One Mammal

I’m going through a lot right now. Generally I feel unhappy at home and work, I feel like I have limited support and trying to decide what is in my, and my son’s best interests. I know my emotions and concerns are valid.

While I feel like I had achieved some emotional security, prior to my current relationship, I am accepting now that my current relationship is contributing to me moving towards a place of less security.

In an effort to return to a place of security, to evaluate my next steps and choices, I have started seeing a therapist again. At her suggestion, I’m attempting Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) in an effort to understand and accept the intensity of my feelings.

What am I feeling? Panic, Anxious, Hostility, Resentment, Hurt, Isolation, Grief, Disillusionment.

Why am I feeling this way? Thoughts that my romantic relationship is over. Acceptance of the toxic culture, emotional abuse. Concern for myself and my child.

What led up to this? Conflict, lack of sleep, stress from other sources (work).

Are these emotions connected to something that happened in my childhood? Yes. The way that I’m being treated in my relationship is similar to how my father treated me going up and how my previous partner treated me. I believe my partner is a high functioning addict. I doubt that people can recover. I’ve never experienced it. I don’t want to make my next decisions based on that belief, they will also impact my son.

I know we haven’t been talking much lately although we spend a lot of time together. Despite the silence, I want you to know I’m happy we met and that we’ve spent the last years together as a couple. You’ve played such a big role in my life, I love you, you are the father of my child. I have so many memories of spending time together. Remember hiking in the rain at the Lake together? Despite being terribly lost in a downpour, we managed to laugh and keep our heads together to find our way. Although early in our relationship, I trusted that you wouldn’t let anything happen to us. And you didn’t. I had a lot of fun that day and many others, thanks to you.

I know that you abuse alcohol and drugs as a means to escape. I know that these substances are addictive, and you’ve been using them for a long time to feel better. I know you compare yourself to people you know with much more obvious signs of addiction, using that as a gauge that you are “okay”. I believe that you have an unhealthy relationship with substance use. I believe you know that too and appreciate that you’ve made efforts to cut back, but I think you need more help working through this problem.

I’m sitting on our deck writing this. It’s sunny and warm out. H and I spent the morning alone making muffins, bike riding, water fights and freezies. You went out with K again last night for “a” drink. H keeps asking for you. My heart breaking every time that you are unable to be fun dad today. He so desperately wants to play and connect with you.

You came home late, woke me up coming to bed and kept me up snoring loudly. You always snore like a jet engine when you’ve been drinking. This is a pattern. So much that I start to prepare myself mentally to have interrupted sleep and be a single parent when you announce these “spontaneous” outings for “a” drink with a friend, that I’d be willing to bet aren’t spontaneous at all, that you’ve initiated them instead.

H is napping, you are too. I told you to go back to bed because I was frustrated that you were sleeping on the couch, pretending not to be hungover. That you didn’t just go into the office to throw up, returning with a juice box for Harrison and red-rimmed eyes. If I’m honest, I’m resentful that “a” drink with you doesn’t ever seem to be “a” drink. “A” drink means, “I don’t know my limits. You’re a single parent tomorrow, enjoy!”

You rarely leave a bottle unfinished. I can think of few times you were the designated driver, always preferring to take a taxi or rely on someone else to be responsible. You can’t seem to think of things to do with people that don’t centre around drinking, and if we are doing something it’s almost always the only part of the planning that you can be relied on to contribute without prompting. “I got you something at the LCBO for the weekend”, I wonder sometimes if you believe that. That your trip was for others and not a mask for going for yourself. Or maybe it just sounds better…

I’ve never seen you stop drinking before someone else and you always seem to be the last man standing. You will say that this happens much less than it has in other times in your life, but I worry that you can’t control yourself, you can’t stop, that you can’t enjoy life without binging. I’ve never seen you go more than a couple days without a drink, and I doubt that you could give it up for any length of time without help. I’ve noticed you make more room in your life for people you know who are heavy substance users and have distanced yourself from friends who have pursued sobriety. I wonder if that’s your choice, or theirs. I wonder if that’s another way to continue with the idea that you don’t have a problem.

I worry about you. Even though you are in the house, you are rarely present. I’ve noticed you making more effort lately with H, to talk to him and take him on outings. But your threshold is low, often before he’s asleep you’ve already started into hours of game play. You use the TV constantly to avoid interacting and supervising him, more than you should, so you can play video games, read the news, or whatever else you’re doing that seems to be more of a priority. I go along with it, sometimes because I’m too tired to fight about it. Sometimes because I’m overwhelmed. I wonder if, I wasn’t home, you would be doing drugs or drinking instead. It makes me scared to leave H with you overnight, I would never forgive myself if something happened to him. Lately I also wonder if I wasn’t here if you’d have to examine your substance use, if you had no choice, but it seems like a huge risk with H so small.

