He is what I need but not what I want

I’m at a low point in my life right now. Not a black hole of despair low, but a low. A lull in life, a quiet point. My sister is getting married in two weeks and all I can think about is how I dread getting married. At least to my current partner. So many people around me are getting married and I can’t help thinking if they’ve settled or not. Are they just like me, perfectly content in their relationship but not quite happy? They don’t publicly adore their partners so it’s hard to tell if they truely love one another. Surely, they do.

Is this how I’m supposed to spend my 20’s? Find a nice enough guy and marry him, adopt a dog together and then buy a run down house that will fit all of us and our big dreams of renovation. This is the trend many people around me are following.  My close circle of friends are all planning their weddings and their curtain colours. I’m waiting to get excited about “my turn”. Instead I feel panic and desperation. I could marry the man I’m with, but I don’t want to. Truth be told, I don’t want to be in a relationship anymore.

My man is lovely, helpful and kind. He’s happy and puts up with my grey cloud of misery. He reminds me of an overly affectionate cocker spaniel, wagging his tail when I get home and running laps around me. Lately, my partner and I are spending very little time together. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not just me, what if my partner is also deepening the divide between us? I can only be hopeful.

Neither one of us deserves this, yet I can’t bring myself to break us. I need this man more than I want him. I am selfish and I can’t let go. Of course I still love him, but I don’t want to be with him. I want nothing but to be alone and free. I’m sick to death of thinking of ways to be together, what we can do on date night, feeling obliged to see his family. I feel like a fraud when I go over to his family’s house. I know that I’m going to disappoint them all and leave their much loved son/brother/nephew/grandson soon enough. But not right now.

In the grand scheme of things, I know what I want, I want to be free. Today, however, I need some help with the garden. So my man is coming over to do just that, to help me with my garden. The garden that could have been both of ours, but he is hesitant to leave the safety of his mothers nest. At 26 years old, I’ve grown tired of waiting for him to build a life with me. I guess I moved on and he has stayed exactly where he has always been.

I don’t want to go through the break up process. I know how it goes. I know the pain I will feel, of not having him next to me, not having him call me, not having him help me. How on earth am I going to operate the lawn mower? I hate the thought of hurting him so much. I hate knowing that I will let down his family, his mother is adamant we are going to get married and have babies. I can’t do this just yet. I can’t leave him just yet. I will put up with my frustrations at him a little while longer. It’s impossible to leave him and to stay with him. I am a coward and I wish that he would end this for me. I hope that he leaves me for someone else, someone more deserving of him than I am. That’s what I’m hoping.

 

Praying for love

Last night out of desperation, fear or love, I did something I haven’t done before. I got down on my knees and I prayed. I wanted to pray for myself, but I pushed that aside and I prayed for my partner.

I’m getting the sinking feeling that we are breaking apart. My life is going one way and his another, I don’t know if I’m with him because I love him or with him out of habit. And so, last night at my bedside, I prayed that he be with someone who is patient and kind and respectful, somebody that makes him laugh, somebody that truely listens to his stories, somebody that wants the life that he wants. I prayed that he find happiness with someone truely special and warm.

Am I that person? Can I change? I know what my partner deserves I just don’t know if I’m able to give that to him. I don’t laugh with him anymore, I don’t listen to his stories, I don’t like how unkind and miserable I become with him. Isn’t your relationship supposed to bring out your best qualities? My relationship is putting a neon sign on my worst.  I have a relationship with the kindest, loving, honest person I know. He showers me with love, he is so considerate that it makes me feel like the grinch in comparison. He called my parents to congratulate them on the sale of their house. I didn’t even call my parents to congratulate them on the sale of their house.

My partner doesn’t deserve the hurt and rejection I put on him. Lately, I would rather sit in silence when we are together. I feel an urge to nitpick, to judge, and he expects the judgement now. “Am I embarrassing you?” He asks at a wedding we went to on Saturday night. No, I was embarrassing myself. I had clearly let my sour attitude spoil the atmosphere. I rejected his advances when we got home that night, he went to go sleep on the couch and a part of me didn’t care. Another part of me called him silly and dragged him back to bed so he could sleep by my side.

I know I’m being selfish and pathetic. I want him, but I don’t want him. I’m tempted to mould this into something that I do want. It’s impossible to leave him, I feel it’s just as impossible to stay. I have been miserable in his company for months yet I’m still hanging on, waiting for something.

I’m waiting for me to change. I’m waiting for me to laugh again, for me to want to be a part of his family, for me to be kind, loving, supportive and warm. I do my best in his company, but somehow  I can’t be with him without being cold and foreboding.

I know what I can do. I can continue to hope that something will change, I can continue sending him love in my thoughts, and I can continue to be with him for a little while longer. I’m not sure if that’s my selfishness or if a part of me wants to fix this. I want to fix it when I’m not with him, as soon as I’m with him, I can’t stand him. It would be such a relief if he ended this, maybe he is brave enough. I have a feeling he is waiting for me to come around again. Can I do that? Can I be the girl he once had?

The problem with asking for help

I’ve spent years googling everything. Everything. It became prolific when I moved out of home, interstate, with nobody to help me. I called up my mum, I asked my friends, and I asked google. I googled how to boil an egg once. Now I’ve become self reliant on asking for help. I wasted so many nights last year by googling for hours on end, I’d google “How to be happy”, “How to know if you’re in love”, “100 things to do before you die”.

Similarly, this asking for help seeps into my work life too, I ask for help before I’ve attempted anything myself. I rely on others to assist me. For a long time, I thought that not being embarrassed for asking for help was a strength of mine. It landed me a permanent role. Sure, the ability to ask for help is powerful, and the downfall of many successful people who have failed to ask for help when they sincerely need it. I don’t sincerely need help most of the time, I ask anyway.

Deep down, I feel like a fraud. I feel unintelligent, fake, dull and unimaginative. How could I solve a maths problem when I’m not smart enough to? My 15 year old students are wrong about maths, it is very creative. In the same way baking a cake is, you could fuss about for hours, playing around with flavours, colours, exotic ingredients, or you could just follow a recipe. We teach maths by giving a recipe. You still get stuck? Ask for help. Ask for help. Ask for help. Ask for help. Asking for help instead of mucking around, getting creative, having fun, is lost.

I don’t create anymore. I ask for help, I take on the advice of total strangers by reading blog posts, I youtube, google and read self help books. I follow recipes. It’s almost an addiction, an addiction to knowing by absorption. I don’t go out there and find out for myself what creates a happy life, no I google it. I read posts about it. I don’t cultivate it for myself.  In the age of technology and access to information overload, it is only too easy to become a sponge. There is a problem with living the life as a sponge, you’re not creating anything for yourself, just mopping up everybody else’s creations.

I feel a change coming on, a quest, if you will. I’m going to be creative and make the life I want, instead of daydreaming about the life that I want. I am going to be creative. I will let inspiration take me away and see what comes up. Yes, asking for help is imperative when you’re stuck, but I will give it a red hot go myself before I ask for help. I will make sure I am actually stuck.

Asking for help, relying on others, taking advice on board without thinking, these things all destroy creativity. Your problems are uniquely yours, if your solution is to turn to somebody else then you’ve just given away your gift of solving a problem. That’s not creative. That’s being a sponge.