My work calendar has an item for Feb 14th of every year: Get dinner reservations. The alarm was set for three weeks in advance. This was usually enough time to get reso's at some fancy place we hadn't been to yet. It was always a surprise destination, and included flowers and a card, and hand holding, and candlelight, and good food, and cost be damned.
The last couple three years had an element of doubt to it, as in her wondering why I was doing it but enjoying it anyway.
I enjoy romance, what can I say. And it was never hard to focus on what was good about her and about us for a few hours. Nor would we ever run out of conversation.
Different this year. My Monday morning breakfast group -- two other guys I know who meet in the cafeteria at about 8:10 every Monday morning -- asked me how many valentines I sent out this year. They were expecting three, for some reason. The answer of course was none. V Day is a one-and-only thing for me, and I won't be back in that state for a while, so I won't be doing much V Day.
All right, I did buy flowers on the weekend. But the recipient understands exactly what's going on with me, probably better than I do, and was very appreciative, and a fine cook besides. So my qualifications still stand. I think.
The woman whose Valentine's Day I took care of twenty six years in a row called last night so I could read her to sleep. Used to be, no matter what argument we were having, no matter what was going on, if she needed to go to sleep, she could settle on my arm and I would read whatever and she would drop away and quietly snore to my mellifluous baritone. This time I read to her a little while over the phone. She liked what I was reading -- some obscure San Francisco history I had dug up -- and then after awhile decided she wasn't going to fall asleep with a telephone smashed into her ear. So she said have a happy Valentine's Day, and I said the same to her, and goodnight.
I felt very sad for awhile.
There's nowhere else to go with that paragraph. Love isn't a simple holiday card, as we've discussed here and elsewhere. What really matters is that I take responsibility for all aspects of my life, and enable those I love to do the same. That is a serious project that always seems to be just beginning. Once I do, and once she does (and she? and she?), then we will all be in a new place, and there's no saying where that place will be. No saying at all.
Maybe that's why I'm never in a rush to sign papers. Of course, that not taking responsibility thing is another reason.
No, there is somewhere else to go with that paragraph. I felt very sad for awhile. She loves me very much and I broke her heart by finally deciding to act on my ambivalence, my seeking, and my need for a break. I wanted to chase my rainbows, and to stop being her codependent in so many of her rather toxic coping mechanisms. Being the guy that smooths things over was a role I understood and played pretty well. It's a hard thing to let go of, because it leaves her in so much pain, and as I've said and will keep saying, most of all I want her to be happy.
In the context of Mother's Day, which my sons are already planning and in which I will be an indirect participant (being the cash machine), I said in email, "You know there is and always will be a love between us, and I have learned that one thing I want most in the world is for her to be happy. I just, for whatever reason, cannot be the person who makes it happen."
My son replied, "it's not that you can't be the person...it's that you choose not to be the person...just saying. If you really wanted to you'd find a way."
He's right and I thanked him for saying it. I don't want to be that person anymore ... for whatever reason. Can't ... don't want to ... yes, there's a difference. It's called taking responsibility. And then being truthful. None of that passive-aggressive "I can't" shit.
That's my Valentine's Day ramble. If I started with a point to make, I've forgotten it. I hope yours if you have them are sweet and given in love and, best of all, an unalloyed sincerity.
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12 comments:
Gosh that's so good. And so simple.
can't be vs. choose to be
Takes balls to know it. Takes more to know the experience for the other is greater. And do it anyway.
That's how my day feels.
If you don't want to, then you really can't ... and why would she want you if you didn't want to be there?
Anyway. Nice ramble. :)
"Can't/won't". Either way, I'm with Neruda on this one.
If you forget me
asha. Wow. Yes.
Don, I'm aligned with Paula's comment. It goes back to the "grimly hanging on" perspective. Making yourself "can" when you are really a "can't" because your mind and heart moved on too far. Yes, with the right amount of the right effort, at the right time, it could've been a "can". Only you know for certain where in that spectrum you lie.
Yes. Maybe in love, "can't" and "won't" are the same. And when I feel it deepest inside, it isn't really about her more than about what she represented, that sort of forever love and trust we all typically yearn for. Or should I just speak for myself? Meanwhile, a weekend here and a weekend there spent in complete immersion is more than I could ask for, and worlds better than a lifetime spent juggling love and doubt.
I resonate with your last sentiment.
Make that woman some tapes. CDs, I mean: whatever people do now. And send them to her along with some audio books read by others.
