Lies

Trust

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 1 Comment

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T – Truthful

R- Reliable

U- Uphold

S- Steadfast

T- Take For Granted

 

This has been a week where I have been put in the position of feet to the flames in regards to trust.  I have been in a situation where I have had to CHOOSE to believe or not. A test for my soul, my heart, and my head.

You would think that trusting would be easy. After all, we enter this world as trusting human beings and if we are lucky we maintain that trust in ourselves and humanity at least until we get into school and we find out what “mean girls” are. But then, as we age, life begins to teach us that trust is not as easy or forthright as we once imagined it to be. It no longer is blind or innocent and often for many of us it becomes something that has to be earned rather than something that is freely given.

This week as I contemplated the issue of trust I decided I needed to understand just what that word meant to me. I discovered there were some essential ingredients that I feel must be evident if trust is to be maintained.  These are:

Truth- For me trusting means that your words and actions must be truthful. NO games, no secrecy, and no purposeful omissions. I want to know that what you say and do is based in truth.

Reliable- I must know that I can count on your words and actions to mean what you say they will mean and that those words will be acted upon and be done.

Uphold-In the old English sense of the word it means to maintain in good condition;to take care of.  It means that you will be constantly doing things to take care of our marriage. To me this fundamental if a relationship is to grow and thrive.

Steadfast- Unwavering in purpose, faith and attachment. Firmly fixed in place or position. You are not going anywhere.

Take for Granted- To accept without question and being able to believe what is said or done is true.

I suspect there is a whole lot more to trust than the things I have written and I know that trust is not just a one way street. Trust also involves making yourself vulnerable by believing in your partner when circumstances appear that it would be in your best interest to protect yourself. It means opening up your own heart, taking off the armor, and allowing possibilities to drift into your life when it makes you uncomfortable. It means looking for the best in the person or situation rather than the worst.

In theory, I believe that trusting with all your heart and soul is the best thing you can do for yourself and your relationships.  I would rather have my heart broken than to never have tried to trust.  But in practice, trust takes two, and you have to know that your partner is trustworthy in all realms of your relationship in order for it to survive.

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Thoughts On Betrayal

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 5 Comments

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It is interesting to me

The number of people who have said

“This doesn’t sound right.”

“Are you sure he isn’t having an affair?”

“You should hire a private detective and find out.”

But I don’t believe he is seeing someone else

And even if I did

I would rather have him live with his own guilt,his own fear, and his lies

Than for me have to live with his betrayal

There was a time I would never have thought this way

Maybe its age or maybe its wisdom,

But whatever it is I want him to feel the whole impact

Of his actions

And I don’t want to feel it

Until/ or if this marriage is done.

I don’t want to take on

What is his to carry

On his own two shoulders

Let his legs buckle under the weight of it all

Not mine

 

 

 

Lie to Me

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 1 Comment

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LIE TO ME

Let your words pull me off this deserted island

That I was banished to

Empty, confused and alone

With your not so innocent words

LIE TO ME

Tell me again just how much you love me

Let me see your love for me in your eyes

While the mountain of words propping up our relationship

Crumbles down when the word divorce (noun) is uttered

LIE TO ME

Tell me everything will be okay

That we will love each other with passion again

And that nothing has changed for the two of us

Today and for eternity

LIE TO ME

Make love to me like you mean it

Let me know that you are seeing me

And not the ghost of someone else

When you pierce my body and penetrate my soul

LIE TO ME

Show me your plans for the future

And your make believe photographs

With my face in them

Our smiles lighting up the sky because we are happy again

Please…

LIE TO ME

Because it feels better than the truth

LIE TO ME

Because I need to feel sane again

LIE TO ME

So I can dream again

LIE TO ME

So I can pretend this is happening to someone else

LIE TO ME

Because I want you to

LIE TO ME

Right now…Today

Six Hours Later…

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / Leave a comment

It has been interesting to me that I have been composing these recent pieces in a somewhat poetic form. I ponder why because I never choose to write in this particular style. And what occurs to me is that right now I feel raw, sad and the confusion is deep and so in writing in an unfamiliar style it almost makes it feel that it is not me that this is happening to. I am incapable of organizing my thoughts in a traditional piece so I must not be that OTHER woman, that sad one, the poetic one, who might very well end up divorced.

