Sex and the Single Soccer Mom

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how
unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever
steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.”

So, after my “Wooden Jesus” blog the other day, I’ve spoken to the man with whom I had the relationship. He contacted me after reading it, which was hard, but I suppose I can’t say I’m surprised. We ended up talking by phone and getting a bit more clarity on each other’s perspectives and, I think (I hope) ending things at a point where the good memories can eventually shine through. We’re both in agreement that we’re not at a place where it’s healthy to attempt to be friends. Right now there is too much history, too much left unresolved and a lot of healing that needs to take place.

After we spoke I had such a massive weight of anxiety and emotion sitting on my chest and it took a really long time for me to calm down enough to attempt to sleep. It gave me ample time to think, however.

He claimed I misrepresented myself by acting as though we could sleep together without obligation. My first impulse was to reject that. I have always tried to be honest and I felt certain this was no exception.

Yet as I peeled away the layers late at night, tossing and turning, I exposed what I think is the unvarnished truth.

Sleeping together wasn’t the issue. Thinking we could hang out as “friends” when we’ve never been only friends was the problem. It would have been more honest and more brave to look at him and say: “I don’t think I can be your friend. Even though things weren’t perfect between us and I’ve realized we’re not the best fit romantically, I still have feelings for you. I’m also angry at you about a lot of things. The fact that you think you CAN be my friend, that you don’t appear to be in emotional pain over the loss of me, hurts me deeply and opens wounds from my past. It makes me feel rejected, “not enough”,  all over again. It makes me feel weak and as though there’s something wrong with me, because you seem just fine and I’m still struggling. Sometimes I want to be part of your life; I’m lonely and wounded enough that the idea of accepting the pale substitute of friendship sounds better than being completely alone and never seeing you again. Although, I know on a soul level this won’t serve me and will always leave me with my heart in my throat at the end of the night, aching and feeling insecure, angry and resentful;  to admit that makes me feel like I’m giving away my power. So, as much as I hate the thought of losing you completely, I think it’s best that we don’t attempt this.”

I didn’t say it because I was scared. I didn’t say it because it made me feel pitiful and vulnerable. I didn’t say it because the thought of being viewed with pity or indifference, or initiating a confrontation over my remaining anger, made me feel like throwing up. I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to completely say goodbye if there was a choice and I knew that saying any of that would have been a goodbye, again.

It’s not like all this was running through my mind, just like that, on a conscious level. I wasn’t purposefully dishonest, yet I was trying to be nonchalant, non-attached, invulnerable and still keep him in my life. My inability to admit to myself that this hurts and believe it didn’t make me weak or diminished was my fault. My mistake was bravado and hoping the bluff of “I can handle this and I don’t need you to love me” would turn into truth. My mistake was in still being tied up emotionally in a relationship I ended in May, that hadn’t filled my needs then.

So was I dishonest or misleading? Perhaps, but not in the same way he believed me to be. I did NOT think when we went home together that it would mean we were a couple, or that he had obligations toward me as a “couple”. However, I did want some sign that he cared, that I was special to him, even if that didn’t mean we’d be together. I DO think we have an obligation to the people in our lives we care about, whether they are friends or lovers. I DO think the small gestures we make are a sign of whether or not we value them, whether we’re sleeping with them or not. I still stand by my assertion that the sex wasn’t the issue; this break would have happened (needed to happen) even if we hadn’t slept together. If there was dishonesty, it was in refusing to admit that I couldn’t handle just friendship or that I was still angry and hurt over the spring. If I misled it was because I felt too vulnerable and scared to say: “I still have feelings for you that I don’t know what to do with, but I’d kind of like to see you sometimes. I don’t know how that can work though and it’s probably not a good idea.”

I’ve been working so, so hard on myself. Trying to evolve into a more spiritual human being, striving for honesty with myself and others. I don’t think what I wrote in my blog was wrong, because it was very much how I was feeling about the situation. I don’t even think those feelings were wrong…but I wish I had been more honest with myself from the beginning. If I had been, then I probably could have been more honest with him. Then we could have either worked together on it…or not. Wishing doesn’t make it so and what happened, happened. Who’s to say it would have been better or worse if I HAD processed all this up front? But at least I’d feel better about the process, even if the end result was the same.

Some people ask me why I would risk exposing myself on the internet by publishing my private thoughts. This is the reason: Because we’re all trying to make choices and we all screw it up sometimes. Everyone gets angry and loses their tempers, or are terrified of rejection. We all can feel vulnerable and try to bluff our way out of it, so that we appear invincible rather than fragile. If we do get rejected, we certainly don’t want anyone to know if we don’t bounce right back up or if it hurts like hell. Afterall, doesn’t that feel like the other person has power over you, just a bit? Being the one to love more feels sucky–I’ve been a hairline trigger away from a breakdown since Monday night, just from trying to process all of this. I put this out there because I want other people to know they’re not alone. I’m human and fallible and scared and a wreck sometimes and that’s okay, it’s just part of the journey. Right now, this feels sucky, but it won’t always. Even though I hate the thought of walking away from him completely and it feels like a failure to not be able to stay friends, it was what needed to happen. Then again, I’ve realized the fact that I still even wanted to be part of his life, after the Spring, is a sign I’ve got a lot of work to do on my self-esteem and my ability to say: “Enough is enough” when people don’t treat me with value. I said it in May, so I’m improving, but then I wavered. Part of me has wondered if I hadn’t published the blog, if I could have pulled off the friendship eventually. And that is also part of why I wrote it. Because now I no longer have an “out” to keep doing something that hurt a little all the time, even though I was always glad to see him too.

