Blame

I had a difficult time explaining to people my reasoning behind leaving my husband after only four months of marriage.  Part of me wished that he had hit me or cheated on me because those are really the only two reasons that people hear and accept without question.  Instead I had to delve into the depths of what our relationship was really like anytime someone inevitably asked me what happened.  Though I could have simplified it by telling them that I cheated on him, which was the truth.  But it's not so easy to admit to being the bad guy rather than the victim.  Plus if I had just slept with this guy one time but was completely happy in my marriage otherwise than I probably would have just let it go.  Never told anyone, just store it away in my cellar.  I met Casey one fall afternoon at Hopworks.  My two year engagement of relentless planning had ended in one quick day two months before and I was left realizing that this was now it.  The wedding was something to get excited about, look forward to.  The rest of my life, apparently, was not.  Without all the wedding buzz to distract me I had been left to concentrate on what I'd secretly known the whole time. I've made a huge mistake.    I was doing my best to convince myself to accept it. I was just going to live a mediocre life that I for some reason decided to settle for.  But then I met Casey.  He was a few years younger than me, tall, full head of curly hair, sweet smile, out for a beer with his dad, a firefighter.  I didn't exactly get to know this guy in the few minutes that we chatted at the bar.  But in those few minutes, Casey became everything I ever wanted and it suddenly dawned on me.  I married a total loser.  The marriage felt like a trap, suffocating.  And I realized I had been feeling this way for the last four years but was numb to it.  Something about the mere existence of Casey woke me up, shook my shoulders and slapped me across the face.  Looking back now I feel grateful to Casey for this, though he doesn't know he did anything.  But at the time it was just torture.  Turned out we were in the same bowling league.  And every Wednesday I'd slip off my ring and pretend I wasn't married.  I'd go back to his place afterwards and in the morning wake up to hateful texts from my husband.  Whore  he'd call me Slut.  Cheater.  And I would be appalled that he would call me such names, would make such accusations, despite the fact that they were true.  He never did know this though.  I mean not beyond a hunch.  The absolute easiest way for me to end that marriage would have been admitting to it.  But I just couldn't do it.    Not only because it made me look bad, that it confirmed suscpicions that I couldn't actually be faithful to anyone ever.  But also because it let him off the hook.  And the truth of the matter is, he called me a whore, slut and a cheater long before I met Casey.  He belittled me by telling me I wasn't doing a good enough job cleaning the house or pointing out imperfections in home improvement projects.  During a volunteer work day at the school, he yelled at me in front of all my employees and the vice principal of the school, because he didn't think I had a handle on volunteer management.  I was completely miserable.  But if I just told people who asked what happened to my marriage, if I just said "well, I cheated on him and he left me,"  then none of that even matters anymore.  Expressing love to someone else somehow trumps being a total asshole.  And I just couldn't let it be that way.

Respect

I've always been a defender of guys.  Growing up with a brother who was only a year older than me and a handful of male cousins, I didn't actually meet another girl who wasn't an adult until kindergarten.  Maybe that's why I've always gotten along better with guys and still do to this day.   So as I got into high school, started making girlfriends and inevitably started talking to them about boys, I had a hard time with the theories going around about men.  That they were pigs, they were only after one thing.  They're just going to be nice to you until you sleep with them and then they'll lose respect for you.  I just didn't believe it.  I couldn't see any of the guys that I knew, who I was friends with, who I admired, treating me that way.  I couldn't really see any guy treating me that way no matter what I did.  Maybe I was just spoiled by growing up with my older brother as my best friend.  He would tell me what other girls were like, how they were never as cool as me.  Never as easy to talk to.  Never as laid back.  Because of this, I walked around imagining every guy saw this about me, thought this about me.  I just assumed that all guys had some built-in respect for me.  It took until college to realize this wasn't true.  But even then I figured the only reason a guy could lose interest in me like that was because he was just plain too good for me.  So I started dating guys who basically were not at all worth my time.  Because I figured they would know it, they would know I was too good for them so they would treat me well in order to keep me around.  Yeah, that didn't work either.  Funny that I would think guys who are kind of assholes would actually be nicer to me.  They lost interest just as fast  But still I couldn't say it, I couldn't say that all men were after one thing, that they're all pigs.  I just figured I wasn't meeting the right ones.  Actually it became more I don't deserve the right ones.  My counselor tells me that it's my fault really, this lack of self-worth.  She says guys don't respect me when I sleep with them early on like that.  Even she was saying it guys sleep with you and lose respect for you.  So I'm realizing she's right, and I really hate it when she's right.  By sleeping with guys right away, I am telling them I have no respect for myself so why should you respect me?  Yet still I am not ready to take all the blame.  If anything, I am ready to denounce my defensive stance on the male race.  I am ready to say Yes, they are all like that. And then sit down and eat an entire bowl of chocolate ice cream while knitting a sweater for my dog, secretly wishing that a guy was here, spooning me on the couch.

The Journey

Like most behaviors we have that we aren't proud of, it's considered a mental disorder, a disease.  Codependency its called, or more commonly, Love Addiction.  I have only recently started reading about this, upon the advice of my counselor who is probably just bored of listening to me talk about boys.  From what I make of it so far, those of us who are love addicts can never really have a healthy relationship because we don't really know what a healthy relationship is.  Instead, we purpousley get into relationships with people who activley avoid commitment, intimacy, and love.  Why?  I'm sure there are lots of theories that multiple therapists have come up with.  But I can only attest to myself and my own reasons.  Though I'm not exactly sure what they are either.  Maybe it's the pursuit that I like.  Maybe its the attention.  Maybe it's that passion that you can really only get at the beginning, at the first kiss.  Maybe it's the heartbreak that I'm actually addcited to.  The drama.  A turmoil inside yourself that you actually get to blame on someone else.  But I think what it really comes down to is self-esteem.  It's amazing how far you can lower  your standards when you don't think you deserve any better.  The funny part about this is that I've always thought that I did have high self-esteem, mainly because other people seemed to think so and would compliment me on it.  But I'm not sure exactly what it is they've been seeing and mistaking for esteem.  Maybe just an ability to be social, which those of us who are social, know is just a form of acting.  Regardless, this flux between low and high self-esteem has had me settling for subpar relationships only to panic when I realize how mediocre they are and then feel the need to get out them immediatley.   So in order to find a healthy relationship, which I do indeed want, I'm gonna need to address and tackle all kinds of issues.  On this journey, I invite you along.  I can promise you only brutal honesty, and because of this, you may not much like me as a person.  You won't be the first one.  But there is no other way to achieve happiness.  Just dark, brutal, stomach-wrenching honesty.