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.

The discussion - Part 1

Throughout the week of confused post-wedding emotions, my partner and I had a few very good discussions about our relationship.

I did some real soul searching and came up with the following notes, which we discussed together, although not necessarily in this order:

Barriers 
I felt as though I might have been putting unnecessary barriers up in our previous conversations. I was slightly adamant that I wanted to move to a certain area when we moved back to Australia. But when I had fantasies about Mr A, I fantasised that I would have been happy to have followed him anywhere. What did this mean if I was not willing to do it for my partner?

I had also been adamant that I wanted to continue with my company that I'd opened whilst living in the UK, which put up barriers to us living in various other locations in the world, however when I fantasised about Mr A, I fantasised that I would have happily gotten a job in the US to be with him.

Resentment about living choices
Both my partner and I had carried some resentments towards each other over various living choices - him for the current home that we live in that he thought it was too quiet and unsociable. Me for previous places that we've lived that seem to have impacted on our relationship and my general feelings of happiness.

Bitterness
With the resentment, a certain level of bitterness had built up, leading to a devil may care attitude from my point of view.

Toxic
I felt like we'd both been quite toxic towards each other in the past with the way that we treated each other.

Money
My partner had never wanted much in the way of commitment, and a joint bank account was his idea of hell. I'd like to think that I proved myself to be much more responsible with money than when we first met, and wanted to open a joint bank account for us to work towards common goals.

Marriage
As was pointed out to me at the wedding by a friend, I was compromising 100%. I know that my partner didn't want to marry me. But I wanted to marry him, not just get married for the sake of it. But the main problem was with the fact that I didn't know why he didn't want to marry me. Maybe it would've helped me to understand our relationship better if he had been able to really think about this. I even went as far as suggesting that he get some professional help about his feelings on this issue.

There doesn't seem to be a compromise here.

Why did I want to get married?

1. Because I loved him, I couldn't imagine life without him and I wanted everyone to know that too!
2. To formalise our relationship in the eyes of the law and our friends and family.
3. To provide legal security to both of us if something was to happen. (Wills can do this too)
4. I wanted to get married so that our (future and hypothetical) children would know that we were serious about each other.

Children 

I feel like babies are always being put on the back burner. 

Why do I want children now? 

1. I want my children to know the energetic, fit people we are now.
2. I want to be able to enjoy my children, take then camping, take them travelling, show them new experiences.
3. I just feel this need to procreate.
4. I want to enjoy the feeling of being pregnant, the expectancy and the excitement.
5. I want to meet the children that we could make together. 

Naming the children 
Whose name/s do we use? I want my surname to be a part of it if we aren't married. This is important to me, I don't want my children to have a different name to me. I grew up with that and it was uncomfortable as a child to explain to other kids why my name was different. And I know the world was different back then, but I want my children to have a little part of me too! 

The crush

This next post isn't an easy one to write. I am embarrassed by the way that I have acted in this situation, especially given the risks that I was taking with my relationship.

You see I had always been a little bit crazy about men. I have had a number of big, emotionally charged crushes in my life. The famous one that I will always refer to is Marty. The Marty crush was over a period of about three years and ended when I met my current partner. One day I might expand on the Marty crush, but not now.

All I can say is that Mr A has only acted appropriately in this situation - and with a very high degree of sensitivity towards my feelings. He is a very understanding and genuine friend who is able to connect with his emotions and is not afraid to talk about them. He has questioned me on topics and said things that not many people can do. And if anything it is probably because despite us both feeling as though we've known each other for a long time, we have only known each other for a couple of weeks and are really just strangers to each other. So I guess when you don't know each other's history which is certainly the case here, it is easy to be honest and open with someone.

It is also as I found out, thankfully not to the detriment of our friendship, very easy to fall back into bad habits. You see over the last weeks I have developed and I really hope now overcome a massive and debilitating crush on Mr A. I'm not sure how he realised it - I'm not really know for being discreet in these situations, but should have been much more careful considering that I would never want to hurt my partner.

It was never my intention to cheat on my partner, and had Mr A been willing to do so, in all probability it would have turned me off very quickly. You see, I have always enjoyed the chase - and when they returned the interest, it was a matter of hours, days or weeks before it was all over. But when they didn't return the interest, that is when things became a little bit mental. And as I've mentioned earlier, when I've been rejected or am feeling depressed or upset about something, my creativity comes out. So there is a whole portfolio of poetry from my "pre-partner" days about heartbreak and sadness and unrequited love. But in this instance, I was also realistic and genuinely didn't want to end a six year relationship over some non-existent event that I made up in my mind.

