Falling Out of Love

 

Falling out of love at different times

I know when I fell out of love.  My love withered slowly, and I tried everything I could think of to revive it – watering it with counseling, fertilizing it with sex, shining sunshine on it with a marriage class, pruning it with biting my tongue – but no matter what I did, I watched the flowers turn brown and the leaves drop.  One day, I looked at it again, and saw that it was dead and dry, and there was no hope, and that no amount of care in the world could revive it, and I was done.  Almost immediately afterwards, I asked for a divorce.But I wonder all the time how it was for my ex to fall out of love with me.

I wish I had written this, it is beautifully and powerfully written and it has made me think all day.  I love things that make me think all day.  This was written by a blogger PollyAnna and was posted on her blog http://pollyannasdivorce.blogspot.com/.  Please go read.  She is only slightly behind me in the divorce process and she has some very insightful thoughts.  Plus, she manages her anger better than I do and I think she hung the moon. Since reading, I have been thinking so much about when it started to go for Stanley.  He professed to love me and the man cried when he realized that I meant it when I said I was unhappy and wanted a divorce.  But when you love someone wouldn’t you think you would put in a little effort?

For 14 years, the man showed me nothing.  Sure he came home every night, but he sat on the sofa and drank beer.  I quickly became happier when he didn’t come home.

In my clinical work, I realized very early on that there is no such thing as unconditional love among adults.  Parents unconditionally love their children.  But even when children are adults and make bad choices you see that the parent (while always maintaining they love the person as their child) will sure set some hard limits and remove themselves from that adult child’s life if they have to.  No matter how much you love someone (removing the parent/child relationship here) that person can be so bad to you that you lose the love you have for them. It is like Stanley never understood this.  As a matter of fact, I remember we did have the unconditional love conversation.  Him saying isn’t it nice to have such unconditional love and me giving him my ‘adults don’t have unconditional love between them’ speech.  Especially if I didn’t birth ya.It seems that he thought if he loved me and I loved him, we got married, and that was it, he didn’t have to try anymore.  Anywhere.  In parenting with me, in being my friend, in being my lover, in being my spouse.

And it hurt my feelings over and over and over.

I cried a lot and was generally pathetic.

and he would leave the room because he has no clue.

This went on until I had my mid life crisis.  You remember.  I started noticing lifeguards and watching reruns of High School Musical with the little girls because I wanted to.  Then one day, I went shopping for school uniforms at Sears (Fuck you, Stanley) and tried to check out with a credit card.  Now, I never used a credit card, always my debit card, and they wouldn’t let me use the cc because it didn’t have my name on it.  Whaaa?  I work!  I make money! I tried my Am Ex.  It was expired.  It had expired a whole year before and I hadn’t used it even once to notice.  Ok, the Am Ex was my fault, but I didn’t even have a credit card in my name that I could use.  I stood in that store and got mighty pissed.  And I cried in the car.  I had a full blown hissy fit.

I was FURIOUS.  And I hit my wall.  Bigger than Dallas. 

When did I give him my power??

I decided right then I was taking my power back.  As I was driving and crying I became a freakin Warrior Queen.

This music helped me find my power.

I was mad because I handled every little thing for Stanley and for the kids.  Dude had it made.  I managed the home like I was a housewife and I brought home the bacon as well.  He managed all of our finances and he hadn’t even taken care of me enough to make sure I had a cc with my name on it.  He had tons of cc btw.  He takes care of himself always.  I felt like he had stripped me of all of my power.  He was walking around with a fat wallet and I was getting turned down at Sears because my big shot husband didn’t give me a cc.  The woman that checked me out thought that I was dependent on a man. 

AW, HELL NO.

I called him on the phone and told him that I wanted a cc with my name on it TODAY.  He came in and meekly said it was in the mail.  You bet it is, dumbhead.

I feel like that if he had loved me he would have made sure I was financially safe.

I made my plan to go back to Sears and buy myself a big ole cheap purse!

No.  When you love someone you keep them safe.  Physically, emotionally and financially.

And if they love you back, they do the same for you.

Stanley grieved the divorce.  He was sad.  He pouted, he cried, he slammed doors. But he never really tried to show me he loved me.  There was a long period of time that he could have turned things around. I think that what Stanley was in love with as our marriage went along, was not me but  was being married.  I think he loved the stability.  He is super lazy and he thought he was done and he didn’t have to work at a relationship anymore. He had a beautiful family, successful wife, clean and tidy house, folded underwear, etc. I think he grieves that loss and that he has to work on finding a woman again.  Dating is hard work! 

Woe unto Stanley.

But not for one minute do I think that his grief over the demise of our relationship was about losing me. He had fallen out of love way before. So, buck up Stanley. Now back to Christian Grey and my increased heart rate.