Why do we stay, when we know we should go?

My childhood was pretty average, I think. I had two young parents who got along, or so I thought. I had younger siblings that annoyed me to death, but they also made me happy at times. My parents didn’t argue a lot in front of us. I assume they did this in private, because my parents didn’t agree on much, but that I learned much later in life. Life at home was alright. I recognize that I was privileged to not have to worry about what I was gonna have for dinner, we had lunch for school already made in the morning, we went to private schools (sometimes), and we went on vacation. On paper, this is what a good life was meant to be. Two young people fell in love, decided to get married, had children, provided for their children, went to work. Life should be good, right?

I knew that things were not okay when my dad rushed me and my siblings to the airport on the day we were done with school. The fourth grade had been a challenge for me. Like I mentioned before, we went to private schools sometimes and third grade had been a lot of fun in public school which meant that I had fallen behind academically, so when I started fourth grade in a catholic private school, I had to play catch up for the first half of the school year. Math was extremely challenging, and I had to spend a good part of the school year learning long division and trying not to fall behind on other subjects. Every class was challenging, but that’s what my parents were paying for… the rigor or being educated by nuns. My favorite subject was English. I loved my English teacher. I learned a lot of vocabulary that year, which unknown to me at the time, would come in handy later. The nuns also had a choir and I was chosen to be a part of it. Perhaps that was the best part of the year, being selected out of the rubble to be a part of the choir and get to skip history class with the choir kids to practice in the auditorium. When the school year came to a close I was sad and excited. My mom had moved to Puerto Vallarta half way through the semester and she was waiting for us, at least that is what my dad said.

The airplane door opened and an asphyxiating humidity filled the air. It was hot. It was humid. It was hell. The sun was SO bright that it took a little longer than normal for my eyes to adjust after being in the airplane cabin for an extra 25 min waiting for the doors to open. We disembarked on the tarmac and with every step we took, my body warmed up more and I began to miss the city. Where had my mother brought us?

My mom had to work that day, so she sent a couple of her employees to pick us up at the airport. They had a pick up truck waiting for us, we rode in the back without the cover. As they drove us towards the hotel, the wind messed up my hair, mom would not be pleased with that look. My little brother and my sister looked very happy. My sister and I wore dresses and sunglasses. Our hair was tied with bows. My brother was wearing bermuda shorts and a polo shirt. We were classy city kids. The ride to the hotel didn’t take longer than 25 min. It wasn’t a fancy place. My mom’s job had arranged hotels for their employees and since my dad had decided that us kids should spend the summer in Puerto Vallarta, my mom hadn’t had time to get an apartment ready. Back then, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this plan. I assumed it was a way to help us adjust to life in a new city, but it was a little suspicious that we weren’t going to my grandparents’ house in Monterrey for the summer like we normally did, especially if my mom wasn’t ready for us. 

My dad left after a few days. In my child’s mind, I assumed he’d stay and I don’t know, help my mom find an apartment to live or hang out with us? But no, that was not his plan. I am certain, that summer was when I became an adult. That must have been the summer my mom decided that she was so done with my dad’s bullshit.

My mom is a gorgeous woman. If there is anything pretty in me, I got from her. More importantly, she is a very smart person who can do whatever she sets her mind to. I think I got that from her too. After having us kids, she decided to go to college to get her degree. With three young kids to take care of, family told her that she was crazy because now that she had a husband, she didn’t need to go back to school. But, my mom didn’t listen. Something inside her told her that she needed to do this for her. So, she upset my dad and the family and left us kids to be watched by relatives or spend insane amounts of time alone, to go get an education. To be honest, I was super little and I don’t even remember not having my mom around during those years. Once she graduated, she got a job and was quickly promoted. The opportunity to move to Puerto Vallarta was exactly what she had been expecting. My mom is not a fan of the big city, and she wanted a better place for us to grow up as kids without all the dangers from the big scary city. It’s a little ironic that she wanted to keep us kids, but the move is what forced me to grow up.

So, my dad goes back to Mexico city without kids and leaves his wife alone in a new city, far away from family, with a lot of responsibility at work and three kids to watch after. Why? Relationships are partnerships, right? Or so I’d like to think. If I put myself inside my mom’s shoes, I probably would have been extremely disappointed and angry at my husband for making that decision. As a kid, I thought he was going back to pack up our condo to move to the new city. Did that require us kids to be sent to live with her so soon? Maybe, maybe not. Was my dad upset that my mom had decided to move to Puerto Vallarta without a lot of discussion or preparation? Is that what happened or did my dad agree to something and then failed to hold his side of the deal? I am not sure, but I can tell you that this is probably the period in my life that has shaped my idea of what marriage is and the meaning of love. 

