i want to fall in love with someone who loves me as much as i love them!

What constitutes enough? I need to answer that for myself. This was horrible between my husband and myself. We could never get it together. This is a VERY hard place for me.

Good Lord what do you expect of people? Oh Creator of the entire Universe explain this “love” and devotion stuff to me. How do You create us to screw it up so very badly and then…. the unspeakable joy. Oh…and then….SUCH! complications. Nice!

How to proceed….I’m asking myself what have I done in the past, I don’t want to do it again. This time I want different results. How do I run from intimacy? I was told I sounded cruel today. I know I did. I felt my porcupine. I shot a barb. It was so crystal clear in that moment that I was in excruciating pain and that I deflected with hurtful sarcasm. I let down my guard and just felt the pain. The pain of disappointment, of fear, loss, loneliness, helplessness, lack of control. I was raised by a Marine Drill Instructor, who was also a sniper. (God Bless You Daddy)Suck it up, walk it off, get in the game, all important attitudes when the goal is “stay alive and keep your buddies safe”. Doesn’t work so well in being open and vulnerable. I want this to work. I want this to be different. Today I hurt, I don’t have control and I am not going to run. I have no clue as to how to proceed, I’m just not going to run.

This is the tough place. The place where I can’t give up so much of me that I no longer know who I am. This is the place where going along to get along can degrade into doormat. This is the place where I need to stop and let the other play catch up. This is the place of values. This is the place of valuing self and not wanting to be the one that makes ALL the room for the other. This is the scary place of choosing to give up the relationship rather than obliterating self. It is better to give it up now, at this place than continue without value. Value of myself, value of the relationship and valuing him so that the most dangerous of all feelings, contempt, won’t be settling in, in the dark corners of the relationship because I resent giving too much. It is now… and always will be …my choice as to how much I give. It is time to let go in love and not let there be any room for contempt.

We can’t really call this a relationship yet. But, we’ve had our first fight. It was different than anything I’ve ever experienced. It was very clear going into this encounter that the relationship was more important than being “right”. There was no sense of “survival”. I didn’t feel threatened. I felt honored. And I was wrong….so wrong. Not wrong so much as insensitive, which to me is somehow worse. Scary stuff. Worth it, but scary.

I was married for a long time. Technically I’m still legally married, but it has been a very long time since we lived together and depended on each other for the day to day experience. I’ve noticed that I’m beginning to sort out how I feel about things. We were so mixed up with each other. It is interesting to notice that I acted out one way when I really felt another way. I kept quiet to keep the peace a lot. I was also opinionated about things that I had really never given much thought to. My question for myself…now…is…how do I maintain the integrity of my own personality without sacrificing again who I am? I laugh as I write this I recognize that one of the first things needed is to not “fear” the one I love. Wow! I’m not feeling any fear in this almost a relationship.

Learning to let go of the outcome and not being so afraid to be who I really am is part of what is going on here. The relationship has extreme constraints. LOL to say the least. And yet, it seems determined to grow. With the very bizarre migraine headaches I have had that put me in the hospital came a new way of mental processing. I get images in my mind now instead of words. The image I get when I think of this new relationship, (can I call it a relationship) is a visual memory. During my childhood, I lived in a 120 year old house in Montana. The snow was deep, no think deeper. The house had weird little cracks and the grass, which was dead under the snow would try to grow through the crack in the wall into the living room. My father would plug the hole…every year…and still the grass found a way. He would pull the little patch of grass, plug the hole and still it would come back. I remember thinking that was what hope looked like. This “almost a relationship” is seeming to be like that little bit of grass that grew through the crack in the stone wall of my childhood home. I try to pluck it. (It breaks the rules) I try to fill the crack. (It breaks the rules).

I delight in the return of the almost relationship and in spite of the fact that it breaks the rules, I call forth hope.

This will require trust. Argh!!! Not my finer suit. Trust of myself as well as trust of the other person. I am capable of trusting. I trusted myself to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. I can be trusted. I am worthy of trust. Wow! This requires surrender of control. LOL Oh! this is going to be fun, new and different. Go before me God! This is terrifying.