At the moment, my future looks bleak. I know, I know ... I'll work through the grief process and get to a point of acceptance, ... and some new opportunities will open up, ... and God will bring some good out of it. But in the midst of it, they is all useless platitudes. Knowing about the grief process is virtually no use at all when you're in the middle of it. Don't ever tell a grieving person that it will be alright -- we know with a great sense of immediacy that IT IS NOT ALRIGHT.
I can see three equally difficult and unappealing options: work through all the difficult issues to
re-establish a relationship with H, take the risk of starting a new relationship
with someone else, or becoming a lonely old man. The first doesn't seem at all likely and is out of my control. Could I trust her again anyway? A dead end. The second is almost (but not quite) inconceivable. I have given my heart fully to H. Even if that beaten and broken heart can be repaired, how could I possibly give it again to someone else? I don't want to. I want H. She is irreplaceable. A dead end. The third seems more likely, but unbearable. Can I actually survive without a partner? Without intimacy? Without sex? Another dead end.
— Nat
I'm sorry to hear your story. You've told me not to tell you to be alright, so I won't do that. It's not alright. Hell that stuff hurts. I've been through the breakdown of a 7-year relationship (with child), and it took a year for me to feel I'd come out of the tunnel. But of the three 'dead-ends' you name, you know the second is the most likely, and if it happens, not a dead-end at all. You can't contemplate it now because you're completely emotionally unready. It's like trying to imagine hunger when you're stuffed full. Nothing has any appeal, but when your system is ready, it will be different. Right now of course you feel that no-one else in the world could ever measure up, but it just ain't true. Thank God the world is bigger than that. Speaking from experience, there's the possibility of immense growth in this for you. I hope you don't mind me saying that - it's not a platitude, it's my genuine experience.
ReplyDeleteAll the best mate,
pedro
Thanks Pedro. You're right of course. I have already started on the "immense growth": partly forced on me because my habitual ways of thinking have been challenged by the separation, and partly because I am deliberately trying to keep busy with new projects.
ReplyDeleteAnd BTW, thanks for being the firt to comment on this blog. I really hope a community can build around this -- it's not my aim just to vent my own anguish.
— Nat
And although it can't be conceived now, the way you view the women you fell in love with and still love will alter radically over time, so in time you will not longer view her with heartfelt emotion but more objectivity, and perhaps will see her as far from the right women for you, although in grief now, that is also inconceivable as you just want love returned and restored. Max from South Bend Indiana
ReplyDeleteThanks Max. I find there's a complex interaction between my emotional attachment and my willful commitment to H. I am proud that people can depend on me to stick to what I promise, and I made a complete commitment to H "through better or worse etc, til death do us part".
ReplyDeleteI don't know about other guys, but for me, that promise is hard to rescind. So this sense of dead-endness is both emotional (how will I ever get over H?) and cognitive (how will I ever get over this failed commitment, and would I ever be able to risk another similar commitment?)
--Nat.