We’re staying together. Or maybe I should say we’ve got back together, because the last seven days were basically us splitting up in everything but name.
On reflection of that fact, my inclination is to jump up, shout “YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!”, and pour the bottle of cheap plonk I’m drinking over my head, but I’m not going to be doing that any time soon, because after last weekend my girlfriend had every right to kick me to the curb quicker than you would a BNP door-stepper with swine flu.
Last weekend’s horror show was, in a demented way, almost a bit of an epiphany – in the aftermath I could finally properly see the amount of shit I’ve piled on my girlfriend, how I’ve made her responsible not just for our relationship but for me as well. Yesterday I realised I’ve been doing that for three years of our three and a half year relationship. And that’s why she’s at the end of her tether.
When we met up on Friday night I told her I could finally see how I’ve always tried to justify what I’ve made her put up with, that every crisis I made her help me cope with – from fictional brain diseases to being on the verge of homelessness to being late for her last birthday knees up – I always dressed it up as a one off that would never happen again.
Sure, everyone has predicaments in their life that they can’t deal with, that they need to lean on someone else to cope with, but they don’t have them once a month. And everyone has issues in their life that bother them, but they don’t burden the one they claim to love the most WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE.
No wonder she feels like I’ve ground her down and exhausted her. I’ve told her I can’t cope without her on more than one occasion, and no relationship can be sustained under that sort of pressure. If she did the same to me I don’t know if I could deal with the level of expectation, but she has had to do it for years.
She asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted us to stay together. She said she felt like both options available to us sucked. I told her that, while I would always regret how unhappy I’ve made her with what I’ve put on her, I’d regret it even more if I didn’t try and save what we have. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but it felt like the easiest thing to do on finally realising how much I’d fucked up would have been to give up and feel sorry for myself that I’d lost the person I loved.
She agreed, but said our relationship has to be about her and what she wants after three years of being all about me. That she wants to at last have the freedom to live her life without the burden of my problems and without me dragging her back from going where she wants to go in life. She said that I am going to have to take what comes my way from her without resenting her and complaining that she’s testing me. She said that something snapped last weekend, and that the only way we could continue to be together is if things changed dramatically.
I accepted her terms. After what I’ve taken from her, how could I not? I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think that what we have was worth saving, and I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think I could do it. I’m not kidding myself – it’s going to be fucking hard. There’s a very real chance that, even if changing things goes to plan, it may not work out after all that’s happened, but I’m prepared to risk it for what we have because I’d regret it until the day I died if I didn’t – even if I die aged 181 while trying to remove my supermodel girlfriends bra with my teeth.
Where we go from here is still not entirely clear; there’s a long way to go until I can convince her I can change and that we can have the life together we both want. I also have to accept that we probably won’t be having sex for some time and show her friends I’m not some arsehole hellbent on making their friend miserable.
I feel that, if nothing else, the experience of the last week will stand me in good stead. I felt as if my greatest fear – that my inability to cope with life would lead to me losing her – had been realised, yet I was able to live my life despite that. If things work out the way I really hope they do then that experience may at last give us, and me, the balance we’ve never had. I’d do anything to make her happy, but, for that to happen, I have to be happy too, and I have to take responsibility for that. Onwards…
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