Evolving takes time and I’m gonna screw it up occasionally. Still, it is the screw-ups that teach us the most about who we are, who others are and how we want to live our life. It’s the pain that is the growth process. I have no doubt I had to experience this in order to get to where I want to go. So I’m going to try to be done with beating myself up, wondering what I could have done differently. Enough is enough.

It’s been over 3 weeks since I left my former lover’s bed at 2 a.m; I’ve not spoken to him since.

Unbeknownst to me, I was coming down with the flu, so over the next few days I had a lot of time to think. When he didn’t reply to my text letting him know I was sick, well, that started a negative spiral.  When my 11 year old daughter wanted to know why he and I weren’t a couple, but were hanging out, I told her it was too complicated and only a grown-up would understand. She gave me the “look” and insisted I explain it to her. Quoting something he’d said to me the last time we were together (the sentence that kept going through my mind) she looked at me with horror and said: “That’s so mean, Mom.”

It was an epiphany. Our entire 19 month committed, broken up, trying again, broken up, trying something new, unsure what the hell we’re doing relationship was cast in a new light. Suddenly, things I’d felt deeply, but chosen to overlook became clear.  Truth had fallen from the mouth of a child and I could not ignore it.

I grieved all over again. I felt hurt and angry and on some level, I felt like a fool for trying to think the best. My thoughts circled around things that had been said and things that hadn’t, actions, looks…I revisited it all and turned it over and over in my head. I wept and a flame of anger, righteous anger, began to rise up inside my heart. So, of course, I began to write about it.

I wrote and wrote, revising and tweaking for days…which turned into weeks. I’d write, delete, then start over again. I told the story that showed clearly WHY I was angry and hurt. No one who read it could fail to understand, least of all him. I needed to show him the ways in which his thoughtlessness and ambiguity had harmed me. This was about holding up a mirror so he could look clearly at his actions and why his lack of clarity was cruel. Wasn’t that my responsibility? So he wouldn’t go out and hurt someone else like he’d hurt me? I crafted a work of art, every word carefully chosen to make him comprehend what I had felt: Vulnerable, hurt, used, diminished, de-valued, angry. I spent hours and hours writing, editing, and rewriting. Then I agonized over it all the times when I wasn’t writing.

Years ago I saw a film with Jane Fonda called “The Dollmaker”. After the loss of her daughter, the main character becomes obsessed with her attempt to carve the figure of Jesus out of a piece of wood. She spends hours obsessively trying to get it right, only to realize in the end that the only way to save herself and get her family back on track was to turn loose of the carving she’d worked so hard on. In a powerful scene, she takes an axe to the Jesus carving and chops it into multiple pieces, using the smaller chunks of wood to carve beautiful figures she sells to help support the family.

I realized this blog, my beautifully crafted tale of pain and sorrow, had become my wooden Jesus. It originated from a place of pain and was becoming a trap. Everytime I read it, worked on it, I was reliving the negative emotions. I felt overwhelmed by needing him to understand and feel sorry that he’d hurt me. I was trapped in feeling the hurt…plus, something kept me from publishing it.

It’s not my job to make him understand; I’m wanting to do relationship work with someone who doesn’t appear to value a relationship with me. He couldn’t even text me back after hearing I was sick! Why on earth was I spending my valuable time agonizing over this and reliving every painful thing that had happened in our 19 month relationship? If at some point he looks back on our interactions and wants a deeper understanding of my point of view, he knows where to find me. The entire arc of our relationship, along with the silence that has existed since my last text to him, would highly suggest he doesn’t currently have that interest. Nor do I have a responsibility to assist him with future relationship work…it’s simply not my job.

I still WANT to believe the best. There have been times I’ve looked in his eyes during conversation and believed we made such a powerful connection and felt stirred by the depth I believed I saw. Part of the entire basis of why I fell in love with him was because I believed him to be an honest man of integrity, who was trying hard to work on his values. I want to believe in that man, even though I’ve realized attempting any level of relationship with him does not serve my highest good. I want to believe that somehow, he is attempting to do what he believes is best, even if I really dislike the way he’s chosen to go about it. I am going to do my best to blot out the voices in my head, mine and others, who assign different motives to his actions and words. I may choose often to believe the best in others, but I don’t think I want to be a cynical person who always sees a hidden agenda. I’ve always wanted to believe you can bridge any relationship change with love, rather than burning a bridge. I’ve also tried this enough to know it takes two people to build a bridge. It doesn’t work if one person is doing their best to build a bridge and the other is standing at the construction site yelling across: “Good work! Once that bridge is built, I’ll figure out if it’s worth my while to cross it!”

So now, I continue on with my life and he continues on with his and we will both be fine. I will miss him, but I will especially miss that man I glimpsed sometimes with whom I had the soul connection. I will send him love and hope he fares well in this world, and I will release him from my life. Completely. Then I will turn my attention and energy to those friends and loves in my life who return the friendship and love I offer. As for the other blog…

Well, I wish I could say I had a dramatic moment to share, but I’m not Jane Fonda. My wooden Jesus sits in my “Drafts” folder; I haven’t quite convinced myself to delete it. Coming to the decision to not publish it and to revise it was grueling work, which I meditated and prayed over for many nights. I’m hoping one day I’ll hit the delete button and feel that final sense of release from this 19 months, with only the good moments and the lessons learned remaining. That’s my goal: To remember the beauty, release the pain and take what I’ve learned with me without bitterness.

Afterall, life and love is a journey.