Yep, I am just floating down De’Nile.

THREE HOURS POST GWENNIFERR

CRAZY
Sometimes I feel like Hillary Clinton
Ignoring what appears to be in front of me for the greater good
But sometimes I wonder if you are the type of man
That slowly drives his wife crazy
Sweet and caring
Sexy and funny
Giving and kind in so many important ways
A good family man folks would say
With a part that is hidden from the public that longs to stray
I did my sexual experimentation when I was young
You didn’t
Are you wishing you had?
What is it you think you are missing?
It’s true
I’ve never “caught” you with another woman
There have been uncomfortable/inappropriate texts
A picture of another woman
And a very strange business card belonging to a woman
You swear you have no idea how THAT got in your wallet
There have been entire nights you were unreachable on business trips
We even laughed that you must be the most unlucky man in the world
When you are alone…even the front desk messes up
Must have rang the wrong room
Even though they were different hotels, different stays
Because you were in your room…all night
Oh yes, and there was that condom under our bed that I found when we were moving…maybe it was our teenager
And now Gwenniferr…again
Why the lie if everything is innocent?
But even worse, it is a stupid reckless lie
These are small things….distant enough from one another
Occurring here and there…not everyday…not every year
But when added up
Make you appear to be untrustworthy to me
Why don’t you just come clean?
There is nothing to come clean of you insist
And so I feel crazy
Maybe look crazy too
And you accuse me of not trusting you
And I don’t
For good reasonS
How can you have a marriage without trust?
We have for a while now
It’s made our bones brittle, our lungs empty, hearts heavy
And finally I realize that you can’t live without trust
Can counseling fix this?
I don’t know
Maybe it is over
And we just don’t know it yet
FOUR HOURS POST GWENNIFER
SPECIAL

I used to think our marriage was special

I really truly used to believe that with all my heart

When did that stop?

Today for sure

Before then…probably

We were friends, I thought

Fantastic lovers, I knew

Allies, maybe? sometimes

And I always thought

That you would be the one holding my hand when I passed on

Now I realize we just had a marriage

There was nothing special about it at all

It was just a plain ordinary marriage

Like everyone else has

A marriage of ups and downs

Of good and bad

Of happiness and sorrow

Of kindness and love

Of children and grandchildren

Of travel and adventure

But now the only thing left is the fantastic lover part

And that is not enough for me anymore

Trust….gone

Admiration…fled the scene

Truth…never

Friendship…well the therapist says we don’t have it

You wanted to like me again

I wanted the same of you

And then Gwenniferr re-emerged

Once again reminding me

We have less than a marriage

Because a marriage is built on truth and trust

And at this time ours appears to be built on sand

FIVE HOURS POST GWENNIFERR

HARMLESS

Your innocent flirting you said was harmless

Your unhappiness you felt until you wanted a D.I.V.O.R.C.E. was harmless

Your dishonesty was avoidance and therefore harmless

Your relationship with Gwenniferr is nothing, it’s harmless

She is like a sister to you, harmless

Your relationship to me that is imploding…harmless

Destroying our family…harmless

Your look-me-in-the-eye I’m telling you the truth, harmless

Your relationship with your children, maybe on your way to becoming a weekend father…harmless

Your innocence astounds me

And your harmless actions seer my soul

Permanent scars carved into my skin

One at a time over years

Looking like a tattoo of dragon talons swooping down

Cutting and digging into flesh

You BRAND my soul with your harmlessness

And it doesn’t feel harmless at all

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How did we get from this this song that we played at our 25th Wedding Anniversary to where we are now? I don’t understand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZwdj1ALvf0

All I know is that we knitted this marriage for all these years and with one tug, one pull of the thread it is unraveling and the speed with which it is astounds me.

Unexpected…314 Days…Do I Even Want To Fix This?

