Square Pegs
Posted by Roberta Lipp on January 12, 2008
There will probably be some small bites about this as I process.
This process shouldn’t be too hard or take too long, being as pretty much the last four months, or eleven, depending on how you view it, have been about me accepting, or preparing to accept, that Joe and I aren’t forever.
What are the ways in which it is important that you match, and what are the ways in which it is important that you fit?
I was always aware that Joe and I don’t match. We have some common ground and compatible opinions and preferences, but we are foundationally very, very different. However there was always something comfortable about us, whether alone together or around other people, as a ‘couple’, as it were. We fit so nicely.
Logistically, of course, bad fit. Because of the 215 miles. I think it was always harder on me than on Joe, but also, had the relationship been different, I was open to one or both of us rearranging our lives. That is a hardship that is not to be underestimated, but to me it’s a no-brainer provided you both want to be together.
But it being hard on me made it hard on Joe. A lot of our phone time was to compensate, and certainly I drove that, and I think it was always a bit stressful for him.
These last nearly two weeks we didn’t contact each other… from the 2nd until last night. And I could feel from my side, how more suitable that silence was for Joe, even before he told me last night. (He told me in a way that was gentle and not about me and not at all hurtful.) I text a lot. I check in a lot. My version of backing off, when I’m trying to do so, is not so far back. I am in a state of perpetual conversation with the object of my affection, and try as I did to have that object not be just Joe, it was Joe.
And I really got, these last days and especially last night, what an intrusion that is into Joe’s more quiet and personal space.
Sort of like his distance is an affront to mine. Sort of.
So I ask myself today, is that an area in which my partner and I need to be better matched?
I think I always hoped that if I ever felt confident enough, I would like, change into someone who needed less of that reassurance.
And with Joe, who simply isn’t a reassuring guy, though he is a guy to whom I mean a hell of a lot, I did learn to need less hand-holding than I ever thought possible. And I have gained a shit-ton of confidence from this beautiful, weird, fucked-up relationship.
But I yam what I yam.
I know I don’t have to ask. I know it’s all rhetorical.
But geez, don’t I deserve someone who loves me so much and whom I love so much that it all overflows? And I NEVER need to temper my affection and communication because I might overwhelm them? Because it all just fits?
This entry was posted on January 12, 2008 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Romantic Ruminations. Tagged: breaking up, text message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tracy said
I find men to be strange animals. They’re wired emotionally quite different than we are. They never seem to need the reassurance women do in relationships. When they do, oft times it’s in a overly jealous way that is even more detrimental than our need to be reassured.
In working with the runes, there’s a passage that I’ve come to love that speaks to this. It basically warns not to collapse yourself into the relationship so much so that constant communication and reassurance is necessary.
“Let the winds dance between you”.
Beautiful, I think. But,for women, easier spoken, than achieved.
Roberta Lipp said
But wow, yes, beautiful. Thank you.
(I’m sure it was a man wrote them runes.)
jess said
you most definitely do deserve that, berta
and you may not know it when you find it
but at one point something will snap and you’ll fidget and realize it just clicked into place
i miss you
Deborah Lipp said
I don’t know that it’s gendered. Every now and then I meet a woman who has a super-responsive, super-connecting man, and invariably, it seems, she’s a woman with a high need for silence and wind.
I think no two people are ever going to be identical in that regard, and there is always a process in a relationship that is about adapting. Sometimes the distance is too great, and it goes from adaptation to stretch to pain. And that’s when you have to say, I deserve better.
Roberta Lipp said
Sometimes the distance is too great, and it goes from adaptation to stretch to pain. And that’s when you have to say, I deserve better.
To me, that is the single hardest question to answer for yourself in a relationship, in any area, ranging from how much contact do you want to are his jokes too annoying to he now has an illness that has altered his personality. When am I being intolerant and when am I being foolish.
Tracy said
Yes, Roberta, it was a man who wrote it. Figures, doesn’t it?
I think you have been extremely patient, and I while I don’t know as much as maybe some others do about the relationship, you don’t strike me as being intolerant or foolish.
You strike me as someone who has a definite idea about what they want and deserve, and you found someone who’s qualities brought something out in you that felt he is worth pursuing. Let’s face it, if your attempts were half-hearted, how would you have ever learned the things you needed to know about him to come to the correct decisions about your relationship.
Roberta Lipp said
Everyone, thanks for all the input. Am I walking away with nothing? Hardly. There was some very tender and real and patient love between us, and I took it. It’s in my cellular structure now, and that stays. And oh. my. god. have I learned a lot from this.
(Miss you too, JK!)