does water seek its own level?

A few weeks ago…

One of the common relationship aphorisms that sticks in my mind is “water seeks its own level.” The counselor my ex and I went to years ago, in fact, said this to us. And, for reasons I shall soon share, it has come to mind again…

I’ve been seeing the gentleman once accused of aggravated assault (sounds kind of badass, doesn’t it?!). Very early in our getting to know each other, he confessed to me just about everything you can imagine a person unloading: a troubled childhood, severed ties with family, medical history and more. He still sees a therapist to work through the whole arrest ordeal. As I wrote earlier, he doesn’t look so good on paper.

And yet there’s something about him… I know, you’re groaning. And you should be. The last thing I need is a project.

We were chatting the one night (just before he told me everything) and I recall teasing, “You don’t scare me at all! …but I’m pretty sure I scare the living hell out of you!”

Now I think it’s fair to say that I’m a little scared.

So I’m wondering if the roots of my attraction are reflected in shared experience: I’ve written about how the failing of my most significant relationship shattered my self-esteem. What I’ve yet to share is a story that I guess it never dawned on me that I’d need to write about here. But now I do.

More than three years ago, I went through a crisis in my family — the very family I helped to create. I was emotionally traumatized. When I think about it, the image I see of myself during that time is me in bed, nearly catatonic and drooling, unable to get up, unclean and unable to go to work.

Memory is a liar. In fact, in the midst of the worst of it, I rose each day, showered, dressed and went to work. I obliquely mentioned to co-workers that I was going through a stressful time with a family crisis, my head was cloudy and I apologized for any areas in which my incapacity caused them to overcompensate during this couple of weeks. (I suppose it needn’t be said that this was a precursor to the split, another manifestation of the symptoms and issues of all that was wrong in my marriage.)

As I slowly “recovered,” I didn’t realize the entirety of the damage to my psyche. I may have believed that I was functioning at full capacity just weeks later, yet external feedback (processed and accepted more deeply after the fact) suggests otherwise. Thus, nearly six months later, I found myself being treated for depression. Within 48 hours of taking a serotonin enhancer, I was a completely different person — a person more like the self I knew.

Still, something in my brain seemed to have changed. My ability to concentrate or focus never really seemed to return to 100%. In other words, the emotional trauma had done sustained damage. For awhile, I thought it was the depression, allergies, hormones or any number of things that can cloud one’s thinking. I’ve since read up on it and, with no formal training or diagnosis, believe that I experienced some amount of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I worked with my usual tools to alleviate the symptoms — applied kinesiology (AK), yoga, meditation, organic diet,cognitive therapy, and Holosynch, a meditation soundtrack that puts the brain into a deeply relaxed state. I quit a stressful job. I’ve been selective about the energy in my environment (people, places and media).

Still, having done this work, I find myself drawn to someone still very much in the midst of healing himself.

So I wonder what this attraction says about me:

Do the things that resonate between us have to do with our pain? And, if so, haven’t I already been there? Haven’t I rebuilt my self-esteem? Haven’t I done the hard work?
Or is it because of his strength and maturity, having worked through so much, and that he strikes me as so adult…and so willing to embrace all of life head-on?

we were married to the same man

Over the past two years or more, I cannot tell you how many times I heard, “Sounds like we were married to the same man!” I found women at work, women at the salon, and friends I’ve known for years who all expressed the same sentiment.

I guess what it comes down to is that there are a finite number of reasons that relationships don’t work out. And, as it happens, I’ve found several women who share a story not entirely unlike mine. Several, it seemed, had some sort of midlife crisis and then…

In one particular example, a high-end builder with an exclusive clientele just decided he didn’t want to do that sort of thing anymore. After bumbling about for a few years, taking some classes and trying to figure out what he wanted to do when he grew up, he ended up in retail. Because he was more mature than the high-schoolers reporting to him and had a bit of know-how, he was quickly promoted to supervisor. Cheers to the family dental plan…and a couple of hundred dollars a week in income! Sure, it was a contribution, but nothing like supporting a family with the income to which they’d become accustomed.