My mom loved us, I have no doubt about that. My dad loved us too, I don’t have any hesitation about that either. But, did they love each other? That, I can’t answer but I can assume that the answer was a big fat NO. They tolerated each other. As a kid, I thought that was love. Why would I think otherwise? Kids learn from what they experience at home, and I grew up in a happy home with people that stayed together for the good of the kids. When did they stop loving each other? I will never know.

All of those questions plague my subconscious. Add to that the questions I’ve developed on my own from past relationships and you get a sea of doubt and uncertainty. What does love feel like, look like, smell like? How long does it last? Is there a way to extend its life or are we just fooling ourselves and continue the cycle of complacency and disappointment for fear of failure? Why don’t we recognize and accept it when someone stops loving us?

That last question is the key to my story. Now I see that my mom was sending LOUD signs to my dad about what was happening in her mind and in her heart, but my dad was either ignoring them or he thought that they didn’t matter. 

I am guilty of trying to stay with someone for fear of failure. When the years start piling up, it is easy to think that we’re better off sticking through it and to refuse to take the more difficult road. In retrospect, my parents should probably have separated then, but the inevitable wouldn’t happen for another 7 years. I know they had good days, but in general they had really bad years. It started to become apparent to me in their interactions. My mom, always focused on work and on our grades. My dad absent for the most part. 

After 5 months of looking inward and making sense of my last breakup, I feel that my ex showed strength in his decision to end our relationship. Regardless of what triggered it. Today, I feel happier alone. What I learned from those 7 years in Puerto Vallarta from my parents was that it is not worth prolonging a difficult decision just because you aren’t ready to handle it. This chapter ends with a bus ride going north. A woman and her three teenagers embarking on a new adventure and a defeated man staying behind to deal with his own demons.

I open at the close

Update: September 13, 2018
I wanted to add an edit to this story because it affects me deeply in how I feel about things and how they ended. 
A couple months ago I learned from a new co-worker who used to work at "his" workplace that he is with a married woman who has 3 kids.