I don't think the difference between can't and don't choose to is wide enough to argue the point, but I can see how your son sees it differently. You say the difference is about taking responsibility, but I don't agree. I think taking responsibility was facing the reality of your situation and dealing with it, hard though that was, and what word you used while doing it is beside the point.
Valentine's Day is so stupid. My husband and I only ever acknowledge it by giving something heart-shaped and tasty to our daughter, never with anything for each other. And every year all the other relatives try to get in on the act and get all disappointed that we didn't send them anything and, you know what, you just had Christmas, FFS, get over it. It's DUMB.
Tapes of what, Christine? I'm a bit muzzy this AM so you've whooshed me. Congrats on that, btw. ;-)
Don, after re-reading what you excerpted from an email to your son(s), and the excerpt of his response, I'm going to disagree with him some more.
I want to preface this by saying I am a great believer in the power a human mind has in creating its own reality, and with the right cognitive behavior treatments you could probably move your mindset to an astonishingly vast selection of choices, including becoming the person who chooses to stay with your wife and living within her marital/world view, well, at the root of it, you truly CANNOT be the person who makes her happy. No matter the amount of dedication with which you might, in this hypothetical reprogrammed you-niverse, apply, she still has the power to reverse your efforts. To remain afraid or suspicious or whatever drives her at the basis of her unhappiness.
I imagine you know that only she can be the real agent of her own happiness. Your participation would serve as stimulus to that only as far as she would permit it.
But your son is accurate in noting you did and do have a choice in at least trying to assist his mother in finding happiness. You did choose to put other goals ahead of that ... an acknowledgement, perhaps, that your method for helping her was, maybe, enabling her fears rather than strengthening her self-secureness. A realization that you had to be whole -- more whole than you felt at the time -- before you could be an effective agent of change for her. And, finally, acknowledging your wants are at least as deserving of realization as are hers. The divergence in opinion as to the validity of those wants is epic, societally. Yet a growing number of people are coming to reject the "old school" view that we must each always sacrifice our needs to serve the needs of another only when those service-worthy needs fit the straight and narrow. Reject the unusual! One man, one woman, each from the same race and creed, bound forever. All else is wrong.
Yadda.
Over-caffeinated, am I.
I don't mean audio for you, Gekko. I mean for the ex. Audio of Don's voice so she can listen, which she seems to want to do, but not force him to be present for her at her bidding. The books on tape: weaning devices.
It's so nice of him to do that and so very PAINFUL to hear about. I suppose at some point HE will know when it's time to stop. But you know me: Opinions R Us.
Over-caffeinated gekko: "I want to preface this by saying I am a great believer in the power a human mind has in creating its own reality..."
Agreed.
gekko: "and with the right cognitive behavior treatments you could probably move your mindset to an astonishingly vast selection of choices..."
Um, maybe, but maybe not. Most p-shrinks say you cannot, f'rex, reprogram child molesters. And I wonder for the sake of argument if the right cognitive behavior treatment simply lays a new bit of program code overtop the original O/S, sort of a Windows 1.0 of social skills sitting atop the DOS 3.2 of innate psychopathy.
gekko: "you truly CANNOT be the person who makes her happy. No matter the amount of dedication with which you might, in this hypothetical reprogrammed you-niverse, apply, she still has the power to reverse your efforts. To remain afraid or suspicious or whatever drives her at the basis of her unhappiness."
That is absolutely correct. As we're fond of saying, we can control our response to the fist aimed at our nose. We cannot control the fist.
gekko: "And, finally, acknowledging your wants are at least as deserving of realization as are hers..."
Trickier.
The growing number of people who reject the view that we must sacrifice our needs to serve the needs of another are often the "me-first" generation.
Emotional issues are about the only thing that bind (and separate) all human interaction. Money, sex, religion, and politics, usually considered the "biggies," are at the base of it simply emotional issues because we invest so much in each. Peeps don't talk much about control but I would include that in the list.
All that notwithstanding, I like Chris.tine's suggestion of the audio tapes/CDs/files as a gap filler.
I think it's true that if you "really wanted to be, you'd find a way." But I think you get to decide whether, in fact, you really want to be -- for some people, perhaps that kind of incredible sacrifice would indeed be a route to some kind of self-actualization. But for most, it's the route to self-repression and serious psychological and emotional damage. Much depends upon the ability of the other party to receive support and actually act on it to grow and change ... and it seems that your ex had some limitations in that department, which she may or may not be inspired to overcome now that she is not in a relationship with a rescuer. She might have to find her own inflatable safety vest. And that, in the long run, may be a better thing for her than your finding a way to make her happy.
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