His wife was a trooper throughout this transition, but finally opened herself to the possibility that she didn’t have to be responsible for him financially or emotionally or otherwise. He had become another child to a woman weary of parenting.

Another woman’s husband spent much of his time lying about on the sofa watching the television when he was meant to be looking for a job. He racked up credit card debt and lied about money issues.

Here’s where the relationship rubber hits the road. We’re here to love and support one another in ways, as long as we agree to what those ways are. (Most, but not all of us, know what we’re getting into before we marry.) We’re not here to parent our spouses or support behaviors that don’t nurture us or our commitments. We’re not on this Earth for another lesson in co-dependence.

Long (years) after I’d asked my wasband to go back to work, he was still protesting that “we’d agreed that he would stay home with the children.” In truth, we’d “agreed” because he’d lost his job and it seemed like our best option at the time. Like a toddler on the verge of a decade-long tantrum, he’d dug in his heels and was not about to budge from his position. He changed his internal script to, “I gave up my career to be home with my children.” And he seemed to believe it!

Relationships must change and evolve. They require communication. Agreements made must often be renegotiated. And it takes two committed adults to embark on that sort of work.

the standard of living

I’m happier now than I was while in a doomed relationship.

Yet I often ponder this question of my standard of living. Is it better? No, though I suppose I thought it would be. I thought there would be some savings associated with not having to support another adult — perhaps some groceries, gas, insurance or utilities. And I thought I’d be getting a bit more in the way of support for our children.

My resources are tight. My time is full, from the time I wake until I crash each night. I entertain less often. I enjoy cooking less now that it’s a scramble to put dinner on the table each evening. I find less time to be active and exercise, and to connect with friends and family. All things that are important to me.

And, yet, with two precious children sharing discoveries each day and a deep sense of purpose, I find this moment in my life rich and full and hopeful.

Those other things that matter? Well…they’ll be resurrected in time.

my, how I’ve grown!

If you look back to when I first began writing this blog, there was a lot of purging and a lot of stuff about the failure of my relationship. It must have been cathartic, because it’s rare that the anger, resentment or blame flares up anymore. In fact, while I’ll confess to anyone that I still care for my ex (he is, after all, the father of my children), I’m detached about it. I would never go back to our relationship or him. When I dropped off the children the other day, he hugged me and told me that he loves me very, very much…and the only thought that came to mind was “have you been drinking?”

Amidst the un-flings and failed attempts to get laid or find romance these past months, I’ve largely healed my heart and re-set my standards. Perhaps it sounds odd that I even needed to re-set my standards…and, yet, I clearly once accepted so little for myself that they were due a bit of re-calibration. And to do so, my self-esteem needed an overhaul. Leaving a stressful job, spending lots of quality time with family and friends, yoga, meditation and a healthy diet have worked wonders. In many ways, I’m restored with a much more solid sense of self. And, while I’m feeling great, I plan to keep up positive momentum on that front.

I’m also getting better at catching myself when I fall into old patterns of behavior. I’ve noticed and curbed impulses to use behaviors associated with masculine energy in relationships with men — if he’s not providing it, I’m not interested. And I’ve dialed back my need to mother people who are (technically) no longer children. I’m grateful to have been able to take the time to glean the lessons of my failed relationship and grow from them. While dysfunctional behaviors that I’m not yet aware of are likely to reveal themselves as I explore new relationships, I’m going to be gentle with myself and my “other,” and I’m going to be a lot better at forgiving myself when I make mistakes. These are joyful discoveries for me — they bring me closer to realization of the woman I want to be.

Perhaps best of all are the great qualities I feel expanding — courage, patience, deservingness, trust, allowance and good humor seem to be blossoming within me. My “vibe” is more consistently positive than ever before.

These are good days. I am enjoying among the best times ever with my children (our recent vacation was amazing — they’ve just reached an entirely new level of fun, interest and expression), and I’m putting into practice so many of the relationship tools I’ve learned in the past several months — even some of those tips that involve relating with men. While I’m not about to report anything, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the way things are going!

gotta love that, dawg!

