Every man in love has one fear. Just one. Loss.
“Am I enough?”
“Will s/he leave me?”
“How can I make him/her stay?”
“What do I do if I go all in and s/he folds?”
This is the one insecurity, the one flaw in humanity, that leads to endless cheating and divorce. It leads to arguments and fighting. It is the path to darkness, despair, and, sometimes, death.
If you love someone with all your heart, what happens when they stop loving you?
The answer is simpler than you think: you grieve. It hurts, too. You gave them such a large piece of yourself and now they don’t want it. You want to know why it didn’t work out. You want to know what you did wrong. You want to know why it ended.
I can tell you why you ended.
You’re not going to like my answer, though.
You ended because they never began. You didn’t give them room to be themselves, allowing them to feel safe enough to explore and grow. You boxed them into a corner and they found out that was much smaller than the whole room they take up when they’re alone and then they want to be alone.
The desire to be alone is misinterpreted by less emotionally intelligent people as needing someone else. They don’t understand that they have had conditional limitations put upon them by their partner. They go into the next relationship, thinking it’s going to be so much better, but they hit the same walls. They’re pigeon-holed and miserable. Again!
(It’s okay if you didn’t see it before. Here I am, to be your lighthouse on the path to enlightenment.)
We often fear being alone because our insecurities will eat us whole with no one else to distract us from them. Psychologists don’t seem equipped, on the whole, to help you cope with being singular in the sea of bodies out there. They have some fancy made up terms to tell us all how we’re damaged, pretty much… and we are damaged, but that’s not the point.
The point is that there’s no hand guide to spending time with yourself, getting to know yourself, getting used to relying on yourself.
To be okay with being a soloship, we must recognize that we are flawed. We must acknowledge there is no perfection. We fail. We don’t always fail, but we will always fail some of the time. Accept it and understand that you’re allowed to fail. You’re supposed to make mistakes. They always suck, too, because doing it right the first time is less effort. It’s less hassle. It’s less headache.
I posit if we were perfect, we’d be boring. We’d interact like machines. Have you seen two AIs talking to each other yet? BORING! What makes you exciting is your flaws.
I watched a movie some time ago — I can’t recall the name and I’m sorry about that — about this guy in the drug trade. He had a lady who was flawed and he said something about loving her for her flaws. Doesn’t that sound nice? Being loved for the way you are different? Being loved for being imperfect? Ever since I saw that movie, I thought, the writer of that single line is right. I should find someone who I love for the way they are flawed.
So I did. I failed to make them feel secure enough to have a healthy relationship. That was my first try at love. Ditto on the second try. Third try… and then I met my ex-husband. He had great self-esteem, I’d thought. While he was with his boyfriend, anyway. After he dumped his boyfriend to focus on me (which I never asked for), he began to shut down bit by bit. Then, when he saw his high school friends, he’d come back to life briefly and be the man I married. However, he was fiercely codependent, I’d come to realize much later.
I didn’t really mind that, it’s just that I was ill-equipped to deal with it. In fact, because I’d dated some codependent people, I came across as codependent myself. The day I struck out to figure out my individuality was the death knell in my marriage. I knew who I was before marriage but his family changed me. I personally think half the mods were trash, so I binned them. And I binned him for never taking it upon himself to grow. But it was my fault. I didn’t leave much room for him to grow, you see.
I’d only learned an unhealthy form of self-regulation. I never learned how to support another person the way they should be in a relationship because my parents were a piss poor model with one being a narcissist and the other being his (now) willing victim. I’d watched the model between my in-laws, but they had their problems, too. It took me years to understand that I’d held my husband back. I was so bitter at the idea he forced me to do all the growing up that I’d never completely realized that I simply have a higher sensitivity to the needs to run the household.
I had a higher cleanliness threshold. Once things got to a certain filthiness, I cleaned. I had no patience for losing money to late fees, so I paid all the bills. It was a mess. And he refused to grow in my blind spots, instead playing MMOs all night while I did the dishes he and his friends left me. By hand. That happened for over a year. Then, one day, I gave up play time with the children in order to do the dishes they created, choosing me time over family time.
And that’s when he cheated on me the first time. Emotionally. I got sick and tired of cleaning up after people once they were gone and my repayment for refusing to continue to take this abuse was his infidelity.
I wasn’t leaving him then, understand that. I simply chose to withdraw from the tabletop RP group that found themselves at my house 2-3 times per week, eating my hospitality, dirtying my abode and my dishes (you shut your filthy mouth about paper plates right now; I’m here to save the planet from the likes of you), and then whining at me when the cat box smelled too strongly as if my husband (child) couldn’t possibly clean up after our children for his lovely crew of friends.
No, I’m not bitter. I’m livid.
