I'm struggling to put all of what I'm feeling to words. I'm struggling to fully understand what this new realization about me truly means. So I keep getting up from writing this post to water my basil or move to another chair or make myself some breakfast.
I think I fear abandonment. Before last night, I never would have admitted it even to myself. I'm not sure I even realized it on a conscious level. I've done such an amazing job all my life learning how to rely on myself such that I didn't think I needed to worry about abandonment that I pushed this fear deep down.
I don't feel like I've ever truly been chosen. No one has ever prioritized me. And even when I was able to develop relationships, they didn't last because the other person didn't accept who I fundamentally was or wasn't willing to put the same effort in that I was putting in.
I think about my second best friend who dumped me when I came out to her as queer (which was actually the second strike against me - she had already told me I was going to hell because I was Lutheran). I think about my first best friend who dumped me without warning when her parents got a divorce. I think about so many other friendships that faded because I was the only one putting in any effort. That is even happening now with my current friendships.
And I think back to all the bullying I faced as a child. I was the odd kid out. The one with barely any friends. The girl who danced to the beat of her own drum. I still feel that way. I love my uniqueness and am confident in who I am but I'm not confident there is anywhere my uniqueness would fit in.
So when I met my now ex-husband, we had a whirlwind dating period and for the first time in my life I thought I had met someone who saw me, liked me, and was going to choose me. That first year or so together truly was amazing. And I think that period where we were likely driven by infatuation lasted as long as it did because we were long-distance for nine of those months. And it was long enough for me to get attached and build in my head how I saw our future. And so before that first year was up, I proposed to him.
It wasn't until we had moved in together, that I started to see the cracks, his unwillingness to prioritize me, his siding with his mom against me, his avoidance of any hard conversations. But by then, I had put all my eggs in this basket. I had built him up to be the one who would actually stick by my side, the one who would be different from the rest. I had already committed to him and I am not someone who takes commitments lightly. I'm loyal even when it isn't best for me. So I ignored those cracks.
The early years of our marriage were really rough. I don't even have a good memory of the details of that time period and have to rely on what few journal entries I wrote. Between the chaos of being a new teacher stressing about tenure and the chaos of a difficult start to my marriage, I was in survival mode. In hindsight, I wonder if I would have handled either of those situations differently if they weren't affecting me simultaneously. Would I still be a teacher today if I could have focused just on that? Would I have become a better wife (or walked out of the relationship much earlier) if I could have focused just on that?
And then when he had an emotional affair, I was so desperate not to lose him that I focused all my energy on contorting myself to what he wanted me to be and no energy on whether or not he was taking accountability for what he did and his efforts (or lack thereof) to try to repair the relationship. My biggest fear at that time was that he would leave me. I feared abandonment.
I don't know what my primary attachment style is but in reflecting on the relationship in this light, I suspect I was leaning fairly avoidant in the beginning when I was ignoring signs and in survival mode and then I was likely leaning anxious by the time we were dealing with his emotional affair, and by the end I was feeling more secure as I had begun to set boundaries. It was probably those boundaries and me moving towards secure that pushed him to end it.
So when he ended our marriage so abruptly, without warning, and just as the political climate (and my job security) went to hell, the fear of abandonment came true. And the depth of my pain of being abandoned once again and this time by someone I had invested two decades in was/is still overwhelming.
No comments:
Post a Comment