Yes, I was just as shocked as you are, dear reader. So there it is... 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’ve been struggling to write this for over a month because I am still not sure how or why things happened when they did. I have to admit that I always knew that he wasn’t mine and that he would be the one who’d leave. What I didn’t know is how it would happen.
As this year comes to an end, I think writing about the end of my relationship with him might help me to close this chapter in my life. But first I have to try to make sense of it.
Everyone keeps saying that 7 years is a very long time and that everyone goes through difficult times and that some couples just don’t make it past those struggles. To me, it didn’t feel like a long time and I don’t believe that we had typical problems. In fact, we didn’t have real problems. Our relationship was so cordial and mature that even when we had disagreements, we discussed them and fixed them (however, he disliked my technique for staying calm and threw it in my face at the end saying that it was part of the reason why he thought we didn’t communicate well).
I think that deep down I always knew that he didn’t love me, but I stayed with him because I assumed that he would eventually fall in love with me. After all, people who marry complete strangers manage to forge a life together, right? Okay, perhaps that’s not the best way to look at things. I remember that at the beginning he seemed so wonderful. I was foolish to let myself fall in love so quickly and so openly after having being hurt by “princess.” I don’t regret the feelings I let myself feel. We agreed on the big decisions - no marriage, no children - and we both desired to experience the world and to live a different life than what was expected of two educated and independent adults. The sex was good at first. We both tried to satisfy each other. We’d drink and talk about simple and complex topics well into the morning hours and then we’d sleep all day. Sundays were football days for him, which is something I had never really experienced before, but he made sure I was entertained and not by the games on TV. I grew to like those Sundays a lot.
It began as an office romance and because of the secrecy of it, I think it made our initial “affair” all the more exciting than it would have been if we hadn’t been in that situation. I risked my job to be with him. Foolishly, I had fallen in love…
It was natural to follow him to Louisiana since I had made the choice that I wanted to be with him. That was the first big decision I made because of him while completely ignoring what I wanted. I wanted to go to the East coast not the South.
I really loved Baton Rouge in spite of how horribly difficult and complicated work was. We took a lot of trips to festivals and went to many restaurants and hosted friends and family who came to visit. We made friends and felt that life was good.
I remember the first time he told me that he loved me. His best friend was in town and we took them to one of the bars by the apartment where we lived near LSU. We were drinking and dancing and everyone was having a really good time. He was drinking scotch or something like that and I’m pretty sure he was drunk. He looked at me with his mysterious look. I couldn’t read him when he had that look on his face but he didn’t use it often. I had only seen it once before while we were dancing at a wedding the first night I met his family. While he stared at me with one hand on his glass and the loud dancing music in the background he just blurted out - “I love you” - That was it. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. It was SO unexpected. I had told him those three words many times before and he’d just stay quiet and he’d hold me tight. The whole thing actually made me sad. I don’t remember the rest of the night but his confession changed how I felt about us. I think that’s when I decided that I’d go all in. I was determined to be with this man for as long as we could hold on to that love.
I think the beginning of the end happened around our trip to India. I carried a huge burden with the planning and the arrangements that it made me feel like I was someone else. I experienced anxiety, depression, and jealousy on that trip. I assumed it was all in my head because I was stressed out, but our feelings aren’t as simple as that. The part of him that was mine faded away somewhere over the indian ocean and it left a hole in me that I wasn’t able to explain or comprehend at the time. I cried a lot on that trip. If it hadn’t been for a couple of the people on my class who went above and beyond to ensure that I was doing okay, I don’t know how I could have survived that situation without crumbling. None of those people were my boyfriend though. He was clearly annoyed and tired of me and I was afraid and sad because I felt that I was losing him.
Once we were back, he was upset with me for keeping him in Wisconsin. Someone else would have been thrilled that their girlfriend found a GREAT job that she loved and that she was good at but not him. He wanted to move to another country and see the world while I wanted to work on my career and take small trips to see the world (on vacation). As an immigrant, I appreciate everything I’ve achieved and everything I have (no matter how small) and he didn’t understand why I didn’t want to leave it all behind to explore a new country with him. I tried to make him happy (risking my job again). This is the second time I made a big decision based ONLY on what HE wanted and this time it didn’t go well. I was miserable in Mexico. He wasn’t who I thought he was. He was much weaker than me, less driven, and less hungry to succeed. I began to resent his lack of drive. I realize that this is very subjective because my idea of what he should have been doing is probably very different from his perspective but this is my story and I’m telling it from my perspective.
When work called and asked me to return or I’d lose my job - I went back without hesitation. I was dying to get a reason to come back home. We lived in paradise and yet we were so unhappy.
Once back in Wisconsin we fell into a routine that kept us sane. The damage had been done though. He resented me and I resented him. There was no way around that. We stopped having sex. We stopped having meaningful conversations. We’d drink and drink and drink. Somehow, we thought this was normal. This is when I finally realized that this was not a loving relationship anymore and that we were living like roommates. I yearned for his touch. I missed his loving smile. I craved his kisses. I’d try to look pretty or even sexy at night to see if he’d be interested in having me and he’d go right to sleep. That was so hard for me. I was devastated and disappointed because I still loved him but I didn’t feel love coming from him anymore. Thanks to a friend, we worked on our love languages after we separated for about 4 weeks around my birthday. During that time apart I realized that I still wanted to be with him and that I loved him. If I hadn’t been sure of my feelings, we would have split up at the time but he told me that he wanted us to be together so we embarked on the last leg of the journey. It was like magic. I honestly felt that the love languages had helped us understand what we had been missing and that our love was on track once again. I was so happy and he seemed so happy too. The last year was really good. I even renewed my job search to move to a state where he’d be happier. We were SO close but unfortunately (or fortunately - I don’t know which one it is) I didn’t get any of those jobs. We were stuck here again and getting ready to be here for another brutal winter.
Then the end happened so fast. One week we were going on trips and doing the things we set out to do as a couple - and the next week he is sitting next to me in our living room telling me that he met someone at work and that he needed to figure out his feelings for this person and that he was moving out.
It has been a little over two months since he left and I’ve made peace with what happened. I am not sad anymore. I can see now where we failed each other. I failed in thinking that my love for him would be enough and that eventually he’d feel for me what I felt for him. That never happened. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop loving him. I know I’ve stopped wishing he’d want to come back. I mostly feel betrayed because my best friend didn’t talk to me about his feelings and instead made decisions that hurt both of us and forced a breakup based on betrayal and deceit instead of a clean amicable break between two friends who cared for each other. I would have liked to have the latter but life doesn’t work that way.
I am closing this chapter forever and aside from brief references in future blog posts, the subject of “him” is finished.

