Blegh. I feel like such a loser. When hard things come, I have to purposefully sit down an analyze them to get through them. It makes me feel like such a rigid person, not a go-with-the-flow kind of person. Which, don't get me wrong, I don't see any problem with being a scientific person with things, but I feel like that's not really me. I guess I'd rather go with the flow, figure things out as they come, and take things one step at a time, but in situations like this, it's handy to be able to put everything aside for a few moments and try to figure out exactly why I feel the way I feel. Since I feel so deeply, it really helps me to be able to release negative emotions that hurt me so much.
Right now, I'm not exactly... hurting from these things. After feeling hopeless for so long that things weren't ever going to turn out okay, these emotions are a little easier to deal with. Unfortunately, it makes the feelings that I'm feeling now a little harder to understand because they aren't bludgeoning me in the face.
Somehow, having talked to Andrew the other day isn't some sort of big relief to me where I'm sitting there going "Ahh, now I feel so much better!" It's kind of like "This is the natural way I knew it was going to happen... eventually." So it's not a surprise, and it's not a relief.
Well, I suppose that's not true. I do feel somewhat relieved, but I don't know if I'll feel all the way relieved yet. I think I'll only feel relieved once this is all over, once everything is all out in the open, and once I come to a conclusion.
I suppose there are people out there saying "Just let it go already." I know that's what Andrew thinks. He told me that I have a hard time letting things go. And that's about the silliest thing I've ever heard! I am one of the most forgiving people you'll ever meet! When people are mean to me beyond what they should be mean to me, I see past their actions and see their hurts, and forgive them. I put everything I am into loving them, accepting them, and wanting the best for them. I pray for them, I cry for them, and I struggle for them.
So I'm not sure where he gets the idea that I can't let things go.
Except I have been talking to him, and he keeps saying "If you won't accept this, you're never going to accept this, so it's just a waste of time!" I think I see that pattern in him from myself. I keep telling him "Just because it you don't see any point in it doesn't mean there isn't any point!" So to him, it feels pointless and like I just won't let things go, so he assumes that it feels the same way for me as it does for him. But I keep telling him "STOP ASSUMING! Just because it feels like we're going in circles for YOU doesn't mean that I'm not getting anything out of this!"
I told him that like me, he feels everything very deeply the things that people feel. But there are times when he doesn't feel the things that others feel, and that leaves him assuming that other people don't feel like that either. And that's called being insensitive when you refuse to accept when another person says "I feel this way!" Because he feels what other people feel, it leaves him at a loss in those times when he doesn't feel what they feel.
Thus, he's made a lot of silly assumtions about me.
See, a part of me wants to help him understand, not just for me, but for his whole life, that he won't always feel what the other person is feeling, and that it's foolish to assume that he does. Because in all reality, while you can understand the things that are going on enough to get a really strong sense about them, it is extremely difficult to know their whole life story, to know how this thing in their past effects the way that they feel about this, and that thing in their past effects the way they feel about that. So, most of the time you just have to accept when they say "No, I'm telling you, it's different for me than it is for you!"
Then, another part of me says "He isn't the person for you anyway, so why are you fighting so hard so that he can understand? He won't understand. He's just going to misunderstand over and over. This isn't the end of it, you know it. If you decide to do this there are going to be a lot more struggles ahead for you. But you know so many people now who accept you for the person you are, they don't assume that they know you, they accept when you said 'I feel like this', they help you through your struggles, they give advice freely, and you don't feel like you're always on eggshells with them! Don't you want a person like that?"
Only, it's hard to separate that a part of me is fighting so that he can understand for his next relationship, and a part of me is fighting because I still think that it might be able to work out, even if it takes a lot of work.
