I don't claim to give advice and I'm not one to try to. I sometimes get asked for my opinion, and I tend to make sure that my "advice" is expressed as it's just my opinion. Some friends want advice; some just want an ear to ping stuff off of. Sometimes, neither. I suppose it also comes down to who do you trust enough to talk to, and most of my friends, in spite of my blog, know that I'm not running around telling every Tom, Dick and Harry their business. I often tell the stories as they affect me and only to the effect that I believe that lots of people experience similar situations. Those similarities are what touch us and make us feel connected and less alone in our situations. I think that loneliness can be overwhelming at times. I've been there, and I know for sure that I am not the only one. One of the hardest times for most people I think is to be in a relationship that they find no longer tangible. No one wants to give up on someone that they have invested time in, but at the same time, no one wants to be in a relationship that they feel stifles them. I've joked that I'm the epitome of commitment phobic. I suffer immensely from "cottontail syndrome"...run rabbit, run. Some people I know suppose that is because I was the victim of a bad relationship with infidelity at its worst. I'm not really sure. So perhaps, I need to explore this possibility.
I have a lot of friends in less than satisfying relationships. I know you have to take the good with the bad, but I sometimes wonder if the bad is even worth the good when I observe their experiences. The ones that are married tend to stick it out longer, and sometimes, make it work in spite. I have a buddy who's been married over 20 years. I'll admit I adore him--mainly because we are like two peas in a pod. However, there is a major difference between us. In his marriage 20 years ago, he was the cheating dog, and I was the married to a cheating dog. He and his wife survived his infidelity, mainly because of her. As anyone that is a regular reader of my blog knows, my dog got kicked to the curb. Our conversations are often pretty frank, since both he and I suffer from honesty syndrome--sometimes we can be too honest for our own good. (How he got caught by the way.) Perhaps his infidelity was too much, seems like karma kicked his ass, because he's now impotent. There's an irony there that just grabs you. He's also coping now with his wife cheating. I'm not sure if her cheating started before or after his issues started, but it's a strange twist of events to be sure. He jokes about it once in a while like it's so matter of fact and there's not anyone that doesn't know about it--although other than when he brings it up, no one acknowledges it. It's become an unwritten rule to a large degree. I asked him once why he stayed. His response was a long, long awkward moment of silence followed by, 'It is what it is." It is what it is. It is what it is? It is what it is! The words resonated in my head. Wow. Complacency? Like I stated, he and I are two peas in a pod. There'd be no 'it is what it is' for me. Of course, where we differ is that very few women suffer from not being able to perform. Most women that don't perform choose to not perform. And, I've never been the cheating dog. In his shoes, after a long time considering his position, I suppose he's right. He still loves her with all his heart and vice versa, and like me, he firmly believes what comes around goes around. This is his around. It is what it is.
Honestly, I know several couples that stayed together after infidelity. In most, it was the man that cheated, and the women did the ever faithful stand by your man routine. In most of the cases where it was the woman that cheated, the marriage ended. Most men simply will not stand for that, because their egos just won't take the blow. In the cases where it's the man though, there is a myriad of possibilities of the outcome. One friend has stuck it out after her husband cheated and now he's an absolute loon when he gets worried over the possibility of her leaving him. He's much like Chris Rock says in one of his comedy skits. Men worry after their own infidelity that they've given the woman a free pass. Another stuck it out, and over the years she became more and more bitter over the way he treated her. I'm not sure the infidelity ever came to a complete stop. Her loyalty was repaid by him being gone 5 nights a week for various meetings with his Masonic brethren. What I know about the Masons, I thought they were supposed to be striving to be better men. I don't see how infidelity falls into being a better man. Perhaps the Masons are more smoke and mirrors than they let on. I'm not even sure that he was actually going to Masonic meetings, and I don't think she bought it either. But, I never understood her standing by him. She loved him at some point, but she became so bitter for a while that I tend to believe that lead to her early passing. The heart can only sustain so much bitterness, anger and hatred. There truly is a fine line between love and hate. I actually would love to close this paragraph with the "happy ending" version of these stories, but I simply don't have one. I have one acquaintance, I suppose she thinks were friends, who is as happy as she thinks she can be in spite of her husband's cheating. Of course, she's a very shallow, money focused woman. She doesn't work, and her husband makes plenty of money. She's perfectly content with him cheating because to paraphrase a conversation we had once, she wouldn't want his ass all over her anyway. I asked if she worried at all that he would ever leave her high and dry and possibly broke. She laughed. The prenuptial that he had insisted on cut both ways. Since she could prove his infidelity, she would walk away with a minimum of half of everything. Plus, he loved her in his own way. OK. My assessment is that it is simply a marriage of convenience now, regardless of whatever it was before. I'm not sure, but I guess I knew myself better than I thought I did 18 years ago. I kicked my dog to the curb, and while I'm positive that might not be the best for someone else, it was definitely the best for me.
