August 4, 2024
It sure took long enough.
I’ve been puzzling over this person’s behavior for the past week. I did assert my opinion that his behavior, especially since I knew precisely what he read, how often, and when, could reasonably have been expected to reflect more than just friendly concern, especially since practically our last words to each other more than two years after all this started were, “I love you.”
But, you know? A person wishing to clear things up could have simply answered me. This person runs off, and …
Okay. I accept this at face value. It’s fine.
Let me tell you the sad, sad story of one “J. Matthew Peabody.”
This fellow used to write on Medium about his experiences getting laid off, having a sick wife, and falling into an extramarital affair. The person in question here has a very distant relationship, yes, but Peabody experienced romantic and sexual rejection that was even worse. Very, very bad. Yes, it’s true that when one person’s sick and one person’s laid off, that’s a lot of stress on a marriage. But if you’re well enough to run marathons but “too sick” to have sex, well, something’s a bit odd, there. I won’t go into details, but even if you’re depressed by your illness, you have to realize that certain things you’re doing are so obviously hurtful and rejecting that you’re destroying your marriage by doing them.
And when your husband is asking you for marriage counseling and you’re saying, well, you’re just not going to change so there isn’t any point …
I think being upset because your spouse ended up attracted to someone else is, in fact, somewhat out of court.
I find it ridiculous that, in situations like these, society puts the blame on only one person. This wife Needed Her Butt Kicked.
Then came the scenario I said no in 2017 in an effort to avoid: Peabody becomes a human ping pong ball, going back and forth between home, his parents, and his girlfriend, PING-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-PING-ping-ping-ping, for a period of over three years. The wife wants to put him in the basement if he comes home and treat him like a roommate. The girlfriend wants to give him a real relationship, but he feels too guilty to accept it. OH, the children, the children!! (Okay, I can see it in the case of the teenager who was still at home, but the other two kids were grown and gone, and in any case they told him they knew things were bad, and they were expecting a divorce, anyway.)
By his own admission, this fellow kept balking at going home and giving it one more honest try and dropping the girlfriend because he was so afraid of the loneliness of the marriage. That it wouldn’t get better and there he’d be, stuck again in the same sad loneliness and now his girlfriend would be gone.
And the way THIS wife was acting?? I don’t blame him. This was a total no-brainer.
Anyone believing THIS setup would have been at all conducive to his happiness needs to read this therapist on what being a good spouse really entails. Examples:
Then, there’s this one …
Anyway.
So they finally settled on a divorce and that is supposed to be final this week. Only he’s treating the girlfriend like she and the affair are the ONLY reason the marriage broke up, and shortchanging her for the ex-wife who didn’t want him to begin with. He’s living with the girlfriend rent-free while the wife is taking trips on her alimony. The girlfriend is wondering whether it would be better to just cut him loose and let him go live in his wife’s basement and continue financially servicing her and financially and emotionally servicing his kids and hating himself for being “bad” enough to actually have needs for the rest of his life.
If a relationship ever happened here, is this the scenario I could be looking at?
Given the strange behavior, I wouldn’t doubt it.
And if such a relationship is not possible, why the fuck am I seeing all this strange behavior???
Oy.
In the meantime, I have discovered that I am happy the way things are.
I don’t miss people anymore. I don’t miss relationships anymore. Suddenly I realize I’m done with caregiving, I don’t have anybody to look after, this couch is very damned comfortable, I can order food rather than fix it and clean up messes, I don’t have to keep a house clean for anybody else, and when I come home from work I can just sit on my laptop and daydream.
It’s actually quite nice to have given up all this bullshit: “I have to exercise and exercise and starve and starve unless and until I’m THIN!!” Well, I’m never going to BE thin. And I’m an old lady now, and I sure as fuck HOPE I don’t live to be ninety-six, so what’s the point of starving and starving and exercising and exercising because if I don’t I won’t live to be ninety-fucking-six??
”I HAVE to become at least a semi-popular published author or I will feel bad about myself!!” Um, me and 99.99999999% of everyone else who thought they wanted to do the same thing.
The fact is, earning a living writing is impossible, and even if one did accomplish it, the living is so tenuous that your life would be full of worry and uncertainty.
I don’t want to live like that. Screw it.
When I got my raise, I actually had to REMIND myself to let other people know. Most people would be on the phone to their parents, other family, a significant other, or a best friend. I’m so used to being alone now, I actually FORGOT that a normal person would want to tell someone else.
I’m so used to being alone, I don’t care anymore. I look forward to spending a day off from work entirely by myself. Today the pool is green, and closed, so I spent my day on the couch, typing a fan fic story for a friend and this blog. I ordered a vegetable omelet on Grubhub and made some coffee and was very happy all day alone. (Plus I was getting over being sore from swimming sixty laps on Friday.)
I’m starting to realize I like my life. Financial worry seems to be over and I’ve gotten over this childish, pathological need of other people. I don’t care if I never have any close loved ones ever again. I have a rare moment of breathing room between finally being able to provide for myself and being old enough not to be able to anymore, and there’s this sweet spot now between being stuck with the care of older relatives and a mentally ill mother acting crazy all the time, and the time when I myself will no longer be independent.
And I’m not crying and crying and terrified because I’m all alone anymore!
I should enjoy this time now, because IT WILL END.
Why mess it up with someone who SAYS he doesn’t want to leave his wife, but whose behavior has been SO STRANGE??
Fuck, man. Let’s leave well enough alone. Once upon a time, we could have gotten together and it could have worked, but that ship has sailed.
I’m much happier now with just myself, fan fiction, two cats, and a vibrator for company.
Amen.