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 2 Comments

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I showed up unexpectedly

Hopeful…for a long lunch

I never show up uninvited

But I had a hunch

We needed some more time together

You told me you were going to the gym

“Let’s go,” I said.

And you said, sure… hesitated… and then insisted on going to lunch first

I would love to go to the gym with you now

Again you insisted on going to lunch right then

We did it your way…again

THE LUNCH

Lunch was lovely

Eyes locked

Fingers touching the way they do

When you want to turn me on

Beautiful blue eyes batting at me

Smiles a million miles long

Conversation sweet but lean

The man in the booth behind us flirting at me with his eyes, his smile

And for the first time in 29 years I wondered what it might be like to flirt back

For it was nothing I had even considered…before now

THE GYM

At the gym you took me into a tiny workout room

Ellipticals you said

I love the ellipticals

And so we huffed and puffed together

And then I saw that tiny almost imperceptible wave

To shoes and a dress which were the only things visible to me

I asked who it was

Gweniferr you said

And my head exploded

But not from a lack of oxygen from too much time on the elliptical

But from all the air escaping me after being punched in the gut

Hard. AGAIN.

Oh… the same Gwenniferr with whom you exchanged inappropriate texts

Oh… the same Gwenniferr you SWORE you never saw anymore because

She never came to the gym

Oh…the same Gwenniferr you have no interest in

Even though your texts several years ago appeared to speak differently for you

OH…THAT GWENNIFERR!

The elliptical stopped

NOt realizing that I was responsible

For the inaction

I wish I was mellow dramatic and could have passed out on the floor

Ladylike, as they did in the old days

A swoon

But instead I wanted to slam my body into yours

Angry…more than that

Full of RAGE…but I kept my cool and later felt… nothing

But a gaping pit where my heart once raced when you touched me

It appears you have lied to me again

Later you showed me the rest of the facility

The huge gym with even more ellipticals surprised me

It was the gym I assume that Gwenniferr had been working out in

Usually with you?

But not today

Obviously I was unexpected by her too.

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Cheater…Cheater…P**** Eater

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 3 Comments

Cheating-copie

Recently a blogger I follow asked if publishing a blog about the state of his marriage without his wife knowing was cheating. I replied:

I think that it is perfectly okay to do something for ourselves and if blogging makes you feel better and you enjoy it, then by all means do it. That said, you probably are cheating on your wife IF you are investing more energy on your blog then in fixing your relationship. Or IF you are developing secret “relationships” that might interfere with getting closer to your wife because you are expending a sort of intimate energy on an “on-line” person. If however, you feel you are learning better ways of relating to your wife and family by the comments you are receiving then more power to you. We all have ways of gaining knowledge and if this improves your outlook, happiness, etc. then you are only improving what you will take home to your honey.

And I stand by my response because it doesn’t involve sexual acts or emotional intimacy with another person besides his wife. But what about cheating on a broader level? At what point is the line crossed between “behaving badly” and cheating?

An old boyfriend of mine used to say, “Getting head isn’t cheating” and that is precisely why he became an OLD boyfriend of mine.

But if getting head isn’t cheating, what is?

Well, in my book, sexual cheating occurs not because of any specific sexual act but when a partner keeps secrets of a sexual nature from their partner. Viewing porn, having a fling, having an “intense” emotional relationship, or visiting a strip bar is fine and dandy as long as your partner knows about it and has no problem with that particular behavior or set of behaviors. This means both partners must act with integrity and make their significant others feelings their number one priority. There can be no lying, no keeping secrets from one another and no saying “yes” when what you really want to do is say no. This is because the only true path to genuine intimacy in a relationship is when total transparency and honesty prevails. For it isn’t the sex act itself that causes a marriage to implode, rather it is the secrets and lies that betray relational trust that is what eventually kills the bond between the cheater and his/her mate.

So “cheat” away…but only if you tell your spouse first and they agree to the fling. Otherwise, get a divorce and then go live out your wildest fantasies where the only thing that can be hurt is your wallet and your own pride.