There are times that I've wondered if infidelity is the reason that I am such a commitment phob. I mean amongst my friends my phobia is notorious. I'm simply unwilling to make a real long term commitment to anyone other than my children. Even the dog (and by dog, I mean my famous Akita) should be worried whether or not I can make a long term commitment to him. I'm already trying desperately to pawn him off on my oldest son--well, in truth, the dog is supposed to be his and his brothers. Still, when they decided to pawn him off on me, the first thought was to drop his ass off at the pound and call it a day. He's only still living with me because my boys would kill me if I did that and that stupid "but I love you Mom" look that he picked up from my kids. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I've never wanted to make that commitment. I was engaged when I was young--by young I mean 19. I'm not sure how long that relationship would've lasted in retrospect, but I was totally head over heels. Of course, the problem with puppy love is that sometimes it doesn't become the real thing. The second time that I really wanted to get married, well, I married him. And, when they say there's a fine line between love and hate, that's not an understatement. Yes, love can skip over that rope so fast it will make your head spin. Of course, since I find hate a useless emotion, it didn't take me long to get over it. I have friends that have been divorced for years, both male and female, and still hate or obsess over their exes. They writhe from the thought of the cheater being happy. My response to them is no cheater is happy. If they were happy, they wouldn't be cheaters. The third time, yes believe it or not there was a third time, I just never discussed it, never brought it up, and put it in the back of my pea brain. Although I would've gone there in a heartbeat, I simply didn't want to ruin what I had and figured it would work itself out in the short or long run. Since I'm still single, you can pretty much guess how that ended. It never occurred to me that he even might cheat, and even if it had, I suppose the heart wants what the heart wants. The relationships that I've had since, well, I'll admit that sometimes the heart wants something and then it changes its "mind". The luster, or maybe the lust, washes off. Or maybe the relationship, no matter what the heart wants, becomes intangible. My friends will tell you I might even choose the intangible over the tangible simply because I prefer to run away like a scared rabbit--nothing but cottontail. Of course, in those cases, infidelity or even the hint of a possibility of infidelity, have absolutely nothing to do with my desire to run. So while I've wondered in the past if it was my "problem" with commitment, it's not. Whatever my phobia stems from, it simply is what it is.
My sister often advises me to be sure that I'm happy in the relationship whenever I'm in one. After all the years of observing the bad to great relationships of my friends, I do understand that being happy in a relationship is the only reason to be there. If you're not happy, perhaps it's a temporary thing. In that case, you can ride out the rough spot. If you can't see yourself reaching that point, well, maybe you need to wait until the "emotion" has died down a little so that you can see the forest through the trees. The reality though is that if once it's over you feel, or the other person feels, that a huge weight has been lifted off of the proverbial shoulders, then the relationship simply was going to eventually end in misery. No reason to force something that isn't tangible. It simply won't work. I kick myself sometimes. I do sometimes think I'd be better off if I could've made the tangible relationship, but then I also realize that status quo, staying somewhere where I'm not happy, just wouldn't work for me. My one friend says the problem isn't that either. She points to that third time that I would've made a lifelong commitment and not given it a second thought. Looking back she asked me to ponder and decide if I would've changed my point of view on that now. That's a serious thought. It's been on my mind for months now. Several months. Would I change or even think of changing the outcomes of other relationships I've been in? Those that didn't work, didn't for a reason, right? That is my logic most of the time. Why didn't I marry one of my best friends several years ago instead of entering into a pact that would likely never come to fruition? Wow. The answer is scary. I wouldn't because my pea brain didn't let go of something that was intangible. I ran away from the fact that I didn't want to see and I never quite resolved it. Infidelity while it might be a misery factor is not the reason that I'm a commitment phobic. I'm a phobic because my heart set itself on one thing and my brain and heart have never reconciled since. I'm not sure what to make of that answer. I suppose it makes me a little stupid somehow. The one thing I can say is that I've finally reached a reconciliation--or at least the heart and head have. It's not that I'm a commitment phob; it's that the heart wants what the heart wants. Until it accepts that what it wants isn't tangible, it simply is what it is.
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