I’m a compete sucker for John Cusack. In anything. I don’t really care how bad it is, I will get sucked in anyway. He is virtually perfect (but whoever does his wardrobing could use a slap upside the head). So, when I came across what turned out to be Must Love Dogs, I couldn’t resist. My favorite part is his character’s second date over dinner at an Armenian (I think) restaurant. There, he fumbles out a speech that goes something like this:

“You know what? Can we just skip the small talk? Who are you? Who am I? What are we doing here tonight?

I just have this theory that when you first meet somebody, that’s the time when you have to be totally honest, because you have nothing to lose. Five, ten years down the road, it gets a lot harder; you can’t just wake up and say, ‘this is the real me.’ It doesn’t work that way.

You know what I’m talking about? This is it. We’re never going to see each other as clearly, as nakedly, as we do in this moment, right now, in this instant. I’m really scaring you right now, aren’t I?…

I’m just divorced and I had my heart broken badly by a woman who I really loved… but I think your heart grows back bigger. Once you get the shit beat out of you and the universe lets your heart grow back bigger … and I think that’s the function of all this heartache and pain, you know? You’ve got to go through that to come out at a better place. That’s how I see it anyway.”

I loved this soliloquy. So that’s what I meant when I said my heart is more open. It got the shit beat out of it, but it knows that it can now love more openly, more deeply, and better than before. And the best part is that it’s going to allow itself to be loved back a whole lot better, too!

pros and cons

The fellow I met this weekend was once charged with several felony counts of aggravated assault. It’s a long story but, according to this gent, he was falsely accused and a victim of police brutality. He offered to bring along papers that show that, after a legal struggle of several years, all charges have been dropped with no conditions.

I suppose this brings up some interesting questions of personal safety — e.g. if he brought paperwork proving he was exonerated, how would I know it wasn’t forged?

At one point in our conversation, he said he was surprised I’d agreed to meet him after hearing his story over the phone. Well…he seemed genuine and honest. So I asked him how he would know if I am who I say I am, and whether he’d like to see papers proving that I am single.

The truth is that there are a lot of wing nuts out there: sociopaths, psychopaths, professional manipulators, compulsive liars…I could go on. (My mother, who is reading a book entitled The Sociopath Next Door, might warn me to be on heightened alert.) But, at some point, you’ve got to go with your gut and give someone the benefit of the doubt, or you’ll never get out of the starting gate. By the time we’re forty, whether never married or divorced, we’ve all got a little ‘splainin’ to do. There are few among us without some sort of a past.

I think the more interesting discussion we had was about what, on the surface, might look appealing to another. Briefly, this gent’s a salesman…he was not at all shy about letting me know that I should find certain facts about him appealing:

He is single, never married.
He has no children.
He is financially stable and successful in his career.
He does not drink.

Also, to his credit, he has a southern accent, good manners, brown hair and eyes, and an infectious energy and enthusiasm for living. He is both interesting and interested.

Yet, as I told him, it would be impossible to tell whether his never having been married was truly a pro or a con. After all, I explained, divorced men — in my experience — have gone through something so incredibly humbling, something requiring such deep introspection, that they may be more prepared to know the hard work truly involved in nurturing a successful relationship. No doubt they enter new relationships with few romantic illusions.

And then there’s parenting…

He graciously conceded these points…and, then: “I just want to find someone who’s crazy about me and who I’m crazy about!”

Alas, it could be hard not to go crazy for someone with that kind of innocent, idealistic and perhaps naive enthusiasm.

You should know that this gent didn’t give me his last name before we met, though I typically insist. While on our date, I told him that he would give me his last name before our date ended, so that I could Google the monstrous allegations against him. He cocked a brow. I smiled and said, “It’s a choice, but I think it’s one you’ll want to make.” He laughed, showed me his state-issued driver’s license and told me what to anticipate learning via my Google search.

When I did get a chance to look him up, his arrest and allegations merited only a few column inches on page five of a minor newspaper. And those allegations, as written, sounded like a bizarre fabrication anyway. I have to confess that a part of me was hoping for more…as in front page, above the fold, Miami Herald or better. Exoneration in the form of a death row pardon is, after all, far more dramatic and exciting than your run-of-the-mill dropped charges. Heck, My Cousin Vinnie looks more dramatic from my vantage point (which is not at all meant to diminish the trauma this fellow experienced at the hands of poorly trained officers of the law, a night in jail, legal fees, the stress of facing charges that could result in serious prison time, etc.).

