more naval gazing and my best friend's retort
I am aware that this may not be interesting, however it is completely occuping my mind and I'll be glad some day to read this over. So here is an email and response about my stalled out stuck on hold listening to bad muse-ak love life.
My email:
Shakespeare once said “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
Of course he got married at 18 then left his wife and kids to live in London and be the most famous playwright the world has ever known. He then wrote several plays about dads screwing up their daughters and abandoning their wives in his later years and retired home at around the age of 50 to die shortly there after.
I woke up this morning feeling surrounded by the Tempest/Pericles-esque shipwrecks of my failed relationships. Both of them.
Really it's about T, but I unluckily happened on E's myspace page the other day. He was a friend of a new friend of mine--I didn't search for it! He was there smiling with his photogenic brunette girlfriend. And I don't want E back and I'm not mad at him, I just assume that he's got what I don't have and it doesn't seem fair. I also secretly hope that this woman will destroy him... I need to get over that. I know that I want to be a bigger person and then I have these wicked thoughts that put me as the judge and jury about what sort of pain he deserves... Weird.
As for T, I found myself explaining our relationship yesterday to one of the new people who's working with my company. I said that T and I have everything I want in a marriage. We love, respect, compliment and understand each other. But when she asked if he would move to New York I said, "I want us to be together and I know we have all this, but the only place I can imagine together happening is in a dream land of unicorns and rainbows and a leprechaun would be the ring-bearer." We are great in a vacuum; we are a great idea (or ideal); but I can't actually see us in the real-world. We are so entrenched in 'some-day' that I don't see a way for us to ever be in reality with out serious work and serious re-thinking.
I still have this weird blind-faith (the kind I scoff at religious or right-wingers for) that I'm playing out in my own love-life. I feel I have some innate deserving of T as a husband and that it will just come to me with out my making any effort. I assume that the universe has got my back on this and I don't really need to examine it.
I'm really afraid and stuck in this area.
This was her response:
I totally understand. And for the record, Shakespeare also said - love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
I think that you and T...or maybe just you, I can't begin to even understand him...anyway, I think that you are right in that it's a wonderful idea, but something that may not ever happen in reality. It's something that you do try for and would be willing to do anything to obtain, but that may not be enough. You are trying, you are doing everything right, you're talking to him, you're open to any solution, you want this resolved and soon. But I worry that he may never be ready for that resolution. And I want more for you than waiting on someone who won't reach out and take the hand that is always outstretched to him. It's not fair of him to be wishy-washy for so long.
I understand the fear, though. B wasn't right for me, but I'm terrified I'll never feel that intensely for anyone else. And I understand your resentment at E too. You deserve love and happiness and rainbows and other good things, not him. B has a girlfriend now also, and it makes me crazy. He also still emails me and texts me about how no one challenges him anymore and I made him a better person and if only I lived in Atlanta, blah blah. It's not fair of him to do that to me, and it's certainly not fair of him to have these thoughts, feelings and conversations that would devastate his girlfriend. All that being said, E may not (and probably does not) have a perfect, balanced and loving relationship. He may not send you emails and confide all his problems with the relationship to you like B does with me, but that does not mean that the problems are not there. No way do I believe that E had matured into a man in such a short amount of time.
So while he may be temporarily happy in the arms of some brunette, you are also happy right now in your life. You don't have a boyfriend that you have subpar feelings for. You don't have a boyfriend who constantly disappoints or hurts you. You do have a mind that is constantly growing and learning and a heart that is constantly healing and helping you be more self-aware. I think Inga said this in the Cunt book...Perfection is not the goal, but progress is. And babe, you are progressing and growing. You may be too close to yourself to see it, but I have noticed how you've matured and improved in the past year. And I doubt that E or T can say the same. So in the real battle - you've won. You are the better person. And good things DO happen to good people.
At least we have each other to keep us accountable and to encourage us and to share life with in the meantime, which makes all the waiting a little easier and more fun. :)
My email:
Shakespeare once said “the course of true love never did run smooth.”
Of course he got married at 18 then left his wife and kids to live in London and be the most famous playwright the world has ever known. He then wrote several plays about dads screwing up their daughters and abandoning their wives in his later years and retired home at around the age of 50 to die shortly there after.
I woke up this morning feeling surrounded by the Tempest/Pericles-esque shipwrecks of my failed relationships. Both of them.
Really it's about T, but I unluckily happened on E's myspace page the other day. He was a friend of a new friend of mine--I didn't search for it! He was there smiling with his photogenic brunette girlfriend. And I don't want E back and I'm not mad at him, I just assume that he's got what I don't have and it doesn't seem fair. I also secretly hope that this woman will destroy him... I need to get over that. I know that I want to be a bigger person and then I have these wicked thoughts that put me as the judge and jury about what sort of pain he deserves... Weird.
As for T, I found myself explaining our relationship yesterday to one of the new people who's working with my company. I said that T and I have everything I want in a marriage. We love, respect, compliment and understand each other. But when she asked if he would move to New York I said, "I want us to be together and I know we have all this, but the only place I can imagine together happening is in a dream land of unicorns and rainbows and a leprechaun would be the ring-bearer." We are great in a vacuum; we are a great idea (or ideal); but I can't actually see us in the real-world. We are so entrenched in 'some-day' that I don't see a way for us to ever be in reality with out serious work and serious re-thinking.
I still have this weird blind-faith (the kind I scoff at religious or right-wingers for) that I'm playing out in my own love-life. I feel I have some innate deserving of T as a husband and that it will just come to me with out my making any effort. I assume that the universe has got my back on this and I don't really need to examine it.
I'm really afraid and stuck in this area.
This was her response:
I totally understand. And for the record, Shakespeare also said - love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
I think that you and T...or maybe just you, I can't begin to even understand him...anyway, I think that you are right in that it's a wonderful idea, but something that may not ever happen in reality. It's something that you do try for and would be willing to do anything to obtain, but that may not be enough. You are trying, you are doing everything right, you're talking to him, you're open to any solution, you want this resolved and soon. But I worry that he may never be ready for that resolution. And I want more for you than waiting on someone who won't reach out and take the hand that is always outstretched to him. It's not fair of him to be wishy-washy for so long.
I understand the fear, though. B wasn't right for me, but I'm terrified I'll never feel that intensely for anyone else. And I understand your resentment at E too. You deserve love and happiness and rainbows and other good things, not him. B has a girlfriend now also, and it makes me crazy. He also still emails me and texts me about how no one challenges him anymore and I made him a better person and if only I lived in Atlanta, blah blah. It's not fair of him to do that to me, and it's certainly not fair of him to have these thoughts, feelings and conversations that would devastate his girlfriend. All that being said, E may not (and probably does not) have a perfect, balanced and loving relationship. He may not send you emails and confide all his problems with the relationship to you like B does with me, but that does not mean that the problems are not there. No way do I believe that E had matured into a man in such a short amount of time.
So while he may be temporarily happy in the arms of some brunette, you are also happy right now in your life. You don't have a boyfriend that you have subpar feelings for. You don't have a boyfriend who constantly disappoints or hurts you. You do have a mind that is constantly growing and learning and a heart that is constantly healing and helping you be more self-aware. I think Inga said this in the Cunt book...Perfection is not the goal, but progress is. And babe, you are progressing and growing. You may be too close to yourself to see it, but I have noticed how you've matured and improved in the past year. And I doubt that E or T can say the same. So in the real battle - you've won. You are the better person. And good things DO happen to good people.
At least we have each other to keep us accountable and to encourage us and to share life with in the meantime, which makes all the waiting a little easier and more fun. :)
posted by yb at
10:32 AM
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