I had an appointment with Super Therapist today. A lot had happened since our meeting last Tuesday. When I last saw her, I was at the bottom of the spiral with Flea Market Guy and I was ready to walk away. I had to update her on the whole situation aka his ex girlfriend “helping him move,” me telling him to get fucked, then me loving him too much to actually let him be fucked and finally up to the point where we are now living together and things are really good.
She asked me how I was feeling about it and my knee jerk reply was “fine.” But that’s just me. I’m always fine. Once we dug a little deeper, I finally confided in her that I am still somewhat skeptical of the whole situation and not exactly trusting of him. Nor did I know what I would classify our “relationship” as if it could be called a relationship at all.
Mostly because I’m still mad and I’m still full of assumptions about his relationship with the ex. Super Therapist said that maybe I’m so used to dating assholes that it is hard for me to fathom remaining friends with an ex because of that exact reason. And that there are lots of people who date and then break up and/or realize that they are better off as friends and continue their friendships. I still feel like if it were, in fact, a true friendship, I would have met her and we all would have hung out at some point during our time together over the last year. But I will admit that I do idealize lots of things and it is hard for me to see the other side if it is not a side I’ve ever been on.
Super Therapist says it sounds like a classic case of addict/enabler. I told her I don’t really care what the case is, it gets on my nerves and I wish it didn’t exist. She also said that maybe we should talk about the terms of our arrangement or define terms or something like that. She also said she thinks couples therapy wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I told her that while I did agree on both counts, I’m not sure now is the right time for either. After all, he’s only 6 days sober. I don’t think that is quite enough time to bombard him with “what are we? where do you see this going? am I just a place for you to sleep?” questions.
Hell, thinking about it makes me want to drink and I don’t even have a drinking problem. My past experiences have taught me that I am really good at fixing men for the next woman. I’ve talked about it here before and joked that if you’ve gotten one of those exes that are now not a piece of shit, you are welcome. But in all seriousness, I still have this fear deep down that he will get all nice and sober and he and ex girlfriend will get their happily ever after. Super Therapist has met Flea Market Guy. She says from the short time she’s known him, it didn’t seem like he was interested in the ex. But most days (up until the last week), I would have been hard pressed to list any number of ways that he was interested in me either. It was mostly just him and the bottle he was interested in.
This week, however, was a completely different story. Not that he has been overly affectionate or wanting to talk about too much of anything with depth, but he has been a genuinely good human. He went shopping and filled the fridge with food. He cleaned out the storage shed in back and, today, he took both of the beasts and gave them a bath.
So basically, he’s being the guy that I knew he could be and also the guy that I’ve been hoping he would be.
So why am I not happy?
I’m definitely not unhappy. I’m just wary. I want to believe that we can continue on like this forever, but I also know that he has no idea who he is when he’s sober nor does sober him know what he wants. I’m just here supporting him and loving him through it. And probably, things will stay the same even after he’s got 9 months under his belt and 12 months and 2 years, but I’m not ignoring the possibility that maybe he will get sober, stay sober, and realize he wants something that is not me.
Super Therapist says that I need to stop doomsdaying our relationship and try to just be OK with how things are today. She said to just enjoy today and try not to worry about tomorrow. I wanted to tell her that the exact definition of anxiety, is, in fact, worrying about tomorrow. But I didn’t. Because I know she is right and this week has been way better than the last handful of weeks (except for cruise week).
So I am going to just bask in the moment and try not to let my hard feelings about what happened interfere and hopefully one day he will want to sit down and talk about it and see things from my perspective or maybe one day, I won’t even need him to.
RouletteWeekend 