and us. Although I understood how she wanted to reduce things to basic elements, we could not further reduce than to the 3, not 2 entities.

Also said that the “us” was lying twitching and bleeding on the ground and I was afraid it would die before 10/16/09 arrived. Asked if there was any that we could see to devote some time, even 10%, to dealing with the “us”. Surprisingly, P was receptive. I talked about understanding her point and what she wanted but that her adamant and vehement refusal to even consider an “us” meant, to me, that I needed to see the relationship as over. Went on to detail that her actions seemed to say the same thing: separation of our financial interdependence: car insurance, Costco, mailing address, cell phones. Asked if, when put that way, did she see the same thing? She said she did see that. Asked if we could just consider some sort of action that would pay some attention to “us” and not risk it bleeding to death between now and 10/16/09? We talked a lot. I talked about how I felt that we got to the point we are at. I know that my actions have brought P to the place where she does not feel safe in my presence. I talked about how I saw the deterioration of our relationship as time went by. Stated that I saw the past 3 years as a series of smacks upside the head and that before we could really recover from that, we’d get another one and another one and so on. Said that eventually I lost track of where I was, where I was going, and that my emotions snuck up on me and took over control of me, which dropped my overall functioning like a rock. I know how to care for me – what I’m learning is nothing I didn’t already know but had gotten out of practice of doing. Seems that most of my therapy has included a significant portion of DBT so I think that I’m able to work a bit faster since its review not learning something new. It’s still not easy to do, but just a bit easier than the first time when I was learning the steps, not being reminded of them.

I probably jumped the gun and suggested too much as initial steps to reconciling – suggested that maybe P spend the night or weekend with me. By the end of the conversation, I could see and P said that that was too much, too scary for initial steps. Retreated and instead suggested talking, reading the suggested book from Kaiser, maybe doing some of the exercises which appear geared towards helping couples communicate better. Again, P seemed kind of supportive of this idea. Although that is nice, the last time I made a suggestion or asked P to do something, it was to fulfill our obligation in our living together agreement and to seek couples counseling. That ended up with P accusing me the next day of manipulating her into doing couples counseling. I am literally waiting for that to happen again. I expect that she’ll talk to me tomorrow and want to backtrack because she will feel that this is my attempt to exert control. I can see how she would feel that way: I think that P has given up control to me so many times in the past that she must feel like she’s in control now and that the only way she knows how to do that is to be the one who makes the rules/calls the shots in this separation. While I can see that, I cannot really function in the relationship limbo that we have going on. I need some of my needs and concerns addressed. I cannot see how we could even hope to reconcile if we are going to spend 3 months NOT dealing with the “us” and only dealing with ourselves. I know that more than 50% of my life has been my relationship and that the problems of/with this relationship have made significant contributions to my current mental health state.

If nothing else, I want to see us work on our communication skills. I think that our breakdown in communication is the one of the biggest things that led to our sad state of affairs. I can see that we stopped checking in with each other, stopped making sure that we understood what the other was saying. We started relying on past knowledge, possible mind reading, and taking the first answer we got as gospel and the ultimate way things were going to be. We stopped talking about difficult subjects, stopped having follow up conversations. From this we started feeling resentment towards the other and started shifting from a “caring for” attitude to one of “caretaking” of the other. We were both taking care of each other and not caring for what the other one wanted or even seeing if that’s what was going on, that what was happening was what she wanted. From that fundamental breakdown emerged the M fiasco. It was the final straw which highlighted in bright neon how badly we were, how much we didn’t say, what resentments we felt. P reiterated that she hoped that there was some sort of relationship for the 3 of 5 of us. I don’t think that’s possible as it never started out that way and no one seems to want to try to go there. I am fairly sure that M will never want anything other than light friendship/cordiality with me. There’s too much geographical distance between me and Chris to make our type of relationship work and therefore we can’t really have anything unless we end up closer to each other.

I don’t know what may happen. I want to hope that P could work on an “us” but I really expect that she’ll just tell me tomorrow that I’m full of crap and this is another of my attempts to manipulate her into doing something that she just will not do. I expect to see her feet turn into claws so that she can dig it and refuse to move or even consider my point.