What this was, in my retrospective opinion, was the opportunity to fantasise about what an alternative life might be like. And although both Mr A and my partner have many interests in common, I somehow had built this imaginary life in my mind that was so different from my life now and one that I would be much happier in, although I know deep down that I would never have been.

This is not a proud moment. And I still haven't decided whether or not to give Mr A the address of this blog. The main reason is because I am very embarrassed about my imaginings. Although I have told him most of these things in one way or another, I was hoping to be uncensored within this blog, and that is still my intention. So Mr A, if you are reading this, then here is an insight into my mental state. I'd like to think that you will take it for what it is, a personal introspection that was simply driven by my friendship with you - nothing more, nothing less. You have been important in this process, and I have tried to be honest and open with you on all counts (sometimes to the point of craziness). I consider you to be a friend, and I'd like to hope that you won't judge me harshly because of the contents of this blog.

So here I was, just returned from a wedding that felt like it had turned my emotional well being inside out. What was I to do?

And then Mr A sent me a text. He enquired as to how my emotions were after the wedding. I replied that they weren't good and told him that I'd been googling some self-help on line.

Mr A was a massive help, not by doing anything in particular, but because through my developing feelings towards him (whether they were real or not), I was able to for the first time in my relationship, really delve into why I might not be happy. Why it was that I was entertaining the thoughts, the fantasy of another man.

Especially one that would only ever lead to heartbreak. You see Mr A was moving home within the week, back to a relationship that had been on and off for many years. He seemed determined to do everything that he could to make it work with his girl, and knowing what I do of him, she is very lucky to have him so committed to their relationship. But even still, he was going through a tough time of adjustment and his own emotions. And I wouldn't normally be such a shitty friend, but this crush of mine meant that I wasn't able to provide him with my true and unguarded friendship.

So through the exchange of texts, emails and a few social occasions over the course of Mr A's last week in London, I was investing more and more energy into a friendship that I was fantasising about as being much more. It did come and go in strength, for example two days before he left the country we went to brunch together with my partner. During the course of the day, my attraction to him became less prevalent. But then the night before he left, as we were hugging goodbye and he said that he'd really miss me, my heart was his. But just for that moment.

I could go on and on about the feelings that I discovered for this person, a relative stranger, but already such a good friend. But the important thing here is that this situation was the catalyst for purchasing the book that this blog is named after, that I am going to be writing mostly about. I really felt that it was important to highlight that my misplaced attraction towards a complete stranger was what started this process.

In any others less strong than myself and Mr A, perhaps this could have ended a six year relationship with an affair or something similar. If I hadn't had the sense to try to help myself, and started typing in things like "Why doesn't my partner want marriage? What does it mean when you're in a long-term relationship and have a crush? Should I stay or go?" into google, then I wouldn't have discovered that the, albeit real, but emotionally driven crush that I had on Mr A was in fact a catalyst for relationship trouble. And yes, many others would have seen this coming, but I genuinely thought that my partner and I were just going through a phase.

A phase where I wasn't connecting to my partner, sexually, mentally or emotionally. A phase that culminated in the discussion.

What happened? The wedding - Day 2!

The next morning when I woke, the thoughts came back and more joined them. It got to the point where I was so distracted by the thoughts of "What is going on? How has this happened? What does it mean?", that I spent nearly two hours thinking about not much else as I went through the various spa treatment rooms of the hotel. My head was an absolute minefield of self-doubt towards my relationship. And at this stage, it wasn't specifically Mr A that I was thinking about, but my relationship in general and what had happened to it.

When we met up with Mr A to walk to the reception area for the wedding, I found myself asking the same questions again. Why him? Why now? Why couldn't I be feeling this towards my partner? There was also a very big part of me that was worried about how the evening would pan out. I was already an emotional wreck before the wedding even began, how was I going to be as the night progressed?

After the ceremony and obligatory group photos, we were all invited to go to the lounge area for tea and coffee. My partner decided that he needed something from the hotel, so told Mr A and I to proceed to the lounge ahead of him. When we got to the door, Mr A told me that he wasn't ready to go in and wanted to stand a while outside. I joined him, because for the past year or more I'd had an aversion to entering public locations by myself, and I just didn't want to go inside alone when I thought that my friends had all gone up to the hotel along with my partner. After a few minutes of polite chit chat, he made his excuses and left to go for a walk, which was quite a relief as I was too confused about my feelings to even really participate in the conversation. Most importantly though, I didn't want to embarrass myself or him by revealing my still very new, surprising and confusing feelings.

After he walked away, I continued my internal monologue, telling myself that I was being stupid, obviously this wasn't normal, that I had never, ever had any level of sexual attraction to another male whilst I'd been with my partner. I was going dizzy with the thought process. In the end, my partner came back and we entered the reception venue together and found our friends, who had been there all along.