It's only that... it's true, I don't know the ending to this. I don't know what will happen. I don't know, and I think it's probably so that even after I fight all I can for him, for him to understand where I'm coming from (or for me to understand where he's coming from) that we still won't end up together. So it's difficult for me to answer the question--after I understand in my heart that I probably don't want a person like him who refuses so much to understand that I am not him in the way I feel, and who cannot accept me for who I am in the bad times as well as the good--about why I am doing this. All I can say is that I'm probably fighting for him as much as I'm fighting for myself. I'm fighting because I don't want him to screw up his next relationship in the same way. Or, perhaps I'm fighting because I still believe we have a fighting chance after working through things.
You see, Andrew has this idea. And I'm really not sure the whole extent of his idea, because when I try to summaraze his idea up to make sure I understand, he says "No, that's not it." But the words that he's told me is that he's talked to a lot of couples who ended up together and asked them how they knew. And they said that they realized that they could get married because there wasn't a whole lot of issues to be worked out.
And while I think that's great for them, I think that's also... hm... an... unrealistic hope.
Because, like Nathan said, what about after they're married? Did they have no problems then, too? Does he expect that after they're married that there's also not going to be a lot of issues to work out, either? I told Nathan that I've been trying to tell him that marriage isn't something that you should go into blindly like that, and I think a lot of people make that mistake of thinking that just because there aren't a lot of problems to work out beforehand, that there won't be a lot of problems to work out afterwards, either. And Nathan answered that it was better to work things out before you got married than after if you can, in any case. Which, I think is true, too.
I guess I've always been one to take relationships more seriously. I can remember the first time I started to feel this way, was when my father said to me "The problem with dating is that people get into it and out of it whenever they feel like it. They give up too easily because they don't want to help the other person grow. And so that sets a pattern for marriage, as well. So, no wonder there are so many divorces."
That's when I first started feeling that you shouldn't get out of a relationship just because the other person is having problems--friendship or otherwise. There are reasons to get out of a relationship that has to do with you deciding that you're not strong enough for this, or that you realize you don't like who they are or something of the sort. But I think often that exhaustion from helping a person--friendships or otherwise--gets confused with "I don't like this person."
Well, I think that needs a little more fleshing out, but I do think that it's often too easy in our society to think things are just supposed to "click", when in reality, hormones make things click. Or, more accurately, it makes you blind, or it makes one or the other give up so that they other can have what they want. But you know the real strenght of love when all the hormones are gone, you're exhausted, you're tired, you think "Is there even any point" but you still pull through anyway for the other person (barring if you realize that you just don't like them. But for me, I didn't give up on Andrew even though his parents always seemed to hate me, even though I was exhausted, even though I had doubts, even though I didn't know what the ending was going to be or how long it was going to take, because I did like everything about him. And so far, it seems that that's the way it was for Andrew, too, only when his doubts came up, he didn't have any reason why it shouldn't be so that he should break up with me if he was exhausted [which, I have no problem with that that. If he didn't understand, can I really penalize him for not understanding? Can I really become angry at him because he didn't have the same information that I had? Sure, I can be frustrated with him--which I am--but I don't think I can penalize him for it]). It seems, so far, that he did like me.
There are two questions I have for him, then. It is possible that he didn't like me enough. That, I think... is okay. But it is also possible that exhaustion got to him and he thought that relationships really weren't supposed to be like this. It's possible that he really did like me enough to stay with me through everything, but it's only that he didn't realize that relationships take work. The best relationships are ones where people don't avoid when they're upset about things and voice the reasons why they're upset in an effort to try to work things out, not where they pretend that nothing is wrong (this scenario is inside marriage. Outside marriage, they usually realize that they don't have to pretend that nothing is wrong, and since they see no alternative [which again, I don't think I can penalize them for it if they didn't have the information they needed] they merely break up). I want to know which it is. Was it that he didn't like me enough, or was it that he didn't really realize the extent of work it takes to make a relationship succeed? Or, perhaps, there is something I'm missing altogether. If there is, I would like to know his reasoning.
We'll have to see, won't we? Because he told me I could call, I think I'm going to call him again soon.
--Caitlin
