Mega post warning: This post is long rambling and, no really, its like, long, dude. Get a cup of tea, or a beer, and maybe a snack. Or come back when you actually have the time to read it. You’re going to want to comment. One way or another.
Ok. I am working on a long rambly and probably quite tedious update (edit: this post became long and rambly and its teacup overfloweth into other areas….I’ll fill you in on the rest over the next few posts), but its taking me so long, and I can’t figure out whether I actually want to write it for myself or just out of some sense of blog duty, and continuity….Soooooo, to break the logjam, this is by way of a interim post. I’ve found myself having to actually try to be mean lately, simply to get things over and done with, and this is something I enjoy very little. In the long term though, it is going to be better all round. I suck at being mean. Even when I am trying to be mean I feel bad about it. When I’m not trying to be mean, I seem to get accused of being mean.
It all leads me to the conclusion that me and women are not meant to be…I try so hard to be a nice person and then whenever I end up with a woman they seem to want me to be someone other than who I actually am. I mean….wha? The person you wanted to be with isn’t actually who you wanted? I is confused. Fuck it. I hereby swear to never ever try to be anyone other than who I am, and if smelly old women can’t hack it then they can bally well not try to be with me in the first place.
Anyway….thanks to my wifes recent reluctance to accept my decision to break up, the subsequent mentalness, the bitterness and her incessant making everyone around me think I am the spawn of Satan, I am feeling a little surrounded by people that think I am a twat. So they’re not people who I actually care about….anyone I do care about knows me, knows what went on, knows what I’ve put up with for the past two years and understands my decision to quit. They may or may not agree with it, but they understand it, and respect me enough to support me in it. (and if they don’t they’re keeping quiet about it!)
Yes, I told my wife our relationship was over -While she was in another continent for 3 months. Via email. Yes this sucks, but I am pretty useless on the phone, and I am pretty eloquent in the written form, and telling someone why you have decided to end a marriage requires something more than a few grunts and verbal shuffling. I didn’t want to wait until she came back, and do it in person (which would be the preferred option) because I wanted to give her the option to stay in her home with her family and never see me again. It seemed mean to wait and let her think everything was fine. Isn’t it?
I appreciate that people seem to think the phone is better than the letter, but I do not. I really am useless on the phone. You don’t get me when you talk to me on the phone, you get a total twit. I am me in a letter, I can form my thoughts in the written form as they sound in my head. Albeit slower. To me, a letter is personal, the phone is not. And she is aware of this, she has known this for a long time.
People just choose things to be mad about when they feel hurt.
So I broke up with her.
She came back from the states. She was still of the opinion there was hope for us, even though I had made it very very clear my decision was final. Even at the beginning of the 3 months I had stated that I wasn’t sure we would have a relationship when she came back. It wasn’t like I was surprising her with this decision. I also wouldn’t make a decision like that unless it was final. I don’t dilly dally in such things.
I had got friendly with a lady on the internet in the few weeks prior to her coming back. The friendliness grew. It didn’t contribute in any way to my decision, which if I am honest with myself I could have made in the first week she was away, but wanted to give due consideration. What it did do was force me to make the decision, because I don’t cheat on people, and I do consider a net relationship cheating. It is isn’t it?
So I couldn’t not formally break up with her. It had to be done. However I did it.
But then another conundrum. Do I tell her about the internet lady, or not? Now my first instinct is to just go with the full disclosure. In for a penny in for a pound. I know I’m going to have to go through the emotional ring of fire, so no point leaving anything out. Its not like I’ve done anything…got friendly with someone, also decided that my marriage is a failure. Hey, we’re going to argue anyway, its a given with my wife….
But then I’m thinking – I know her….if I mention at the same time as telling her we are definitely over that I have also met someone I like on the internet (even though I have no idea if is going to lead to friendship, romance or nothing) then I know for a fact she will blame my decision on the other woman, and it will get all very messy and she just won’t get at all my reasons for my decision.
I also know how much it would effect her if she decided that I was essentially leaving her for another woman (which is so not the case, but I could see where it would go). I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t good enough for me, because that wasn’t the case either. There was basically no way I could do the full disclosure and end the relationship in a way that would convey to her why I was actually ending it.