At any rate, since we’ve talked twice and exchanged several text messages since our brief coffee date, I suspect I’ll be seeing him again. And it’s possible that all this drama and danger associated with his alleged criminal past might make it all the more interesting!

to hell in a handbasket

Mostly I’ve been feeling great lately — confident and optimistic — so it’s been frustrating for the past couple of days to full stuck in the mud, overwhelmed…as though this place is going to hell in a handbasket.

Yesterday, I came home to towels and sand everywhere and a messy kitchen (thank you, nanny!). Naturally, as I tried to clean up, the disposal crapped out. Suddenly, I felt completely overwhelmed…both tactically and financially! I don’t have the time to accomplish all I need to, nor the resources to hire it done. I’m paying for a car and a new roof for the house and the garage, full-time summer childcare, I’m trying to find a way to take the children on a road trip, and I just don’t need any more stuff to go wrong right now. Between working full-time and parenting full-time and scheduling the oil changes and dentist appointments and haircuts and planning a vacation and the weather, when in the hell am I going to cut the grass, much less fix something I don’t know how to fix?!

I hate feeling this way…and, worse, I hate myself for allowing myself to feel this way!

It is at this point (in my self-pity) that I realize that there is a part of me, deep inside, that resists trying to solve this problem. I simply expect a man to come along and fix it. That’s what my father always did. And that was certainly a part of what I expected of my mate…who is no longer my mate, of my own volition. I am a run-of-the-mill, Disney-variety damsel in distress, a caricature! (Enter more self-loathing…) It was not always entirely this way…I was all about diving in to ownership (in every sense of the word) when I bought my first condo…

I am nothing if not resourceful, I tell myself, so I reach out…My social networks tell me to try hitting the reset button on the bottom of my disposal and, if that doesn’t work, get an allen wrench and try to give it a crank to see if it gets unstuck. Reset fails. There are several sets of allen wrenches in the basement, I’m certain, yet I can’t find a single one, much less an entire one of those handy-dandy sets I know I’ve seen down there before. And I do mean plural…my father has seen to that.

And now, though I asked him to leave, this is when the anger and resentment at my ex percolates back up: I am alone without my male rescuer. The basement is a complete mess, and he just left it that way. I can’t find anything! I don’t know what he’s left here or what he’s taken with him. I blame him for allowing the children to take over the “workshop.” I blame him for the disposal not working. I blame him for my being in this completely overwhelming project of a fixer-upper house…this was the house he wanted above all others, while I wanted to keep looking. There, I said it. Clearly, despite efforts to that end, I have not yet purged all of the baggage of “us,” and I have not entirely accepted full responsibility for my life. I am a victim. (Ewww…that feels so gross!)

Yes, the self-pity came on strong. I wanted to throw my hands in the air and say, “I can’t do this!” And then, maybe, through releasing the fear, doubt and hopelessness out into the atmosphere, it would dissipate and the fearless woman in me would prevail…

As I happens, I made a healthy dinner, got a start on the lawn, a helpful neighbor fixed my disposal and I gave the roofer a final check for his work, which will be complete tomorrow. And, while I can’t be entirely sure that check won’t bounce, my outlook is so much sunnier now!

relationship article round-up

I’ve noticed a lot of interesting stuff out there on the inter webs. I don’t have a ton of time for commentary so, for now, I’ll just direct your attention to a few:

Imagine my surprise when I saw this article on trends website PSFK. Evidently anonymous blog The Plankton, which discusses dating from the perspective of a woman as “a plankton on the food chain of sexuality,” has attracted worldwide interest for its unique point of view. As a 40-year-old woman, I can’t say that I consider myself to be at the bottom of the sexual food chain. I have, however, experienced some disinterest that — and this is a gut feeling only — might be attributed to the difficulty in dating a nearly full-time single mother…and that bums me out a little.