One of the reasons I was attracted to you was because you seemed to be interested in a healthy lifestyle. This is something I was actively looking for in a partner. In the beginning, you weren’t the fittest person but we walked together most days and you didn’t drink often. You seemed interested in movement and healthy choices. That changed when we moved in together, you stopped being interested (or pretending to be interested) in exercise and started to retreat. To drink more, to stay up at night to get high and watch movie reruns alone. I noted the red flags, I wanted so much to believe that you were struggling with pandemic and that things would some day return to what they were… coming up to our 5 year anniversary and it still hasn’t. I worry that I will lose you to your lifestyle, and that H will too. I know that if the roles were reversed, you would worry about me too.

I can’t hide that I’m frustrated. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this. I started as an intervention letter, but it seems to be more therapy instead. I guess I’m hoping it will allow me to stay in my lane if you ask me what’s going on. Another sad part is that I don’t trust you with how I feel. You’ve shut me down and rejected what I’m feeling so many times I’m doubting that there’s any path forward. I’m grieving that. It seems the path doesn’t look like I hoped it would. And that’s really sad. I think the only thing keeping me here right now if that I don’t think I can handle the idea of only seeing H part time.

J

What goes down, can eventually come back up… it’s the way of things, but it’s also really hard to remember when you’re in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about advice I’ve given friends over the years that I resist taking myself:

1. Why do you accept less than what you’d give to someone else?
2. You should listen to them, they are telling you and showing you what they are. It isn’t worth holding on to someone’s potential.
3. You aren’t stuck. You always have choices, even if they don’t look like what you want them to.
4. It’s not your job to fix another adult’s problems. That’s enabling and not a loving act.
5. Boundaries are rules for your own behaviour and what you’ll accept. They are not for controlling other people. It’s your job to maintain them.
6. You can’t expect someone to know what you’re thinking and feeling if you won’t tell them.
7. Many things worth having involve scary risks. It doesn’t mean they aren’t worth having.
8. The biggest growth happens in the spaces in between, the ones that are a little uncomfortable.
9. We teach others how to treat us.
10. No man left behind is fantasy bullshit. You can’t drag someone that doesn’t want to come.
11. If it’s not given willfully, it’s not worth having.

A couple months ago I caught my partner in a lie. It changed everything.

Well, not everything.. but all those little cracks in our relationship suddenly felt like chasms. I don’t see him the way I did before that day. I’m disgusted by how he justified it. It scared me how trivial he thought my feelings are. I’m having trouble mustering up the same hope for us that existed before this event.

My experience with long term relationships is a slow fizzle or death, this isn’t my first rodeo. I have a type: emotionally avoidant. These men show up strong, representing all the things I’m actively seeking in a partner: openness, effort, kindness.

At some point, that slowly shifts and bit by bit they pull away. It happens so slowly, I question if it’s real or my imagination. But little by little the “I love you”s, the thoughtful gestures, the long open conversations fizzle and change to indifference and annoyance. The “whatever you need” changes to “you ask for too much”.

What was once a healthy balance changes to codependence. I give until I bleed, begging for the closeness I wonder if I imagined. And they take until they see me as a shell, a doormat, a weight. I let go of my boundaries, and they dance on the ruins.

The first time this happened to me I believed it was totally my fault. That I had somehow manifested the change and that I was deserving of scraps of affection. I now understand I’m not deserving, but abandoning myself leads others to abandon me too. Anxiety breeds avoidance. Again and again.

This time, I didn’t abandon myself. I told him how his actions made me feel. I told him what I needed. I needed him to take responsibility for himself and his actions. I needed him to stop blaming me as a justification for acting poorly. I needed him to get help.

To his credit, he’s done part of that. He’s dipping his toe in individual therapy. I understand better than most how hard taking that first step is. I also understand how difficult it is to keep showing up when you start digging into your own pain, the pain that causes you to hurt others and yourself. I understand it doesn’t mean that you will look the way you envisioned when you get to the other side… and I also know that it’s not a straight line to get there. It takes more time than you think and the bad never totally goes away, you just get better at not letting it drive the bus.

He still hasn’t given me a sincere apology. He hasn’t validated my experience. But, in a way, taking those first steps is taking some responsibility.

So here I sit in purgatory. I’m doing my best to try and meet my own needs while he focuses on himself, but I find myself frustrated. I don’t want to be in a relationship which makes me feel like a burden. I want to be with someone as excited to be with me as I am to be with them. I have no illusions that even healthier relationships take work, but I’m also tried of being with men that I doubt even like me.

