Hard truth at the very center of the pattern

Well it's been a week since I wrote specifically about the breakup. A couple days ago I had the strong insight that I had been fighting reality, mostly out of a combination of hurt feelings, disbelief and pride. The insight was spurred by this sentence in We Agnostics in the book Alcoholics Anonymous:

We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" (page 47)

We're at this point in the Big Book at our Wednesday night book study. We spent almost the entire hour and a half talking about the paragraph containing this sentence, as well as the previous paragraph. 

Over the course of the conversation it slowly became more and more clear to me that I had been fighting reality. Because I recast the question in my mind: "Do I now believe that everything is exactly as it should be, or am I even willing to believe that everything is simply the way it is?" So instead of going all the way to a Power greater than myself, I was curious suddenly about whether or not I could affirm that level of radical acceptance. 

Violently, completely and starkly the answer was a resounding NO. So it became clear to me that I was definitely kicking and screaming in the face of reality. Operating under the general cloud that there had been a huge mistake. That the undoing of the partnership was against the right course of events somehow. Of course this is understandable. But it's counterproductive in the extreme. Because the plain and simple fact of the matter is-- stick a fork in it, it's done.So what possible good does my fighting do? It reminds me of what the poetess used to call "shaking your fist at the ocean." 

So that was level one insight, Wednesday. 

Yesterday, after a lot of solitude and meditation and in the middle of working out, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I simply had not loved the ex very well, especially the last year or so. 

And I think it's time to get rid of calling her "the ex" and just use a letter. The letter A is handy. From now on, I release whoever this is from the role/label/category of "ex," which is in relation to me. She's just a person, not in relation to me-- A.

But back to that ton of bricks. I have no idea when I started to pull away, and I have no idea why in particular. I am sure it had to do with being depressed, being overwhelmed by my grad program, being sexually bored-- I'd like to understand myself better regarding this. Because, repeatedly, no matter what else, I leave my partners lonely. It has been a recurring truth for 40 years. Every partner I've ever had for more than about 2 years has said it. Lonely and abandoned, unattended, even feeling unloved and outright rejected.  

Why do I do this? I don't know but I definitely want to find out. I repeatedly get into "committed relationships" and then slowly drift into a zone where I am not available enough for the other person. Inevitably, they either want to be actually alone, or someone pays attention to them and they fall in love and leave me, or I do the breaking up, making my withdrawal complete. 

It's also been true that I am devoted, intensely present, emotionally open and available, sexually energized and conversationally dedicated at the beginning. I guess I would attract women who don't mind loving a hermit if I were a hermit the whole way along. But I am fiercely present at the beginning. And then the usually slow fading and withdrawal occurs, until a crisis of some kind is forced. 

I should point out that my feelings usually remain intensely attached to my partner, even when I am extremely withdrawn. So, by the time they bail, I'm often heartbroken and go through terrible grief. 

But I never until now actually grasped that I just do not love very well and very presently after that first zoom of connection. 

This is very hard to get next to. First of all because it covers so much ground-- basically from when I was about 17 or so. So almost 40 years. It illuminates the later course of every partnership and both marriages I have been in. It's also hard to face squarely because it is the first time I have found my own role so very clearly regarding what I do that makes partnerships fail. I disappear, that's what I do. And the women I am with don't like that and are hurt by it.  Imagine that. And often, when they have tried to get me to come back, to show up, to be available again like the old days, I withdraw even further. So I can't even say that, most of the time, I didn't know that they were lonely and that I was unavailable. I've been told, requested, demanded, begged even, to come out of my cave and show up again. And I just have been unable to do so reliably, even when I still carry quite tender and admiring feelings toward them. 

This time, A repeatedly asked me to spend more time with her and I said no. We went our separate ways a lot. Most evenings, actually, especially the last months. I am aware that her evolving connection with her new person created fear and resentment in me from about November through the beginning of February, so that was a huge contributing factor to my withdrawal toward the end. But my withdrawal started before that. 

Obviously, her decision to fuck over a long-standing partnership and not even try to salvage it at all is not the *only* way a person can respond to being left alone. But that's not the point of this insight anyway-- putting aside the wrongs others had done entirely. 

A and I never got to process any of this stuff very much. She asked me to spend time with her and I said no a lot. She decided to form a connection with someone new in response to that pattern. The end felt abrupt to me because I was clueless and so distant and in so much denial I didn't even become awake to how estranged we were. A had probably been leaning more and more that way for months. When, every evening almost, you ask your partner if they want to watch a show, or play a game, or make out, or do something, anything, and every evening for weeks on end your partner says "No, I just want to hang out" and then he goes into the study and is on Facebook or whatever for hours, does not go to bed with you, cursorily says goodnight and then is up until 2 in the morning, often talking online with other people,well, that's pretty lonely and awful. In part, it's what it is like being in a partnership with a person who suffers from persistent depressive disorder. But there is more to it than that. 

It's tough looking at myself so clearly and accepting without flinching this powerful and destructive way that I contributed to the current reality. The first thing I had to do was accept plainly that it was the reality. That set the stage for this newer insight into how thoroughly I took the partnership for granted. I never got a chance to really say goodbye because I was saying goodbye for months. I vaguely hoped we would reconnect but I never took any concrete steps in that direction and neither did A. By the way, A also withdrew, so it was a dance of separation, which has also happened repeatedly in partnerships-- but the only thing I can change is my own pattern.

And I have done this repeatedly in the past. How much that hurts to realize. I have often felt myself either the victim of failed relationships or at least self-righteously justified. To see my own role so clearly now, in such stark relief-- that I begin to withdraw and disappear and become unavailable and I don't respond to pleas to come back-- well,that's hard. 

It's hard on an ego and pride level, also, because I have always fancied myself an excellent partner. The denial about this insistence on unavailability is very thick. My look good is heavily tied to this self-image of being a good partner. Yet, when the cold phase sets in, I am not a good partner. I am barely even a partner. And when called out on it, I pull away more. 

The root of this repetition compulsion is probably self-centered fear. I won't be surprised if that's what I find. 

This stunning insight (which has been plainly obvious to everyone I've ever loved) holds the potential to be liberating. It seems like a real vein of gold in the mine, actually. Because maybe, now that I have recognized it, I can get down into the causes and conditions of it and have some hope of not getting myself into that situation again. Maybe it will also help me get a little more clarity as to why things are the way they are, especially helpful in the absence of any communication from A. 

Right now though, it's just a gut punch.