This headline on HuffPost Divorce popped out at me the other day: On Second Thought, Don’t Get Married by Dr. Neil Clark Warren. For those of you who don’t know, the author is the dude who founded eHarmony.com. Americans believe, in large numbers, that marriage is becoming obsolete. Yet millions of couples still marry, and millions more want to, but are not allowed to in most states. I absolutely see both sides of this issue, as I’ve lived it. And I agree with Clark Warren that we don’t focus enough on learning how to choose a mate, build successful relationships and resolve conflict.

Finally, I’m a big fan of Dan Savage and all the work he’s done to share frank, open discussions about sexuality and sexual ethics (not to mention the amazing It Gets Better project and his political activism). In this NYT Magazine piece, Savage talks about covering off on sexual expectations before commitment — think of it like having the financial pre-nup discussion, but about fidelity. It’s actually kind of ground-breaking thinking and while, as a monogamist, it’s still kind of hard to wrap my head around it, it certainly bears discussing — e.g. If one of us cheats, does that mean the relationship is over? Could we forgive, work it out and move on? What might it mean? etc. Good discussions to have before taking the plunge, right?

confessions of a relationship dummy

As you can tell from several of my posts, I am still far from having male-female relationships figured out. In fact, I seem to still make a lot of dumb mistakes. I’ve confessed before that I’m a late bloomer, that my brain-to-mouth filter is under-functioning at best, and that I’ve never really had any good relationship examples. But then, who among us have? Healthy, loving relationships among our parents’ generation seem pretty rare…in fact, I can think of just a few couples in my parents’ group who have found genuine long-term happiness together.

Thankfully, in talking with friends, I’m not alone in not having all the answers. I have friends nearly two decades into marriage who haven’t figured it out. In fact, I was surprised to learn that one married couple I know are both reading relationship self-help books. (His is entitled How to Save Your Marriage in 5 Minutes a Day or similar…So of course I asked the obvious: Does that five minutes include the sex? He said that yes, it was supposed to, but he didn’t elaborate. Not sure I’ll be buying that book any time soon.)

Who are these people who find life-long happiness? Who are these lovely older couples who still walk side-by-side on the beach and hold hands and talk after decades of marriage? And how do I get to be among their ranks?

Well…I’m going to have to figure that one out as I go along.

the D word

In the interest of transparency and authenticity, I have another confession:

I’ve been writing about the D word, divorce. In truth, I was never legally married. My ex and I were together for more than a decade; we owned a home together and had two beautiful children; I wore a ring. We were a post-modern couple, unsure that we needed a certificate in a world of domestic partner benefits, hyphenated names and all kinds of modern families.

By the time we’d decided it was time (I’d processed through a slew of misgivings and beliefs about marriage and its meaning, which is one of the reasons Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed resonates with me so), we determined that remodeling the kitchen was more likely to have a positive and profound impact on our daily lives than a marriage certificate. While we could have just gone to the courthouse, I wanted a ceremony; I wanted to get married on the beach with friends and family standing in support of us.

We believed the conventional knowledge that “common law” was seven years. In my mind, we should have married before the seven-year mark for it to really mean something. Yet, by then, I was beginning to see the signs of all this unraveling… (As it happens, there is not common law marriage in this state.)

Still we called each other husband and wife and described ourselves as married in most (though not legal) situations. It was more than shorthand, it was what we felt. I was fully committed. My ex thought he was fully committed, though I would not have described his participation as such. He believed that staying, being there, co-existing was commitment. I believe commitment means partnership, co-creating a life for our family, and a vow to work at regular communication and presence.

And so now I write about divorce as though I’ve actually been divorced, and some may make judgments about that, just as there were judgements about our non-marriage. In fact, I hired a lawyer, there were legal documents and processes relating to joint property and custody and child support, hearings, paperwork and heartache. True, I didn’t have to gut my retirement account, but I suspect everything else — the emotional turmoil and pain, severed or strained friendships, etc. were of the same magnitude. And so I don’t use the term lightly or intend anyone offense by its use… it’s simply the best way for me to name what I’ve been through.