I am willing to take the blame for the flame-out with the first “love of my life” in ten years. A long time in the wasted land. Not entirely wasted, however, a lot of growth happens in love language navigational reassessments.

We’ve moved well beyond love languages. There are so many systems, I don’t even trust my own writing or strategic advice on the subject. I don’t believe anything I wrote at the moment. This is a nano-depression. I will be over it before I complete this chapter. This chapter is sort of the death spasm of the idea that I fucked up.

I did not fuck up. I took a chance. I asked for my needs. I leaned in. I jumped to lightspeed with a tender and anxious heart. I saw the warning signs. I noted the stress our “yes” enthusaisms were causing both of us. Even GOOD is stressful.

Good, is also not enough. Good in 80% of the areas of engagement is not enough.

Ruptures, unrestrained and raw, are the toxic elements that unravel even the most securely attached partner. Here are a few common relationship boundaries that should be observed from the beginning. If you don’t know these, or don’t agree, go talk to someone. You need help.

We all need help. She needs help. It is not my role to be her therapist, coach, helper, or guide. I am not qualified to be IN a relationship and also hold all the boundaries and healthy relationship skills. I can’t be that for you. For her. For anyone but myself. I know this.

I knew fullwell what I was diving into. Something about this particular moment, this particular woman, and our joined enthusiasms, that pulled the battery out of the smoke detector, chirping the “dying battery song” in my mind. I disconnected my brain, or a part of my brain, to make way for the flooding of the heart. I wanted that. Me.

At no point did this lovely woman ask me to board her train and take my position in the engine room at the steering wheel. I jumped in anyway.

I knew she was unprepared. Her language contained hundreds of mentions of her soon-to-be-ex daily. The echoes and repercussions in her heart, were much more stealthy and plentiful. I predicted this would be the case. I set her on fire. It was mutual. At that point, both adults have to take responsibility for their own lives, their own agency. When a relationship is bad, marriage, date, liaison, don’t stick around waiting for the other person to change. Make the change in yourself that you need.

In the case of my lost lover, “I’m going to take the weekend off. Might go to the coast.”

Is the end for her, again? A series of unanswered texts devolves into a Venmo request for $40. Um, seriously?

I am taking my own sabbatical and time out, to find my center again, and I’m ending the relationship. Well, it turns out, everytime I left her house, I was “leaving” her. That’s still the frame she has about her current marriage.

So, it makes sense that I would also leave her. Leave her house. Leave her life stranded and broken. Heighten the intensity of her divorce.

I am so fucked. I did it. I knew it was coming. I disconnected my own warning system. I leaned harder into my training, into my frameworks, into my coaching and listening. As February passed the halfway mark, the conversation balance shifted dramatically.

She had asked me not to talk so much about my previous relationships. It made her feel like a number. A “one of many.” Well, sweetheart, at 63, that is true. She talked constantly about name withheld. A relationship she now frames as being unfulfilling and abusive. A night later she’s reflecting on the power of marriage, and couples who stay together, like her mom and dad.

Um.

What are you telling me? Even as you continue to restrict my movement, my language and posture. And still married? What the fuck are you telling me? How confused you still are about being LEFT? I mean, what am I to do with that?

Bad marriage to a man 13 years younger. Um, what was that about?

“I like that you’re older,” she says.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

Change the subject.

I like that she’s younger. Yes, that’s true. But it’s not my type or preference. We fit. We meshed perfectly well, except for the black bastard that kept interrupting our tantric experiments.

And tantric it was. Best. Ever.

Um, shit, that too, is a red flag. Unhinged sex, often indicates unhinged person. We didn’t go too far into the proclivities, but they were beginning to show up. Was this because she was married to a much younger guy who “was addicted to porn?” Is that where some of these ideas, withheld for now due to anxiety, but in play?

I don’t think I’ll be around to find out.

My weekend, I think, has flipped her lid. Not an uncommon experience.

It’s the first thing I’ve ever said about doubt or concern for our relationship. I’m taking a break. Should not be a message of war. It should be an invitation to go deep yourself, for the time off and figure out what you have to offer, why you think things are so hard, and how you’d like to do things differently.

I’m writing this in a novel, because I am done writing her advice. That never works. A conversation I might should be having with a therapist or one of my friends, instead I’m #hyperfictioning it.

No sure about that. Will examine and report back, shortly.

*her current marriage – just say fuck no and move on
*heighten the intensity of her divorce – and we’re out

back to the glitching index