Ok, it got pretty complicated and messy in my head. You all know I am sure, the machinations and worries that accompany any attempt to end a relationship whilst wanting to leave your other half with as little baggage as possible. I went with the not telling her option. Concentrated in the breaking up part. I did tell her I had made friends with people on the internet, and also told her one in particular I had got on with, and even told her I was going on a visit as a brief respite from life before starting my new job. (I was going to go travelling even prior to meeting the internet lady, so the trip was not even provoked by the meeting, but there you go)
I didn’t really know what else to say because I didn’t know what else was going on. You don’t know what kind of a relationship you are having with someone you’ve never met do you? Especially when you’ve only known them a few weeks. To me, it was all pretty much irrelevant to the break up anyway, and I just wanted her to realise that too. Not a hope in hell…and I was foolish to ever think it could go down any other way than the messy hell that ensued.
So basically the wifes insanity gene kicked in, the house was torn apart looking for evidence. My email was snuck into after I left, my blog was ransacked. (my blog was previously kept private, not because I wanted secrets but because my wife was incredibly insecure and would read anything into nothing, would be convinced any female bloggers commenting were madly in love with me and jeez, its just not worth the hassle…) The upshot was that she realised my relationship with the internet lady was a little more than mere friendship. We were of course officially broken up by this point.
I received a few nasty emails….I got back to an atmosphere of such ferocity that it hurt to even breathe. I started my new job a day and a half after coming back. I didnt get much sleep the first 3 days. Tuesday night I was woken up when my wife came into my room (she had moved into the office) and started yelling at me at 1am, ranting like a total lunatic. I didnt get a lot of sleep that night.
I don’t know. I feel bad because no it’s not the ideal way to break up with someone, but I’m not sure what else I could have done…the circumstances weren’t ideal…I hadn’t seen her for 3 months…I had told her several times over the course of the 3 months that I was trying to work out if we had a relationship left. I didn’t expect to meet someone. I decided to break up with her, and met someone at the same time. Is that a coincidence or was I just trying to reach out to someone else to ease the transition. Its always possible, but I’ve needed someone many times in the past, and theres never been anyone even close to the kind of person I could connect with. I think sometimes life just throws you a rope you know? The human concerns of leaving a suitable period of time between partners is just that, a ridiculous human concern. It doesn’t make a mockery of our relationship. If I am honest, I have been unhappy for a long time. Its not something thats happened quickly.
I’m sure I’ve missed out a lot of important detail that makes me sound like less of a bastard… but I have at least got it out…I didn’t intend to haul out the whole sordid tale.
The sole details my wife has been sharing with people is that I don’t want to be with her anymore and that I have been prancing around behind her back while she was away. Thats it. No mention of the two years I spent putting up with her insecurity, paranoia, quite scary anger outbursts about well, nothing at all, moods, general mood swings and weirdness. And I take prozac for depression and anxiety so you can appreciate maybe how hard it is for me to cope with living with somone so …. unprecictable and stressful.
To some extent I have deliberately avoided trying to persuade her of my innate niceness because I realised there was little point to it, it wouldn’t really help matters. She needs her anger to put some space between us, to help her heal, to make her realise we weren’t meant to be. I don’t need to be the nice guy. Its too late for that. So I have let her rant and call me names mostly. I’ve made little effort to try and change her opinion. I resent the fact that she’s been badmouthing me to people, that she felt it ok to totally fuck up my first week at my new job whilst calling me selfish. But to regain her self worth, it helps if I am unworthy of her in her mind. So thats what I aimed for. To convince her I was a nice guy, that I did still love her and that it was just circumstance and an inability to live together, that would be a cruelty really. It might lend her hope, make her think there is room for hope. There isn’t…I’ve been worn down so much over the last two years that my love for her is a distant thing now…through necessity. I can’t share my life with her. It hurts, but I know it for a fact. I’ve tried to make relationships work long past the point of realising this before, and the last time it ended in me having a nervous breakdown. I know I have to recognise when to stop now. I can’t push myself too far. I am weaker and more fragile than I used to be.
She moved out on Wednesday. She’s coming back on Tuesday to get the last of her things. I think she might be moving elsewhere in the country.
It hurts me that I feel little but relief about this, but thats probably a temporary thing. All I really want is to recover. To pick up the pieces of me and try and figure out if relationships are really worth it. Maybe it’s time to just focus on myself until I understand me. Would seem a good first step before I expect anyone else to…
If anyone has any advice, unbiased opinions, criticism, or other viewpoints…feel free. I hope the women in the audience aren’t all silently cursing me… I’ve been on the other end of this, a couple of times. I know how it feels. I can say I did it with more honesty than my ex did it to me, so I at least learned something from that….
Posted by darkentries 
Posted by darkentries 
Posted by darkentries 
