Diagnostic Question # 36

Question
If all the problems in your relationship were magically solved today, would you still feel ambivalent about whether to stay or leave?

My answer
This is the tricky bit. The book has been designed so that if you answer in the negative, and the author recommends that you leave - that you shouldn't read any further. What I wanted to achieve was a list of things that my partner and I can work through together to try and make the relationship better.

However, the trick comes in this question, because I think that even if everything were immediately better - I would still feel ambivalent about this relationship. Why? Because I think that there is too much water under the bridge. I think that I lost myself, and both of us let me do this. I think that having to answer the uncountable questions about marriage, when we'd be doing it, or why not has worn me down. I think that it's great that my partner now sees himself getting married, but perhaps I'm too jaded with historical bullshit, delay tactics and whatever else to believe him. I think that overall I would be happier by myself than with anyone else.

Why am I going to stay (for now)? I have committed to relationship counselling. I will probably blog about it if I can here. I feel an immense amount of guilt because there were a number of stages in my relationship where I could have made it better, or helped to anyway. I feel like I owe the last six and a half years at least a few months to try to reconcile everything that has gone wrong.

Am I doing what's right by me? Maybe I am, perhaps by following this path, I will realise that I was right to doubt our relationship. Perhaps I'll find a way to absolve my guilt about this situation that started with a relationship silently sinking, an unexpected crush that lead me down the path of doubt, anger, hurt, sadness and guilt. But maybe I will also see that this whole thing was an imagination on my part, some way to escape a scary relationship, one that was going to be forever and binding. I won't know until I start the course of counselling.

Quick take
If you don't know whether you want to stay even if nothing were wrong, then you don't want to stay.

My prognosis
This whole book has pointed me to leaving. It's not so much what my partner has done wrong or right, but how I perceive him to have treated me over time. How our relationship got so bad. I'm committed to counselling and spending at least two months on this path. Then I'll reassess and make my decision. In the meantime, I'm going to work towards being a better person to myself first and foremost.

Am I denying the inevitable? Certainly am. Why? Because I feel an obligation to this relationship. I feel like I owe it to my partner and myself to bring back the true person that I am. If he likes it, then great. If he doesn't, then it'll be goodbye from me.