I remembered two more updates:
1. I'm completely off psychiatric medications now, and have been since the end of November. I definitely notice the difference, but it's not enough of a difference for me to want to get back on them right now. One thing I notice is that I'm focusing more on past confrontations: one from the past year I thought I was coping okay with is going through my mind a lot more now that I'm off medication. I will have to re-read the cognitive-behavioral therapy book. I can PREFER but not DEMAND, and so forth.
2. The ex-boyfriend (the one who called out of the blue to talk about how optimism and meaning have gone out of his life) emailed me to ask how difficult my divorce was on all levels, and if he could call me to talk about it at length. So. Mystery revealed. And it shouldn't have been a mystery, now that I can look BACK on it: his recent weight loss and snappy clothes, his dissatisfaction with life, his impression that he used to laugh and have fun, the loss of his business, calling the ex-girlfriend---these all add up to "man buying a mid-life crisis and about to make his wife and kids pay for it." Plus, the reason I broke up with him is that he kept cheating on me. Sooooo....this explains why when we were talking about psychological stuff and I asked if he was "seeing someone" (a poor choice of words, but I was trying to tread lightly), he started choking and coughing.
I don't know if I want to talk to him about it or not. It makes me feel weary already: I remember how he endlessly justifies his behavior and fails to take responsibility, so I don't really want to hear him do that now, especially if the stakes now involve his wife (who seems like she's GOOD) and two little kids. I don't know if I'll be able to handle hearing some guy my age give "his reasons" for leaving a woman like me with kids like mine. But I think I WILL talk to him. Or maybe not. I don't know. Probably I will, but I suspect it will not go well and there won't be a second talk about it: he'll want my support in his decision, and I doubt he'll get it, so he'll move on to some other ex-girlfriend.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Various Updates
It seems like it is time for a general-update post.
1. Mike had an appointment for a pre-Snip evaluation scheduled for December 23rd. (I realize there is no need for a pre-appointment and that they are just working an extra co-pay out of us. I choose to let him draw the process out, to give him time to REALLY THINK---and also to give him two whole appointments where he has to show his Boy Bits embarrassingly, to help balance the one million appointments where I have to show my Girl Bits embarrassingly.) They called today to reschedule the evaluation for January 17th.
2. I'm dieting with a friend. We did two weeks of "eating what we usually eat, but less of it," and then got impatient and did a week of "no, we are really serious." We lost maybe a little weight, hard to tell for sure, on the first two weeks; we each lost five pounds, probably at least a couple pounds of water (because both of us drink water with food) on the serious week. We'll see how this goes. My experience does not lead me to believe that diets work, and yet Hope always seems to overrule experience, doesn't it? Oh, I am maybe a thin person all along, just a thin person who is Being Super-Piggy and Super-Lazy!!!!
3. I complain a lot about my mom, so it seems fitting that I should give her some credit when credit's due: she recently said that actually, the Bible only says that promiscuous/extramarital homosexuality is an abomination, which is the same thing it says about promiscuous/extramarital heterosexuality, so that for all she knows, gay marriage and parenting is just as fine as heterosexual marriage and parenting. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Oh, but she's still trying to get in the way of the gay couple who wants to adopt, and she keeps talking about "secret agendas" and calling them "the partners" with audible air quotes, so it's not all Happy Awesome around here. Still. This is a step. A MAJOR step. "Thinking about what the Bible ACTUALLY SAYS about it" is a very good step indeed.
1. Mike had an appointment for a pre-Snip evaluation scheduled for December 23rd. (I realize there is no need for a pre-appointment and that they are just working an extra co-pay out of us. I choose to let him draw the process out, to give him time to REALLY THINK---and also to give him two whole appointments where he has to show his Boy Bits embarrassingly, to help balance the one million appointments where I have to show my Girl Bits embarrassingly.) They called today to reschedule the evaluation for January 17th.