Fuck you, Anthony Scordias, for dumping our entire partnership into my lap and then fucking other women behind my back. Fuck you for becoming a burden and blaming me for it. Fuck you for staying a child and making me into your fucking mother, forcing me to nag you endlessly because you were a child instead of an adult. And fuck you for encouraging negative discussions about me in your wake, trying to “ascertain the problem” with outside sources without telling them how you failed me. I never once cheated on your moon-faced ass and you damn well know it you fucking asshole.
Let me tell you something: I saw you at the TMBG concert in 2018. I saw you on the floor with friends, presumably, and I asked myself how I was ever attracted to you. You looked so empty and devoid of chivalry and honor, your soul was so dark. You tried to make up for it with an extremely bright smile, but it was plastered on a little too large for your eyes. Your eyes never lie, no matter how much you think they do.
Oh, and your parents absolutely know you’re a smoker, you dimwit. An ex-smoker can smell that shit a mile away. Don’t think you’re hoodwinking them. One of the reasons I divorced your dumb ass is that after seven years of hiding it from your parents, I realized I’m a smoker. I didn’t want to hide it anymore, it was the whole reason I got stressed out about family gatherings and you know it, you turd muffin. It was the whole reason I drank so heavily and you know that, too. You wanted to hide yourself from your parents, mistakenly believing they would stop loving you for being flawed. You even thought they loved me more than you, so I left and withdrew so you could have the stage, child that you are.
Love is not a contest. It’s an action. It’s a verb. It’s a commitment.
I was alone and by myself after divorcing you. Sure, I had roommates… for a year. I kicked them out because they were such slobs I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. These two grown adults on SSI couldn’t find the time in their day to clean the counter they’d just covered in chocolate syrup while making a chocolate milk. They ate all my food, making me compete for my own efforts, my own sustenance, in my own household. JUST LIKE YOU AND CHRIS AND STEPH.
That’s what made me fat, or part of it. I had to compete for my meal, so I overate because I should be eating every 3 hours. I was too busy making food for you losers to take care of myself properly. And then you dared to go to the arms of another woman because I got fat? GO FUCK YOURSELF. Do it a second time for trying to make me fuck another woman for a year first. The same woman you married a year or two after we got divorced. The same woman you stole my car to go fuck, claiming you took the car every Wednesday, then the following Wednesday you looked at me like I was crazy as hell, telling me it was my turn to have the car, you gaslighting son of a bitch! The same woman I paid to hurt me during chiropractic adjustments and then laughed about it. The same woman who cheated on you.
YOU ARE A PSYCHOPATH. DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE. BOTH OF YOU SHIT STAINS!
AND GEORGE, FUCK YOU FOR SUGGESTING I STEPPED OUT ON YOUR SON.
MARGARET, I ADORE YOU AND YOU ARE MY INSPIRATION IN LIFE, MY ROLE MODEL, AND THE MOTHER I NEVER HAD.
STEPHEN, YOU CATCH MORE FLIES WITH HONEY THAN YOU DO VINEGAR.
ABE, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. I MISS YOU.
CARISSA, PARK IN THE GARAGE, PUT A HOSE IN YOUR EXHAUST PIPE… I THINK YOU KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU FOR HURTING ME AND LAUGHING ABOUT IT. YOU CAN KEEP THE BOY, HE WAS AN AWFUL LAY ANYWAY.
P.S. THAT MOTHERFUCKER RAPED ME SYSTEMATICALLY. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. FUCK YOU.
AND GRANNY, I HOPE YOU NEVER LIVE TO HEAR ANY OF THIS. YOUR SOUL IS BEAUTIFUL AND YOUR WORDS ARE SO KIND, I KEPT YOUR CARDS FOR OVER A DECADE BEFORE I LET THEM GO. THANK YOU FOR BEING A LIGHT IN THE SEA OF DARKNESS.
CHRIS, YOU LOVE A WHORE. STEPH, YOU’RE A WHORE. DARWYN, YOU’RE A WHORE. DEVON, YOU’RE A WHORE. KEN, YOU A’IGHT. AMY, YOU A’IGHT (MOSTLY.) KATY & AL, BYGONES ARE BYGONES. KATHERINE, YOU’RE A TWO FACED DOUBLE CROSSING BITCH OF A WHORE. MICHAEL, YOU ARE A PSYCHOPATH; JUST HANG YOURSELF ALREADY. XAST, YOU WERE DID DIRTY, MAY YOU R.I.P. XAST’S MOTHER: I’M SORRY, YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH IT. JACKSON & THERESA, I LOVE YOU LONG TIME. SAM, YOU SUCK IN WAYS EVEN SATAN CANNOT APPRECIATE. PICKLE, YOU’RE A PSYCHOPATH; JUST DIE ALREADY.
MAY I NEVER THINK OF HOW YOU DID ME DIRTIER THAN DIRTY EVER AGAIN.
AMEN.
Angel-Sansara 