So here I wait, working on my exit strategy. Trying to maintain some small hope that we will be able to bridge the chasms between us… not sure that I believe that they can be bridged.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

I feel like the pandemic made a lot of us try to look past the parts of people that repulse us. Without getting political, the words “privilege’” and “rights” were thrown around by many with no appreciation of their true intent and meaning. In some cases (at least to me), it was surprising. Otherwise intelligent and kind people were showing their hidden prejudice and we all got a big deep look into the ugly thoughts that people usually keep to themselves.

Eleanor Roosevelt brings to mind similar vibes. A brilliant woman in a lot of ways, she was privately anti-Semitic for most of her adult life. I understand this waned later, impacted by a personal relationship with American Financier, Bernard Baruch. But did negatively impact some of her otherwise “good” works.

Can you separate the man from the monster? The art from the artist? The woman from her prejudice?

I feel like I’ve been dealing with versions of this idea for most of my life, having lived most of it with people struggling with addiction. I’m used to people I love hurting me, not because they mean to, but because I was further down the priority list… behind numbing themselves and escaping reality that was too hard to bear.

Can you love someone through the pain they cause you?

Not an easy thing to do… but the sad biproduct of being wounded so deeply by people is that it gives away a lot of power. I can’t help but think my life would be easier if I was harder to offend.

I’m sorry that someone taught you that it was better to hide than love yourself. I know you’re so scared to let anyone see you that it’s better to build the walls and shut out all the feeling. I know that rejection feels to you like abandonment and it hurts so badly that any small critique digs into the wound.

You didn’t deserve that lesson. No matter how they justified it to you.

I’m sorry there’s no way for me to a be a better partner to you than to stop you from railroading me in your frantic effort to hide. I’m sorry that makes me the enemy.

It might be a long time until you believe it, if ever, but I really did just want to love you.

I know you blame my baggage for where we are now. I wish it wasn’t there either. I also wish it didn’t give you an excuse to dismiss my concerns about you. The way you’re acting, talking, it’s all too familiar. I see you, even if you aren’t ready to see yourself.

I imagine sometimes that the version you showed me at the beginning is the you that you would like to be. You were open, kind, compassionate, and honest. You weren’t perfect, but I really thought you were perfect for me.

I don’t know if that person is gone, a figment of my imagination, or a total fabrication on your part but I hope that person that I saw for the first year of our relationship is the real you. I hope you make peace with him someday. I really liked him. I really would love our son to experience his dad like that.

Regardless of what happens next, thank you for trying. I know you did, until it hurt too much to push forward.

I hope someday you love yourself too. You deserve it. You always did.

I impulsively applied to an internal posting about a month ago. It represented a lateral move but one that would provide me greater visibility and experience in an area of complexity that I haven’t previously had much exposure. Overall, it seemed like a good thing to jump into the ring for but not the ideal, fully forward career move.

I am one of the few that was actually provided advancement during the pandemic. I’m lucky enough to work in an industry that transferred very well to a remote model. In addition, I live in a very rural area so my unique blend of experience and the openness to remote employees created a perfect storm allowing me to negotiate not one, but two lucrative moves with companies that wouldn’t previously have considered me due to geography.

I write all this with gratitude and a recognition of the privilege I enjoy that many do not. I got very lucky in a time of unpredictable and unprecedented change and turmoil.

That said, my industry has transitioned again to a hybrid model with I cannot participate in due to my geographic distance from my employer. This has pros and cons. I’m saved from the negative parts of commuting but miss out on a lot of the team building and networking opportunities that are much easier when your coworkers are gathered. I’m also the only fully remote member of my team which leads to some resentment and my being forgotten in some departmental planning. Again, pros and cons to being independent and under the radar.

Lately, as I’m coming up to my 3 year anniversary (and the itch to move on to new challenges is setting in) in this role I’m also realizing that I’m stuck.

On Friday I found out that I lost out on that job not because of a poor interview performance, but due to my geography. And to add salt to the wound, the role went to an exceptional young associate with less than half of my experience but with more access to the office and travel opportunities.

I just turned 40 this year. If I’m honest, this is my first time not being the exceptional young associate pushing more experienced candidates out of the way.

Kind of a weird feeling. All around.

So get a job closer to home you say? Also a challenge. Inflation has made my big city salary a necessity. A move to a closer employer would not only mean less interesting work, but also at least a 20% pay cut.

So relocate then? I have a toddler and my partner just went into business for himself. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to move to the city. Relocation would mean the end of that relationship and a much more challenging situation for my son.

Ultimately none of this complaining really matters. My life is good. I should happily accept my lack of advancement, sink into and embrace my privileged position and focus on gratitude.

But still, it feels strange to think that I may not be pushing towards another milestone when I haven’t not been pushing for one in my lifetime. Does that make sense?

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.