Did I actually like him?

My therapist this week asked whether I liked him.  She understood I loved him but did I like him?  I was taken aback by the question.  I liked seeing him.  I liked spending time with him.  I liked talking with him.  There were many things about him that I liked.  So why was there a pause before I stumbled through an answer?  Why do I even now feel the answer I gave was inadequate or incomplete such that it still tumbles through my mind?

The first things that comes to mind when I reflect on whether I liked him are the times I reassured him that I did indeed like him.  The specific contexts of those conversations alludes me right now but I remember it coming up enough times over the years that the reassurances I gave really stick with me.  In the moment, I believed in my reassurances but is that because I repeated it enough times that I convinced myself of its truth?  

What if I had slowly over time come to like him less and less but had convinced myself otherwise with how often I repeated the reassurances he regularly needed?  Or maybe my loyalty and strive to find the good in people blinded me?

If I'm truly honest, I was exasperated with how often the smallest thing going wrong would signify the whole world must be against him.  I was uncomfortable with his attitude of entitlement that was so often fed by his mom.  I was tired from my attempts to validate him never being enough.  I felt empty from the lack of deep conversations.  I had gotten to the point where for my own sanity I was distancing myself from his constant negativity.  I had started to give up on any hope that there was some magical way I could phrase things that wouldn't result in him taking offense and getting defensive.

But I was too busy focusing on him, giving him the benefit of the doubt, trying to help him manage his feelings, trying to keep our marriage together to have time to notice my own feelings.

The more I unravel, the more I see the ways I set aside my own feelings and thoughts to focus on reassuring him, making space for his feelings, and trying to manage his feelings.  It's like my first dilemma upon moving out - was I truly adverse to noise or did I just not like listening to his complaints about noise?  I didn't actually know the answer to that question until I moved into my own studio that faces both a brewery and very active train tracks.  

Maybe this is just one more example of how my energy and focus on him distracted me from myself.  

Ultimately though, whether or not I liked him isn't something that happened in isolation.  It's a by product of the energy that was and was not put into the relationship.  It's the result of that imbalance.  It's completely missing the mark on what a partnership is supposed to be.

My takeaway from this - stop pouring more energy into people than the energy they are willing to pour into me.