Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Big X, Part II: The Meat of the Matter

When I think back on the meat of the relationship now, I am hard pressed to list the good things, though I know they existed. I did love him once and for a long time. Partly, there is truth in my thinking that the bad outweighed the good, especially in the last couple of years, but also I think that it is the soul's way of mending itself to emphasize the bad after it's over. It helps the crying stop.

In the first couple of years, we were happy together. I was young. He was four years older than me but emotionally at about my level. I had been in relationships (of the high school variety) before and he had not. It was all young love and rushing hormones and the newness of an adult relationship for the first couple of years.

I left him briefly when I was 22. He wasn't treating me right. I was never beaten or anything but he yelled at me a lot. He took out his anger verbally on me. And he kept me separate from his friends. And he lied sometimes about where he'd been or who he'd been with. He thought if I knew he went to a strip club I'd get mad, or if there were girls out with his group of friends, I'd get mad. I could never get it through his head that what made me mad was the lying, not so much the actual activities. Boys like the boobies. I get that.

I had given up some of my dreams for him. I always wanted to join the Peace Corps but now would not because I didn't want to give up our relationship. I would have liked to travel abroad but we could not because he wouldn't fly. I had also during this time become friends with another man and we fell in love, of a sort. I never physically cheated on the Big X but this friend proposed marriage to me and I accepted and immediately left the Big X. But I realized within weeks that my love for this friend was more about being treated right than about the actual man, and that despite the problems we had, I did still love the Big X. I went back to him.

Six months later he cheated on me. I have really good instincts about these things sometimes. (Of course, his father answering the phone at his house and calling me by the other girl's name was a good clue. I'll give you that.) He ended things with her and we had a very long talk about the problems in our relationship, of which there were many. We decided to give it one more shot. I told him right then that I would forgive him this once only and if it ever happened again, we were done forever. He said he loved me so much and wanted things to work and all the right stuff that I needed to hear.

A few more years passed thusly: We fought a lot. We made love a lot. We were best friends. We talked about marriage and buying a house and kids. He said he wanted all that stuff but we were always at least six months away from any of it happening. He was always going to go back to school next semester but next semester never came. Sometimes he threw things at me when we fought. I started to throw things back. He stopped throwing things at me.

We travelled the U.S. a lot. Travelling was our band-aid, I think now. It was our version of having kids to fix what was wrong. The next trip was always going to make things better. Trouble was, we couldn't seem to spend more than 48 hours straight in each others' presence without having a giant screaming match. He had issues. He had anger management problems and problems with crowds. We couldn't go to restaurants on the weekend or before 10 pm because they were too busy for him to deal.

After eight years of being together, I was seriously depressed. Every year after that that passed my depression got worse and worse. I didn't want to leave him because when I was 18 I had decided that he was my one true love and if I left I'd never find a love like that again. I had shut myself off from any true friends besides him so there was no one to tell me how stupid I was being. Always after each anniversary I thought by next year we will surely be engaged.

I was a pitiable person. I had given up friends, I had given up my youth, I had given up my personality for this dominant man and it all seemed worth it because he was going to be my husband one day and we would be together always. I stayed home every night waiting for him to come home and deign to spend time with me.

I was pitiable but I wasn't stupid. I knew he still lied to me. I caught him in many, big and small. After he cheated that one time, I checked up on him often. I knew who he called and when and how long he talked to them. I knew who emailed him and so on. Of course, now I can see that here was another big clue we didn't belong together. If I trusted him that little, there was a reason. And someone that doesn't deserve trust isn't a great person to spend your life with. I don't care to ever be in a position where I feel the need to check up on someone again.

But then I watched each year pass; I watched the age of 30 approach. I watched him putting off his future (our future) and forcing me to put off any plans I had for my own future. I would have gone back to graduate school years ago if I hadn't been waiting for him to get his degree first because after all, if we were going to buy a house we couldn't both be going to school. Boy was I stupid.

In total, ten and a half years passed before we come to the final part of my story about the Big X. Stay tuned, Readers.

3 comments:

Tina said...

To Anon: How about a real name, age, and some interesting tidbit for starters?

To You-Know-Who: That comment on my sleeping around post sounds as if you are a stalker. It is a good thing I DO Know Who so I don't need to be scared of having someone outside my bedroom window when I open the blinds in the morning looking in at my scary bed-head hair.

Anonymous said...

Hey Tina, You-Know who, i think is an ex-co-worker of mine, she was referring to me, guna have to check that! (there's your tidbit), and im 21...

Keep goin with the story

Tina said...

I'm pretty sure You-Know-Who is one of my best friends, who took offense at my saying that I like my lovers to be removed from friends, family, schoolmates, etc, as she is the only person who has been burdened with knowing fairly well several of my past men.

Will finish the story later. I must do homework first.