I'm so selfish

I used to have a person who made me the #1 person for him for a little over a year.  He fed my ego and watered my desire to feel important.  I wanted with all my heart to be able to reciprocate his feelings but my heart belonged to someone else the whole time. 
This week he told me that he had found someone to be his #1 and I felt sincerely happy but I also felt selfishly jealous of her.  I lost his unrelenting devotion.  Even though I knew this day would come some day, I fooled myself into thinking that it didn't matter.  Well, it does matter.  It makes me feel like Jules in My Best Friend's wedding.  I'm a horrible person and yet I am happy with my own partner. 
Told you I was selfish...

What do you want?

That's always a fun question but it is not as simple as it seems. What I want has to do with my feelings, my interests, and my goals. Having options is a luxury to some but options without goals or very specific interests can be fun at first but in the long run they can become a big disappointment of wasted potential.  Well, that's what I think anyway.  My mom always told me that even if I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted out of life, I at least should have a clear idea of what I didn't want in life. Right now I don't want to have a wasted life. I don't know what my potential is and I suppose I will never find out without some focus. I am getting old and I feel like I'm living the life a 20 year old would envy. This life gives me pleasure and for the most part happiness. The problem I find is with the  second part of that sentence... for the most part... what a sad way to rationalize unhappiness. But why? why am I not happy all the time? why am I questioning this path I've taken?
Perhaps because there is no end game? no goal? no direction?

Engagement, marriage and having kids.

If you've been reading this blog then you must know how I feel about most things that have to do with big lifetime decisions. Well... let me just clarify that I am ok with watching my facebook feed explode with engagements, marriages and babies but sometimes there are unique people who surprise me and then it bothers me to see them go down this path.
I have a friend on FB who had all these dreams to go travel the world and see things, learn things and experience life from all different countries. This week she got engaged and I can't help to feel sad instead of being excited for her. I realize it is not my life and I shouldn't feel anything but happiness for her but I can't help it. It really bugs me. I'm horrible, I know.

So... I don't have a nice afterthought. ..

Misplaced feelings

Well... spending time near children always reinforces my decision to never become a biological mother. For some reason, in the middle of a report at work, I thought of how my ex (princess) blamed his cheating and getting a woman pregnant on me because he wanted to pass on his genes and he wanted to give his mom a grandson but since I didn't want to have kids he thought he would just sleep with that woman.   I mean... what a jerk, right?
I have always felt that if he really wanted to be with me because he loved me, he would have never been able to sleep with someone else with the intention of making a baby. Why would he want to have a baby with somebody else if he loved me? That makes no sense, right? So, I have to rule out love and stick with .... (blank).

As if I never had the wish to have children... I suppose I wouldn't be a healthy woman if I was completely disconnected with that side of my being but you know what? I believe that it would be extremely selfish and narcissistic to make a new baby when there are so many little babies who new parents because they've lost theirs (for whatever reason). Aren't we a cruel species? Wait... hold that thought. Wolves eat females' puppies so I guess we're not AS cruel in that instance. Can you imagine a man eating a woman's baby just to mate with her? That's messed up!!!

I have to be strong and make sure that my integrity and my beliefs aren't questioned by anybody, including myself. However,  sometimes it's too easy to do it.

I had a conversation with my BF's dad this weekend and he said that he doesn't believe in the idea that men and women get together sexually but without wanting to procreate with each other. The idea that you'd want to have sex with someone but not have a baby with them seems selfish and it's like you're not serious about the other person.

I wonder how much truth there is in his idea. That wanting to have a kid with someone would bring you closer to them. I have to look at society to know that that's not true.  Why do religious groups believe that if you don't have kids with someone it must be because you lead a life of sin? What is up with that? What about the women who end up doing nothing more than working as maids for a man and their children. What about women's opportunities to work and to study. Why is there such a burden to us and why is this big sacrifice expected of us and us alone?

Anyway... cheating is bad and sex without getting pregnant is good. I don't care what the world says. Having kids just to pass on your genes is bad. Sleeping with someone to pass on your genes without intending to marry her and be there for the child is SO WRONG...

I've had a messed up life...

So embarrassed

So, my bf has been reading this blog for as long as he’s known me. 

 

well… that’s very embarrassing. 

 

I don’t regret my thoughts.  I regret not blocking this blog before, but there is no point in hiding it now, is there?

 

It’s kind of nice, in a way, that there are no secrets between us (I think).  The bad that comes with this knowledge is that I feel like he knows things about me that he may misinterpret and at the same time, I don’t know many things about him so the knowledge we share about each other is not equal or even close to what he knows about me.  This makes me nervous in many ways. 

 

Maybe if I want to keep things a secret I would NOT have a blog online…  I suppose that’s a good idea. 

 

I guess I’m not that smart.