Grief, attachment, grudges and liberation-- light fare for the first day of spring

What a roller coaster. Remaining attached to the ex, emotionally, yet being largely ignored. She doesn't even know where I live. Or anything else, really. She's even resisting or at least questioning whether or not I should have regular contact with Everett. I might as well have died, seriously, for the amount of contact. Yet I miss her. I wish this were not the case. I suppose it's normal. We had regular daily contact for almost 6 years. To go from that to nothing almost overnight is bound to be difficult, no matter how she is deciding to behave these days. But it is a blow to one's pride to have plenty of reasons, all healthy and rational, to disentangle oneself from someone and yet to remain attached. It can't really be fought or managed by me. I have responded by turning my attention to people I can help, in particular my sponsees, and working on focusing on the tasks at hand with the PhD program and some teaching housecleaning. It is no anodyne to get busy at all, but at least something is getting done.

 I worked late last night on the resentment that I have toward the ex for not communicating with me. She started this complete shut down and cut off back on February 6th. Since then, she has just not communicated much of anything. Her outward behavior has been the same as that of someone who simply loathes me. It is behavior of hatred and rejection, manifested. So that is all I have to go on, really-- rejection.

She started to communicate a little bit in couples counseling, but it was all of a revisionist nature, mostly identifying how shitty I was and how bad the partnership was, after all. For example, we had a set of what I thought were mutually agreed upon guidelines for poly/non-monogamous behavior. In counseling, after more than 5 years, she related that she never wanted to be poly, that it always felt like it was just an escape route for me, that it made her feel second class, and that she only agreed to it because she was "in love" with me and would have agreed to a lot of things. This came as a total shock to me-- and is especially ironic because I had not had any real live outside relationships and she had two. She also began constructing the narrative that I "always had to be dragged into more commitment--": this was true to an extent when we first getting together, as I was still healing from a horrific break up and was working on re-tooling my way of being attached. But over time, I sure as hell got as far into commitment as I knew how-- householding, fathering her son, you name it.

 This kind of revisionism was just unacceptable to me.  I had no interest in revisionist narratives that seemed to me to simply be an excuse to defend her decision, so I canceled our further sessions.

So the sudden shut down and lack of communication has nursed a burgeoning and ferocious grudge in me. It is tied to the other resentment I am working on through step 4, which is the grudge against being so suddenly abandoned and rejected-- that is a more global one that I am sure will unearth a wide variety of awful and unprocessed shit from my past relationships. It felt more doable to approach the specifics of all of the lines of communication being down.

The fires are stoked by how her complete lack of communication affects my self esteem, pride, security, our relationship and my attitude toward others, my sense of myself as a man and my finances-- basically, one of those resentments that results from a seemingly global threat to my well being. It's interesting to recognize in this my essential need for communication and connection and how globally and thoroughly being cut off disturbs and destroys me. I fancy myself a sort of hermit, but that is always on my own terms. When I am forced into isolation suddenly and get virtually no information of any kind regarding the most important relationship in my life, I fucking freak the fuck out.

 Getting to the 4th column of the grudge inventory, which is what is my role?-- Where am I to blame? What were my own mistakes? What did I do before, during and after? In particular, where had I been self-seeking, selfish, dishonest and afraid?-- well, that provided the usual epiphany, the usual revelation. In the period of time leading up to the ex ending our partnership, *I* was not communicative. *I* was withdrawn and unavailable. I was distant, isolating, depressed. I continue to not communicate honestly, mostly out of fear of rejection and fear that I can't handle the almost total lack of response.

In some vague ways I realized these things a few weeks ago and even wrote the ex an amends letter, acknowledging my unavailability and withdrawal. But the specifics-- I was self-seeking by never, not once, turning toward the ex in a direct way and trying to reconnect. I assumed all was well and took the ex for granted, definitely. I was selfish in having the attitude that my need for isolation had to take priority over her need for connection. For example, for months, I had been staying up a few hours after she went to bed, and she definitely confronted me unhappily about this a few times, expressing her desire for us to go to bed together. I dismissed that and refused.I wasn't even in a space to make a compromise-- like maybe going to bed together and then getting up after she fell asleep, or having a couple of nights a week, even, where we were on the same sleep schedule.

Her loneliness grew and grew. I was dishonest by stubbornly remaining under the delusion that all was well and that her spoken indications that she was happy and we were okay were accurate. I too was in denial, was unhappy and depressed (not because of the partnership, but honestly so nonetheless). I was also operating under the delusion that I was such a great partner for her that no one and nothing would be able to threaten it. Behind all of this was self-centered fear, of course, ("the chief activator of our defects"-Bill W).

I realize now that I knew our partnership was failing, was vulnerable, was weak and disintegrating and the two of us were not connecting and it filled me with vague and chronic dread. I was afraid she would wake up one day and leave. Lo and behold, What do you know.

You may think that getting next to my role in this way is just awful, dear reader. But no-- it offers the hope of liberation from the grudge. It gets me next to the shared humanity I have with the ex. How we both made mistakes. How we were just two lost humans who began to drift apart. How I am cause in the matter at hand. It is a blow to my ego, of course, but after all, my ego is where the grudge gets nursed, where it grows and festers. In setting her free from being on the hook regarding this resentment around communication, especially by recognizing my own role in cutting off the lines of communication, I have a chance finally to grieve and move on. The total silence continues but I don't need to be attached to it or to try to manipulate it away or get angry about it. For me to be free from her choices by recognizing how my own have contributed to where I am, to what the reality is-- that is the essence of step 4. It's tough coming to the realization that I played such a huge role in the disintegration of a partnership that meant the world to me. But it is the stone cold truth and it is, like all truth, liberating. And I would rather be free and face the facts than be in victim mode and in a prison of my own making. When I get to be truly sorry for my mistakes and the harm that I caused, I also get to be truly free. A bare bones beginning that seems appropriate for Percy on the first day of spring.