2. I'm dieting with a friend. We did two weeks of "eating what we usually eat, but less of it," and then got impatient and did a week of "no, we are really serious." We lost maybe a little weight, hard to tell for sure, on the first two weeks; we each lost five pounds, probably at least a couple pounds of water (because both of us drink water with food) on the serious week. We'll see how this goes. My experience does not lead me to believe that diets work, and yet Hope always seems to overrule experience, doesn't it? Oh, I am maybe a thin person all along, just a thin person who is Being Super-Piggy and Super-Lazy!!!!
3. I complain a lot about my mom, so it seems fitting that I should give her some credit when credit's due: she recently said that actually, the Bible only says that promiscuous/extramarital homosexuality is an abomination, which is the same thing it says about promiscuous/extramarital heterosexuality, so that for all she knows, gay marriage and parenting is just as fine as heterosexual marriage and parenting. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Oh, but she's still trying to get in the way of the gay couple who wants to adopt, and she keeps talking about "secret agendas" and calling them "the partners" with audible air quotes, so it's not all Happy Awesome around here. Still. This is a step. A MAJOR step. "Thinking about what the Bible ACTUALLY SAYS about it" is a very good step indeed.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Call From the Ex-Boyfriend 2
Ha! Yes! You're right: we need more discussion of the phone call from the ex-boyfriend.
"Why was he calling?" is something I have not yet figured out. My GUESS is that he wants to tell his Sob Story to someone who hasn't over the last two years become utterly sick of hearing about it. I think he's hoping for some "Poor you!!!" from a woman who isn't sick of supporting him while he burns through one job after another. I think he's having a bit of a psychological crisis and is thinking of me as a therapist type: someone who knew The Real Him before he became weighed down by Life.
He also seems to want to wallow in the concept that we used to laugh and have fun all the time as teenagers, but now we are weighed down by pessimism. I think his ego would like to be boosted by me saying similar things---like, things were so great then, but they suck now. He wants to reminisce in a slightly dangerous way, and he wants to believe that things could have been great if I hadn't gone off to college and broken up with him. He wants to reassign blame for where he is now, and make it a matter of If Only. He'd like to find out I was pining for him a bit, and then have the confidence boost of being indifferent to it. This is just my guess.
We've talked occasionally over the years. He called me a lot my freshman year of college. He called me the night before my first wedding, asking me to call it off. When I got a divorce, his MOM called me asking me to consider dating him again. He called when he was lonely in the military and I was living with Mike but not yet married; he wanted me to come see him. (I didn't.) We saw each once other during that time: I was home for Christmas, and I called his parents' house on impulse to see if he was home, and they were leaving in a few hours to pick him up from the airport and said I should come along to surprise him. And I did, and there was some sitting up in the middle of the night next to his parents' Christmas tree and kissing, and it was not a good-judgment situation.
I also saw him once when I was a mother of two. I was living where I am now, and he came to help his parents move, and he and I went out to lunch. I spent a lot of time choosing an outfit, and in fact bought a new shirt to wear. But the lunch went poorly; I felt like he was trying to act cool and indifferent, and I felt dumb for going to lunch with him at all.
Since then (8-ish years), we've emailed occasionally but not talked on the phone, and we're Facebook friends. I've noticed that he tends to contact me really often for a few weeks, then drop out of touch for a year or two. I think of him as an unreliable, weak, no-follow-through, blame-other-people/circumstances kind of person. And he's not very smart: when I talk to him, I have to dumb down my vocabulary and he still says "Hah?" like an old person. Cute, though. Looks like LL Cool J. And he always did the things I expected from a boyfriend from all the teen romance novels I read.
I told Mike I'd talked to the ex-boyfriend, and also reported how long the conversation had lasted. I'd considered not mentioning it, but I thought about how I'd feel if Mike had a 2.5-hour conversation with an ex-girlfriend and "didn't mention it," and I thought I would Not Like That.
