Pathways

My wise mother told me, years before I met John, "Be careful who you marry.  He will be responsible for 90% of your happiness, 90% of your unhappiness."  She was spot on.  John is.

Nothing drives me nuttier than experiencing the same core grating behaviors he  first exhibited during our courtship, 26 years ago.  It's not the actions that drive me right up the wall;  it's the fact that they haven't changed over all those years.  I do things that drive John batty, but they're not the same ones that drove him around the bend in the early 1990s.  I worked on those, changed troubling behaviors.  I could see actions that harmed our relationship & take active steps to recognize them as they were happening, then recognize them as they were ABOUT to happen, then feel the triggers that sparked them, then feel their faint origins & stop them, not by suppressing but by SEEING them, letting them know they were seen, and sending them off on a non-destructive way.

That, to me, is what all human relationships are meant to be - healthful spurs to living a more wholesome, less harmful (to others & self) life.  I didn't learn that.  I was born knowing it.  It has brought its own funky cross, because a lot of people don't see what I am getting at.  John certainly doesn't.  To me, he has no curiosity about what makes himself tick, has not interest in going though what are to be the basic steps, the ABCs of breathing on this planet.  He doesn't think that way.  My normal is not his.

I do all I can to have it not matter, but it does.  I know from friends that his way is the more normal way for people to respond to a thoughtless action, with reasons & pledge after pledge after pledge to not do it again, only to do it again because he never got in the first place what had gone wrong, let alone the reason it had.  

Here's the thing, as I see it.  If someone does something that clearly creates a problem for someone, the BEST thing he or she can do, right off the bat, is say something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm sorry!"  Not ten or fifteen minutes later.  Right off the bat.  Just those three words as a response.  Not, "Well, I opened the window next to your seat because I wanted fresh air & it was raining & I would have gotten wet if I'd opened mine."  

When we tell someone, "I am sorry," when we've messed up, it sends the message to the brain, "Oops!  That was  mistake.  Don't do it again."  Of course there was a reason John opened the window next to where I would be sitting - it just wasn't a good one, at least not to me.  But because the first words out his mouth was the WHY rather than a mea culpa, a similar action is bound to happen down the road.

It's hard being married to me.  It's hard having me for a sibling or a child.  It's just always been my expectation that the great value out of being in relationship is that it/they present so many opportunities for self improvement, for getting out of getting in the way of loving, of at least compassion.  Dad got it, but he died when I was in my early twenties.  He would have been button bustin' proud that Mom DID finally get it, in her late 80s.  She got it in her own time, which is when we all get tuned in, if we ever do.  

My expectation - as natural as breathing for me  - of introspection & connecting with chronic dysfunction & trying something to set things better can be massively exasperating to others not so inclined.  And I just don't get people not doing all they can to create new pathways in the brain for better-next-time actions.  

John & I have a remarkable relationship <<<<<<<<>>>>>>>> much of the time.  This one mega fly in our ointment brings about terrible unhappiness on <> much of the time.  But while we're in that tiny space, it darkens our universe, turns the shining orb of our love into a black hole.

I don't get how he can be the way he is & John can't get why I am the way I am.  It's a small thing, but it keeps up apart in very big ways.  John likes to think of  us as together forever.  Me, not so much.  To feel this particular heartbreak to forever?  I think not.  

Am hoping that someday John gets a clue about what he does & makes some effort, even a teensy one, to making things better.  Until that time, I am happy to be on the same pathway with him in our here & now.  For to eternity?  

 
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