When I couldn't hold in my thoughts to myself, I very discreetly told one of my single friends about these confusing feelings that I had towards Mr A. She pointed out that it was just the wedding and that all of the single girls had been having a chat earlier about how they all felt depressed that they didn't have anyone, and were wondering when they might meet someone and get married. She told me not to be silly because I had a great man. I took her words at face value, chose to believe in what she said and left it at that. Luckily for me, Mr A was absent for a good portion of the afternoon activities, so I wasn't constantly reminded about my unreliable emotions.

When we'd sat at our tables, Mr A and a table full of people that we all knew were at the table beside ours, which held another two couples and our four single girlfriends. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur as to exactly what I said or did, but I remember that Mr A and I did talk about the wedding emotions as we wandered up the path to the hotel with everyone else afterwards. I don't know if I revealed my crush to him at that stage, or if this all came out much later.

In any case, the following day was spent farewelling other guests before our evening flight back home.

What happened? The wedding - Day 1!

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everything was roses before. I'm going to tell you that through a lot of commitment, communication and hard work my partner and I have made this relationship what it is today.

But unfortunately some of the things that we've both done to each other over the years have been negative and have impacted on our relationship as such. Most recently I have been quite ambivalent towards the relationship, and this has only recently come to light for me. But now I want to work at it to make sure that the relationship that I'm in is the one that I am committed to and want to be in.

As we proceed through the blog and I will attempt to honestly answer the questions that Mira Kirshenbaum has posed in her book Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, you will begin to develop an understanding for who I am and what my relationship is like. But to truly understand where it is that I've come from in the past couple of weeks, which was a surprise to me when it happened, I will give you the history as to how I came to find this book in the first place over the next few posts.

Saturday, two weeks ago
There we were, getting ready to go to our friend's wedding. I had been nervous about this wedding for a while because I'm never any good at weddings and usually end up drunk, emotional, experimenting with self-harming methods (although never to the point of blood or any serious physical damage) or a combination of all of the above. For this wedding, we had to fly to get there and on the other end we were getting a cab to take us the 20 minute drive to the wedding venue.

The groom had arranged for some of the guests to share cabs if their flights matched up on the other end. We had already arranged to share a cab with a friend of the groom when I received a random facebook message from another guest (let's call him Mr A) asking if I wanted to share a cab. Text messages were exchanged between all parties and it was decided that there was a seat spare, so he could have it. When we all met up at the boarding gate at the airport, we unexpectedly met up with some other people going to the wedding and all got chatting away, happily passing our time on the plane with friends old and new.

Upon arrival at the hotel, the four of us who'd travelled together had a drink whilst our rooms were turned around, then went on to have lunch and try out the spa facilities before getting ready and joining the groom for dinner, drinks and dancing. Our happy party of 12 continued into the night, dancing away.

And I guess that might be when I started to feel a slight tug towards Mr A. Perhaps it was because there weren't any songs that he wasn't happy to dance (and sometimes sing) along to - unlike my partner who always seemed to look down his nose at my music choices (most of which the band seemed to be playing), it may have been the fact that he was so carefree and although very similar to my partner in many ways (job, looks and interests), somehow more polished and mature.

It could have been the conversation we had about family, and how my sister is expecting a child, and that I was eager to be much closer to home (Australia) to be near her, especially when the baby was born. And when he told me about how he felt the same way about his nieces back home (in the US) it was a revelation to me that a guy could understand what I was feeling. Until recently my partner had been making out as if I was some hormonal crazy lady when I expressed the desire to go home because of an unexplained compulsion to be closer to my sister. And as a good friend pointed out to me later, perhaps it could have been the shared values that I was attracted to.

It could also have been the fact that I was feeling a little bit rejected by my partner who had forgotten to bring with him any contraception (we had recently changed methods and he was now responsible after six years of me doing it). This was meant to be a romantic getaway from everything and it was blown to smithereens in a matter of seconds when he said he'd forgotten and didn't appear to make any effort to get a hold of some. A chance to rekindle our sex life that hadn't been very active over the recent months (a fact he was willing to tell me about at every opportunity) was now extinct for all extents and purposes.

The exact reasons why I was crushing on this particular person are still unknown to me. But believe me when I say that there are many, many more reasons why he was entirely unsuitable (and maybe a handful as to why he was). All I know was that I didn't have the slightest tug of attraction to him from the minute we met to sometime around dinner. But then all of these complicated feelings gradually began to descend over the next 24 hours.

As we farewelled the groom off that night, each of the others left gradually, I didn't think any more of it.

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.