He's on my mind a lot, because I'm wondering what's up. I have SLIGHT feelings for him still: at the end of our call he said, "I want to say something to you" and I admit my heart pounded. (He wanted to say thank you for talking to him. Meh. Waste of heart-poundy feelings.) But when I was living with Mike and not married to him yet, I remember Ex-Boyfriend once called to see if I'd get back together with him, and wanted to talk as if it were only circumstances that were keeping us apart, and I told him, very kindly and gently, "Even if I weren't with Mike, I STILL wouldn't want to date you again"---and that's still true. It's not that it's "tempting but I can resist." (A First Love IS difficult to handle later on, though. And the LL Cool J thing.)
I don't think he understands, though, that if it came to me choosing sides between him and his wife, I'd side with his wife. I'm a wife myself, and also I remember what it was like to be with him.
P.S. He called again today, but I was out on errands.
"Why was he calling?" is something I have not yet figured out. My GUESS is that he wants to tell his Sob Story to someone who hasn't over the last two years become utterly sick of hearing about it. I think he's hoping for some "Poor you!!!" from a woman who isn't sick of supporting him while he burns through one job after another. I think he's having a bit of a psychological crisis and is thinking of me as a therapist type: someone who knew The Real Him before he became weighed down by Life.
He also seems to want to wallow in the concept that we used to laugh and have fun all the time as teenagers, but now we are weighed down by pessimism. I think his ego would like to be boosted by me saying similar things---like, things were so great then, but they suck now. He wants to reminisce in a slightly dangerous way, and he wants to believe that things could have been great if I hadn't gone off to college and broken up with him. He wants to reassign blame for where he is now, and make it a matter of If Only. He'd like to find out I was pining for him a bit, and then have the confidence boost of being indifferent to it. This is just my guess.
We've talked occasionally over the years. He called me a lot my freshman year of college. He called me the night before my first wedding, asking me to call it off. When I got a divorce, his MOM called me asking me to consider dating him again. He called when he was lonely in the military and I was living with Mike but not yet married; he wanted me to come see him. (I didn't.) We saw each once other during that time: I was home for Christmas, and I called his parents' house on impulse to see if he was home, and they were leaving in a few hours to pick him up from the airport and said I should come along to surprise him. And I did, and there was some sitting up in the middle of the night next to his parents' Christmas tree and kissing, and it was not a good-judgment situation.
I also saw him once when I was a mother of two. I was living where I am now, and he came to help his parents move, and he and I went out to lunch. I spent a lot of time choosing an outfit, and in fact bought a new shirt to wear. But the lunch went poorly; I felt like he was trying to act cool and indifferent, and I felt dumb for going to lunch with him at all.
Since then (8-ish years), we've emailed occasionally but not talked on the phone, and we're Facebook friends. I've noticed that he tends to contact me really often for a few weeks, then drop out of touch for a year or two. I think of him as an unreliable, weak, no-follow-through, blame-other-people/circumstances kind of person. And he's not very smart: when I talk to him, I have to dumb down my vocabulary and he still says "Hah?" like an old person. Cute, though. Looks like LL Cool J. And he always did the things I expected from a boyfriend from all the teen romance novels I read.
I told Mike I'd talked to the ex-boyfriend, and also reported how long the conversation had lasted. I'd considered not mentioning it, but I thought about how I'd feel if Mike had a 2.5-hour conversation with an ex-girlfriend and "didn't mention it," and I thought I would Not Like That.
He's on my mind a lot, because I'm wondering what's up. I have SLIGHT feelings for him still: at the end of our call he said, "I want to say something to you" and I admit my heart pounded. (He wanted to say thank you for talking to him. Meh. Waste of heart-poundy feelings.) But when I was living with Mike and not married to him yet, I remember Ex-Boyfriend once called to see if I'd get back together with him, and wanted to talk as if it were only circumstances that were keeping us apart, and I told him, very kindly and gently, "Even if I weren't with Mike, I STILL wouldn't want to date you again"---and that's still true. It's not that it's "tempting but I can resist." (A First Love IS difficult to handle later on, though. And the LL Cool J thing.)
I don't think he understands, though, that if it came to me choosing sides between him and his wife, I'd side with his wife. I'm a wife myself, and also I remember what it was like to be with him.
P.S. He called again today, but I was out on errands.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)