Courage

After a date with a guy a couple of months ago, I came home and started crying. I was scared. Miserable. I immediately ceased all contact with him, and returned to flying solo with relief in my heart.

I thought I wanted to meet someone and was ready for a boyfriend. I believed that. This guy was lovely, and we had more in common than I'd ever have expected. He was funny, smart, and engaging. He took care of everything in the hours we spent together. Yet, my enduring memory of that evening is trauma. Wanting to get away.

What is it that scares me? The answer to that question is both complex and incredibly simple. I know I can make it on my own; this way, I'm okay. I don't know what someone else could do to me or the life I've fought to establish for myself. I don't know that I can fulfill what someone else needs, wants, or expects.

Failure. Disappointment. Regret.

The relationships I've had with men that lasted longest (college boyfriend, husband, and the "Hunky Latino") had few hallmarks in common.

The first, when I was youngest, was a passionate and tempestuous exercise in extremes, where each of us wanted to be "boss" and neither of us had the faintest idea or inclination to how to temper our frenetic youthful energy with compromise and concession. Nor should we have... after all, we were glorified children. That was immature love, and from it I learned that ostensibly positive feelings like love can generate secondary feelings like jealousy, anger, frustration, and panic. I look back now and fancy that our affection was sincere, but so was our inability to cope with the power of those feelings. We were a match made in idealistic hell. That relationship ended after four and a half years (years beyond what it should have), and I consider it an enormous growth experience that I was the one who ended it, cold turkey, no takebacks, despite the ensuing drama.

What from that relationship did I apply to my husband, whom I met about eighteen months later? Somehow, from it, I learned to equate maturity with control. My first boyfriend was an exercise in excess -- too much food, too much drink, too much arguing, too much laughter, too many tears, too much passion, too much fun, too many gifts, too much attention, just too much. Exhausting. But my ex-husband was a paragon of control. When I tried the drama on him, he walked away from me; such histrionics would not work on him. He was independent, with his own job, apartment, and car. He did what he wanted because he had the resources. He didn't need me for anything, so I could just be a good thing. A treat. A cherry atop the sundae of the life he'd already made for himself. He was a grown up, I thought. An intelligent man with a degree and a wonderful sense of humor that kept me constantly in stitches. Finally! And I was beyond judgement, because I could do -- or not do -- exactly as I pleased for him, and it was all just a big fringe benefit as far as he was concerned.

Little did I realize that his grownup-ness and sense of humor cloaked a raging inability to share himself fundamentally with another person. It's hard to get close and serious with another joke lined up. While he was good to me, and we had some good years together, but he stood steadfast in remaining entirely himself. I in turn, while bearing no secrets, learned that when it came to him, his reliability was fleeting, his attitudes mercurial. Sometimes, his behavior was equally mercurial as well as difficult to bear. But I had him, and that was enough. My one-sided and all-encompassing love of him was something I offered more to the idea of my husband than to the man who bore the title. His leaving me was no less painful for that. The hole he ripped into my soul when he left hurt just as much as if we'd been soul mates, even more because I didn't understand how he could possibly leave. I'd never asked anything of him, never prevented him from having what he wanted. How much could it cost him to stay with someone who asked for nothing? And got it, too, let the record show.

But then he was gone, but I found his twin in the form of "The Hunky Latino." The packaging was much prettier, the attitude much happier and joyful. This was a beautiful man who was used to the world giving him exactly what he wanted from it. Though he was far from my husband's literal twin, he was certainly his spiritual one. The self-sufficiency, reluctance to rely or lean on anyone else, the absolute disinclination to true intimacy, they all emerged in short order My old friends were there! They made me feel comfortable instead of frustrated. Here was another man who didn't need me, at least not for much more than a warm body around which to wrap himself on occasion. I didn't have to listen to his problems, stroke his ego, care for his home or health, or in any way make up for wherever it was that he found himself lacking. A hand or a shoulder? He made sure he didn't ever need those things. So did I.

What do these three relationships have in common? Very little. But perhaps the negative elements of the first taught me the frailties of emotions and not to trust them, let them guide me, or lend them any faith. That first breakup was ugly, for all its crushed youthful idealism, and it's a situation I'd rather chew off my own arm than repeat.

But the relationships that followed it bore out a pattern of choosing men who don't need "a relationship," because, then, how can I have failed to live up to their expectations of a relationship? They didn't have any expectations. That way, I couldn't fail.

But choosing men who don't need a relationship means that, well, quite obviously, we wind up not having a relationship. We might eat together, travel together, spend lots of time together, have deep conversations and attend social events as a couple... but we are playacting. Our minds and bodies are in context, but the generally good thoughts between us never cross from like to mutual love and high regard, never do we see each other's hearts and souls along with our faces and figures. Without trust, passion, intimacy, friendship, and investment, there is not an actual relationship, it's a functional facade of one, and such a thing actually diminishes me. That prefer it or seem to choose it indicates that I've developed a quite effective fear of what I already noted: failure, disappointment, regret. Easier to aim for something that cannot get close enought to evicerate me.

Jan Denise, my relationship guru, says that she doesn't believe those people who claim they want to find someone just to watch TV together in the evenings. Just companionship. She maintains that what we want is for someone to know us fully and entirely and to still think we're perfect.

I've always thought I had to try so hard to be thought perfect.

What happens if I don't have to try? What if someone just thinks I am?

Resumption

After writing regularly here for so long, and after my almost-two month hiatus, I feel like I owe the world in general an explanation. I closed out the school year and immediately began doing as little as possible after a quick trip to Colorado. Then I joined a writing group, which has provided an outlet for my writing creativity and continued my exploration into my own interests to make new friends. I am proud of myself for doing this, because I'm taking action to find what I want instead of hoping what I want finds me. Along that same line, I've found the beginnings of some interest with an eharmony guy. It's far too soon to say if something meaningful will happen, but the fact that I'm actually intrigued instead of traumatized is hopeful. All we've done so far is speak on the phone a few times, which is VERY EARLY. But so far, I like what I am hearing.

I spent the day at one of our city's esteemed universities in a professional development workship that proved to be a waste of time so far. I hope that the rest of the week involves more action and less time-filling. But it's important anyway to bond with my new coworkers and explore what they have to offer professionally... and what I can offer them, too.

My parents are coming for a visit in a few weeks, and after resolving some drama with my father, I think we're going to have a good visit. Such things are not always guarateed between my dad and me. However, I'm used to the drama by now, and I stopped taking it personally long ago.

I feel better, more whole, more relaxed, and more at peace than I have in recent memory. This down time this summer, with no work or arduous obligation, is a great gift for me to get to know myself the rest of the way on my new-life's terms to prepare for the oncoming future knowing who I am and what I have to offer -- and what I'm capable of doing. And, conversely, knowing who I am NOT, and WHAT I cannot or shall not tolerate or entertain for myself.

Now that I've picked up the mantle of the blog again, I will attempt to resume a more faithful relationship here. The mind needs its playground, and with the self-imposed rigor of my writing group, I myself need to remember to think and express for myself, not just for the characters and stories I create.