Insanity

Somewhere you read that ending relationships is neither easy nor simple. The person responsible for making that statement popular likely experienced a textbook, one size fits all type of breakup. One person is clearly the villan and another is clearly the victim, but the villan eventually apologizes and both parties learn valuable lessons before moving on to healthy relationships. They stay friends, have barbeques together every month and these gatherings include current spouses, kids, pets, etc…

You are not so lucky. When you fall in love, the experience snatches you out of normal existence and pushes you right off of a cliff. It is frightening yet thrilling to share every hope, desire, fear, dream, goal, minute, kiss, and bed with another person. You know deep down that the feeling will fade with time and when it does, you hope the respect and mutual admiration will endure until death. Common sense tells you that you and your partner bring all of your past experiences to the relationship, but acknowledging that dampens the thrill and you will do anything to continue the high. You may notice a few odd behaviors, but this is love and you should appreciate it instead of complain.

Eventually the intoxication fades, but you will still do anything to keep that person happy, even when they tell you one day that you’re too much and they need to be alone. You are thrown off and a bit shocked, but you realize that maybe you need to pay more attention to yourself. You try not to call, but you wonder if they miss you at all or if they’re thinking of you. You resist calling and texting, but you wonder if and why are they not feeling the same. You decide to give in and you call, but there’s no answer. Crestfallen, you try to distract yourself, but it doesn’t work well. Then you ask yourself, did something horrible happen to him and you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye because you wanted to play the game right? Suddenly, the screen lights up with his name and you are joyous again, even when he sounds slightly out of breath while claiming to have been asleep. Those details never become an issue until much later, but you will excuse anything to keep him happy.

Life continues more or less the same, but you realize after numerous arguments (yes they happen) that you have a problem with insecurity. You screw up, you apologize and try hard to improve, but you cannot seem to get it right. You even attempt to convince others that you’re not crazy for being angry, but this rarely helps. If you learned earlier in life how to trust yourself, you might know how to draw boundaries and respect them. You might also know that pre-emptive break up tactics do more harm than good. Instead, you cling and hope that the person you love might see how much you hurt and stop hurting you. This never happens.

After pitiful emotional pleas and episodes, your embarrassment and shame morph into hatred of yourself for being so needy. You also get angry at him for being insensitive and allowing you to shoulder all of the guilt. Your times together center on arguments, but the chemistry and passion never die… until you notice he starts to disappear after the fights. This is when you begin to wonder if you’re not so nutty after all.

At first he disappears for days at a time and despite a nagging voice inside of you that insists otherwise, you believe it is all your fault. You caused him to hurt and you should really learn to trust him. You try different things to improve, but the feedback is never consistent. You are either too serious or too emotional and eventually you realize that you are not the sole cause of everything wrong in your relationship; however, when you do speak up, you always ruin a good evening and can never relax. Or, you don’t know how lucky you are to have him because a lot of other women would die for the chance, so why can’t you just be happy with what you have? You learn to bury yourself as much as possible, but that hardly works well.

Despite efforts to keep the peace, you continue the unpredictable cycle of arguments and breaks until weeks go by before he returns and wants to make it work again. If you take the blame, change accordingly, and stop being so critical, it may work well. You gladly accept the blame; you’ll do anything to stop the arguing, until there is no indication of your autonomy. You are expendable. Losing yourself is preferable to the nauseating carnival ride of conclusions and arguments originating from a chemically altered frontal lobe. A game of pin the tail on the donkey ensues until you, not him, concede and you make the necessary changes to coexist peacefully.

When the escort ads and mysterious text messages inevitably blind side you, the true insanity begins and you are suddenly the only one fighting to keep a family together. You quickly discover the addict will choose to dispose of you over his secret compulsions without a second thought. The person you thought would fight for you under any circumstance is now painting you as the psychotic ex before you have a chance to gather your items and leave the house. It doesn’t occur to you yet, but to him, you are an interchangeable set of orifices and source of admiration.

Nothing more, nothing less.

(C) 2014