Relationship Vomit

 I do know how I got here, but then again, I wonder how I got here.

When we met, we agreed about something called the “no bullshit clause”. No lying, no cheating, no dishonesty. I’m not the one who broke that agreement. I read something today that gave me pause:

Don’t make a mistake being so understanding that you overlook the fact you’re being disrespected.

Too much empathy is dangerous.

There’s a point where it’ll screw you because you’re trying so hard to see things from other people’s point of view, that it’s taking away from your own dignity.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. This friend is admittedly 100% very opinionated, we know this about her. She is an artist. We are each others ride and die, and also call each other on our bullshit.

As part of the recent conflict with my adult daughter, with whom I have co-housed with her and her family for more than five years, is coming to the realization that it isn’t healthy for us to live in the same space anymore. There’s a lot to pack into that, on its own, but I’m not thinking about that, now. I’ve been saying for a long time, that maybe it’s time for me to sell my house. I currently own the house I grew up in. When my mom could not manage much of anything else, she managed to keep our house, and to sell it to me when her health started to fail. To different degrees, both my parents lived and died in that house. AND, at the end of the day, it’s just a house. Maybe the energy that’s in that house needs to be purged.

We also own off-grid property in the Northern part of our county, an hour outside our medium-sized city. I love the off-grid place. My husband has been unwilling to work for the last decade. He had a stroke a number of years ago, and he does have some cognitive challenges, but it’s been about 7 years, I think. He functions just fine to play computer games all day, and he’s been a kick-ass grandpa, taking care of the grand kids. But beg, and plead as I might, he won’t get a job. To a large degree, we are caught between bureaucracies. The VA won’t release him to work because he still have double vision and vertigo, and SSDI (social security disability) says he isn’t disabled ENOUGH to qualify for any benefits. So, it’s all on me. I have begged, I have pleaded to him to PLEASE get even a part-time job, it’s not time for him to be retired yet. He refuses. He will put in one application and then get depressed because they never called him. To find a way to contribute money, income, to the household. In times when I have supported or done things for my adult children or other members of my family, he has been very vocal about calling other people “oxygen thieves”. I guess he decided it was his turn and that was that.

So, I mention to my friend that I am thinking of selling my house and moving to the off-grid property. It would be a hell of a commute, I have five years left at my job, before retiring with 30 years. She says she this is a HUGE mistake. Her and I had previously joked about this, she said she would rent the top part of my house, pay half the mortgage, also not have sex with me (my husband and I also have a sexless marriage), and we could live happily ever after. She told me she thinks it would just be a huge mistake for me to sell the house in town and move to the outskirts. I am not sure how I feel about that. She says my husband will never do anything, never work again. I wonder if I’m actually really stupid for believing he might wake up one day. I’ve thought to myself a lot that what will he do if he kills me, working myself to death to support us while he stays home all day? Well, then he’ll collect my retirement hahahaha. And then he won’t have to listen to me complain either, seems like a win/win for him. I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of my life like this, is the thing.

Last year, I worked my ass off. I don’t remember if I wrote about this before, I think I did. In August of 2021, I made a bad decision that I paid for for a loooong time. I took out a payday loan because my husband’s son was having a child of his own, his first. I wanted my husband to have the experience of getting to do this for his son. So we took a trip to the Northwest. I had told my husband, I NEED you to focus on getting a job after this. He said he would. It’s never happened, and I was suffocating under the payments and debt this caused. I realized that two people who I love the most in the world, who I have sacrificed for, would not do the same for me. To keep my mind sharp, and to have a retirement income, I opened a bookkeeping business. Starting it and getting clients was a little slower than I wanted it to be, limited largely by there only being 24 hours in a day, and already having a full-time job, it was hard to stay on social and really work that angle to get more clients. I had a few that seemed promising, but sort of faded out, or the situation wasn’t right. So, then I took a seasonal contract for Burning Man. From May to October, I went to work and worked 6:30am-3:30pm, then came home and worked 4pm-8pm at the second job, while also having my and maintaining my bookkeeping business. *whew*

I had committed to myself that my reward for working that hard would be taking us on a cruise last year. I did that. I hoped he would see that we could have fun together, and do things. That was all great….and I get to pay for it all. I think I’m done with that. He recently said his dad wants us to come down and visit him. Not without money. I’m paying off last years cruise. I suppose these are my choices, I just don’t understand how someone can sit back and let someone else do all the work and not help. I don’t get that. That’s why this year, I am going to New Orleans on my own. I did take a trip last year on my own too, to Texas to spend a friends birthday with her, but even then, I was like “can’t spend too much”. He NEVER thinks about that.

Just to add a little more baggage to all this, for at least a decade, we’ve had a sexless marriage, but he’s also been outed as a serial cheater. I can’t tell you how much this fucks with my brain. #1 because technically, you CANNOT cheat with me, I consider myself responsibly non-monogamous. But you CAN, because it’s not about the physicality of the cheating, it’s the lying and the dishonesty. Like, I know with the logical part of my brain, that it IS NOT me, but it FEELS horrible when you know someone is developing relationships and feelings with others, but doesn’t appear to care enough to develop and work on their relationship with YOU. He has a lot of hang-ups. Family of origin crap, past abuse, yadda yadda. None of that is my problem, and while I tried for years and years to get him to get help, it has to be him. And he isn’t willing. That just adds a whole other dimension to the mix. It’s part of the thrill of the hunt for this guy. I mean, the last time it happened, it was with someone I had WORKED with, and he’s so, like, fucking devious, that he started out by saying that she had a crush on me, that he just wanted me to be happy, and then I go and look and there’s like 1,200 texts between them, and I’m just like whoa. He had said he was going to go help her change a lightbulb. That’s such a fucked up double entendre, I don’t even have words. I told him “you have fun with that” and HE thought that was permission for him to fuck around.

At this point, I’m kind of at a loss. All of this shit swirls around my brain constantly. Part of me believes I deserve to be happy, I think I’m just really bad at it, or making it so. I’m not miserably UN-happy, but I do think I might be on the verge of being clinically depressed. I don’t want to do anything. I just work, and I go home and sit on my bed and watch mindless TV, or work on one of my many side hustles to keep our lives afloat, or work on volunteer stuff. I work out a couple of times a day, but I don’t feel VIBRANT. I don’t feel alive, really. I feel like I’m going through the motions.

I wonder constantly how I got to this place.

Ending this for now, I needed to get it out. The formatting is all weird on it, I might come back later to see if I can fix it, I don’t know. Fixed the formatting by adding some of my favorite pictures and memes. Welcome to my brain. hahahaha

Peace.