P is someone who literally cannot see from someone else's perspective. Every act no matter how objectively wrong has a good explanation, usually involving me somehow forcing his hand. When we first started dating, he had been keeping in touch with his ex, which bothered me. After several arguments about it, he finally agreed that he would cut ties with her. One day I found out he had continued talking to her and was actually hiding the fact that they were going to a concert for a favorite band of theirs together. (To this day, this is why I hope Dashboard Confessional dies in a fiery plane crash.) He argued that he had only agreed to cut ties with her because of me, because I made him. Somehow, his lying in making the promise and in hiding his continued relationship with her were both my fault.
Every thoughtful gesture, every kind word, even every apology has been empty. The other day, he confessed that he didn't actually have a full day of work and had actually spent half the day with his friend who had a few days off before starting a new job. I said I didn't understand why he would hide that. Why do I care if he takes a half day off? He said he thought I would have more to say, that I would be upset. Translation: I lied because of how you would react. I said that I trust him to handle his own job, that I'm more upset about his lying. He never apologized for it. He even makes a joke out of it. Remember when I said I was at work?
Every thoughtful gesture, every kind word, even every apology has been empty. The other day, he confessed that he didn't actually have a full day of work and had actually spent half the day with his friend who had a few days off before starting a new job. I said I didn't understand why he would hide that. Why do I care if he takes a half day off? He said he thought I would have more to say, that I would be upset. Translation: I lied because of how you would react. I said that I trust him to handle his own job, that I'm more upset about his lying. He never apologized for it. He even makes a joke out of it. Remember when I said I was at work?
The irony is that he was actually let go of by his previous job because of his behavior. HR had found that he and several coworkers had inappropriate relationships, making overtly sexual comments to one another, and they gave him the option of quitting or being fired. I guess to his (teeny tiny) credit, this isn't uncommon, particularly in the sales field, and it was just his coworkers' and his relationship to say stupid things to each other. He had bought a female coworker with whom he was closest with a souvenir tshirt from somewhere and it happened to be too small. Tie that with what was viewed as an inappropriate relationship, HR took this as an intentional, sexually overtoned act. So I guess it would actually be appropriate for me not to trust him at his own job.
If you say something and mean it at the time, albeit with a shallow understanding of what you're saying, and down the line you show that you don't mean it, were those words ever true? P used to tell me that he wanted a marriage where he would "cherish" his wife. Today, the fact that I'm so unhappy, so empty in this marriage means nothing to him. No matter how I feel, it always comes back to how I don't know his heart or how I need help. My sadness holds no meaning to him. My heartbreak goes unseen, unheard, unrecognized. His sight and reach only extend to where his own feelings end. The rest doesn't exist.
About a month ago, after what was maybe our biggest fight ever, I told him that I had no faith anymore, that I hated church. His response was one that would be more appropriate if a stranger had come up to him and said, "I have this hangnail on my finger, and it's really bothering me." He said, " You should look into that and do something about it." It's not that he's wrong. Obviously, I should. But the detachment and utter lack of compassion in his voice and words...he might as well have said, "Sandwich otter windmill."
During the same conversation, I blurted out that I just didn't want to go on living anymore. It's all too painful, and as much as I love my little guy, I felt so unfit to take care of him, to do anything. In response to this and to any thoughts I expressed of how he should just leave me, he brought up our wedding vows, that we had made a covenant. Honestly, this makes me want to laugh. Vows? Covenant? How can you choose only a handful of words out of the millions that have spilled out of your mouth to actually mean something? Looking at our life now, on that very day when we exchanged vows, we might as well have said "Sandwich otter windmill."
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