London bound

Tonight I leave Australia to travel back to London. Everyone has been asking if I'm looking forward to it. The answer is quite simply, yes and no. I am looking forward to getting on with life, but I have caught up with so many good friends and of course, my family since I've been here.

I am confident that I've found the awesome person that disappeared somewhere else over the last year or more. I am happy, energised and looking forward to winding up all of my work commitments in the UK in order to come back to Australia at the end of the year.

As for my relationship - I feel that my partner and I had a break through moment whilst talking on the phone this morning. For the first time, he actually agreed with me that he had issues (hence the way that he's treated me). I've told him that I'm not going to stand for it anymore and that he's going to have to straighten up his act if he wants a future with me. He blamed his mum for the issues, which is probably a likely source of his problems. However he needs to take responsibility too.

We are booked in to see a relationship counsellor next week and I'm hoping to be able to blog about that too. I've found out recently that some of our friends have seen a counsellor (and they are still together), which is nice to know. Everyone usually hides their relationship problems so that no one knows what goes on, but since I've been away, it appears that everyone has problems, some more serious than others, some people more easily able to work them through with their partners. I do hope that when I get back to London that I will see that I have a future with my partner, but if it turns out that the problems between us are too far gone, then I hope that we happily move on to better relationships by realising how we have gone wrong with this one.

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.

Welcome

I have recently discovered that I am in what is commonly termed relationship ambivalence. This was a new terminology to me that I discovered quite by accident whilst doing some google self-diagnosis on my relationship of six and a half years.

Relationship ambivalence is essentially when you're spending a lot of time thinking about whether to stay or leave your relationship, rather than investing the time into the relationship itself. Over the years I have been ambivalent and had moved on from it quite quickly once I'd talked about my various doubts with my partner. This instance was different and made me want to take action, and hopefully you'll see why.

We had hit a rough patch from my point of view and I was determined to get one of two outcomes:

1. Stay, ready to put all of my energy into my relationship and work towards a common future together.
2. Leave, leave my best friend, my partner in crime of the past six years, leave the one person who has probably accepted me the most in this world for who I actually am.

As with any relationship as long as ours, there have been hiccups along the way, but this was the biggest one that we had encountered, and thanks to a brilliant book, Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum, I was able to identify the problem, that I was in a state of ambivalence, and complete a full critique of the relationship from my point of view.

The outcomes were in some cases a complete surprise to me, and at other times a challenge. But most of all the outcomes provided me with clarity, a closeness to myself that I hadn't felt in a long time and they started me seriously thinking about what it was that I truly wanted from my relationship and from my life.

The purpose of this blog is to share the revelations that I have discovered through reading this book. I hope to  honestly look at the relationship that I'm in with myself and my partner through this writing. I hope to be honest, to the point of offence or embarrassing myself or others if needs be. And more so, I hope to share the outcomes of the most important self-discovery that I have undertaken with the world at large via this blog. The purpose for the public audience is two sided, one so that others in the same position that I have been for the past few months will be able to see that all relationships aren't perfect and two, so that I can seek some honest feedback from others who choose to read this.

I wish I'd started recording my feelings in this manner about six months ago, but as with all good things that go bad, I didn't recognise the problem until a very interesting wedding that I attended a few weeks ago. I will detail as much as I can remember of the past few weeks throughout the following posts, and hopefully will be able to give you a fair and honest version of the goings on.

Who am I?
I am every woman who has ever doubted herself in a relationship. I am the woman who thinks about leaving and is scared of the ultimate outcome - loneliness, going back into the dating scene, having to actually concentrate on me again. But I am also the woman who needs to discover herself first and foremost, and what it is that she wants from life before I can recommit to this relationship that quite frankly, I have invested the better part of my twenties into.

About my blog
I have always found comfort and solace in writing about my feelings, whether it be through poetry or fiction. I am writing this anonymous but true version of events through this blog in order to hold myself publicly accountable for my actions. And also as a confidential source of exposing my innermost thoughts and feelings without fear of retribution. I used to write a lot. Misery was my muse, but since I met my partner I have been mostly happy, so the writing faded into the background.

During the tough times past I would write out my innermost thoughts, feelings, theories and poetry. However after one particularly honest account of how I was feeling, my partner, unbeknown to me at the time, read what I'd written and he held it against me for months. He had been hurt and I never wanted that to happen. I also felt betrayed and my confidence in anything that I'd written being safe was blown, so I stopped writing.

Only recently through this whole experience have I found that same comfort in being able to write out my feelings on paper. But as you will see throughout the blog, I would like to keep all aspects of my introspection anonymous to avoid implicating innocent parties.

Support
I have had a few very helpful and reliable friends help me through the last few weeks. Playing various roles from guidance councillor to punching bag. And of course my partner has been very patient with me whilst I have been traversing the minefield that is relationship ambivalence.

I will be sharing this blog address firstly with two very key people in this situation. It was in fact one of those friends who suggested that we write an anonymous blog together that inspired me to start here. And although she isn't a party to this particular blog, I know that she will see why as I continue on the path to discovering what it is that I want through my writing.