My two year high school relationship ended with me pushing him away before he could reject me. He had had gone off to college, so it was just a matter of time, right?
And then, after more than 10 years with him, somehow I was.
The next few years were spent having sex with any boy that was willing to look my way. I was desperately seeking approval, wanting someone to tell me that I was good enough.
If they wanted me for sex, then I was good enough, right?
I just want to go back and hug my 18 year old self. She was a poor lost thing.
You can imagine, then, why I spent the majority of the early years of my marriage waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why me? What does he see in me? Why would he stay with me?
I saw no signs at all that he was ever interested in anyone else. It was baffling. What is wrong with this man? Can't he see that I'm nothing, not worthy?
How can you have a happy marriage when one person feels that way? I never understood the toll it took on our relationship. I kept him at arms' length. I didn't want to be surprised when it all fell to pieces.
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| This is the foundation that was always missing. |
I was seared by the pain of his acts, but I was also crushed by the confirmation that I was not enough.
This is why couples' counseling was such a joke. How could I be a part of a whole when I was convinced that I was nothing? 1 + 0 will never equal 2.
The problem was not that he didn't love me. The problem was that I didn't love me.
I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. So, when it was recommended that I read a book called The Gospel According to Jesus, I balked a bit. It was not at all what I thought it was going to be, though, and I have to share a relevant passage here:
When you know how to “be with” yourself, it is not so difficult to “be with” another. However, if your life is a flight from self, how can you expect any relationship to be grounded? It just is not possible. All you have are a clash of wings in a crowded sky...
Do not seek outside yourself for happiness in a time of great trauma. What you catch in the net of your seeking will be more than you bargained for. Your own pain is enough to work on. Don’t exacerbate it by taking on another’s suffering. If you want to dance with another, root yourself first. Learn to hear your own guidance. Dialogue with the hurt child and the divine host within. Practice forgiveness and compassion for yourself. Be with your experience and learn from it. Stay in the rhythm of your life...
If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and if you are not willing to do so, nobody else will take care of you. Your lack of love and commitment to yourself attracts people with similar lessons into your vibrational field. Then you will simply mirror back to each other that lack of self-understanding and self-commitment. Commitment to another is impossible without commitment first to self. This is important. Those who try to act in a selfless way are putting the cart before the horse. Embrace the self first and then you can go beyond it. What I am suggesting is not selfishness. It is the ultimate surrender to the divine within. The beloved comes into being with the commitment to self. S/He manifests outwardly as soon as that commitment is trustworthy. Then the outer commitment and the inner one go together. In worshipping the beloved, one worships the divine Self that lives in many bodies. This is sacred relationship. Few meet the beloved in this life, for few have learned to honor themselves and heal from the inside out.
~Paul Ferrini, The Gospel According to JesusPowerful stuff, eh? The book is full of powerful insights, no matter what your religious beliefs.
With that began my journey to heal myself, to love myself.
Did I cause my husband to go off and have sex with someone else? Absolutely not. That was his own reckless, idiotic, self-destructive choice.
Did I bear responsibility for the state that our marriage was in at the time? Yes. Our relationship was not happy or healthy, and I had to have known that on some level.
As much as I would've liked to have blamed myself for his infidelity, it didn’t have anything to do with me. The stuff going on in his head at the time, the place he was in... that was his mess. He was the one that fucked up. He could've made different choices. He didn’t do anything to me or because of me. He did something to himself, and the doing of it was painful for me. But the choices, the feelings, the emotions, the actions…all of those were his.
None of it was mine.
But... there was so much that he didn't understand.
He never knew I had an inner voice that cut like a knife, a voice that I used to tell myself in a thousand different ways that I wasn’t good enough.
He thought I was confident and self-assured.
How could he not see what an insecure wreck I had always been?
He never really knew how much he meant to me until things fell apart, until I fell apart. I never knew I hadn’t made it crystal clear that I loved him, that he was the rock upon which I built my life.
How could we have misunderstood each other so thoroughly?
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