Self-Deception

You Know That Anniversary Breakfast…

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 11 Comments
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So we went to our 31st anniversary breakfast. It didn’t go so well. At least for me.It was here that B decided to finally share his feelings which are:
1. He wants to feel the feeling of loving me like I can do no wrong…the way he used to feel but he is unsure that he ever can again. He wants to feel once again like he worships the ground I walk on…which he is not sure that he ever can again.
2. That he is unsure that we are compatible or ever will be. I like to read he doesn’t. He likes to play the bagpipes, I do not. I tend to look for answers and he lets things lay. We go about things differently.He thinks it is important to be with someone he is compatible with…doesn’t know if that can be us.
3. That he doesn’t think we want the same things in life.
4. That he is afraid he cannot find his way back to me
5. That there is commitment on his part rather than deep love…which he would like to find again but doesn’t know how.
6. B wonders if we can we both live with what it is now or what it looks like in the future if there isn’t that deep love that he used to have with me.
7. He is upset that I am not happy living where we do
8. He thinks that when the kids are gone we will have nothing together and he is afraid it will look like now…with all this sadness and turmoil that we are going through right now and he doesn’t want that.
I said that it sounded as if he has made up his mind. That he sounds like our relationship is hopeless. We talked about what splitting up would look like. I think it seems weird divorcing because our marriage isn’t perfect. I mean it is not horrible we rarely fight. He says he feels happy/content in our relationship 60/40. I guess I feel 70/30 but I wouldn’t have said that before all this began.
I am discouraged. It doesn’t seem to matter that I no longer yell, that I am calmer, that the house is cleaner. It feels like nothing I do will change things. I’ll love you more if (fill in the blank) and you do it and it is just B.S.
He doesn’t know what he wants. I don’t think that is fair but maybe I am pushing for a resolution that might be different if I could just wait it out.I struggle with limbo.
I am sad.
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The Road Not Taken…335 Days To Fix This…29 Days Yell Free

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 2 Comments

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Robert Frost’s A Road Not Taken is a mystery to poets and critics alike. To author, David Orr, Frost’s poem is, ” a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.”

And I think that could be true.

For we all practice self-deception of one sort or another in order to stay with our significant other. We re-write the stories we tell ourselves about why we love, why we stay, who we love and the games they play in order to make the story comfortable to us. We all make up stories which allow us to go on with our lives. “He won’t hit me again”, “He’ll fall in love with me again”, “We can survive this,” are the words some say in attempt to change the storyline and make it “fit” into how we imagine the story of our lives should go.

In this vein, I suspect if you asked most men when they hear the words ” The Road Not Taken”  they would say it takes them back to the  women who have inhabited their lives. For it seems to me, that men are often following that Road Not Taken back to the past; wondering if Anna would have been a better lover, if he would have had more in common with Jane at this point in his life and if Jennifer would have been a better mother.  Often, it appears to me that men “regret” losing the woman on whose path they did not travel, while women “what if” or “if only” the road they chose to take. Men seem to let go of their culpability in the demise of a relationship while women, well we, “if only” ourselves to death. “If only I was thinner I could still be married to him.”

Me, I am trying to take a fresh approach on Frost. I think that what he meant was that we as people are altered with every decision we make when we step onto one road and leave one behind. As a result we need to make decisions that will bring us to our best and true self. And that whatever road we have taken we must make it the best road for us. One full of life. One full of hope. One of love, compassion and grace. We can’t turn around and take the “other” road but we can enjoy the one we are on. So today, I am going to take hard,strong, meaningful steps on my path. I will leave the tip-toeing around for another day.