Motives

Thank you for your sweet comments on my last post. You ladies' kindness encourages me.

Beth, you are terribly gracious, but I'm afraid you give me more credit than is my due. I'm not in the least bit selfless nor sacrificial. If I was, truly, I would be so happy for the opportunities that come A's way that I wouldn't care if they left me feeling alone. I would embrace his successes because of what they meant for him, regardless of what they meant for me. In truth, I'm simply lonely. I feel trapped here and destined for sixty years of loneliness, punctuated by small, sweet moments of intimacy. I'm terrified of living out the rest of my days shadowed by a conviction that I'm always inherently falling short; always feeling like I'm robbing people of some greater joy they could be experiencing if they weren't with me.

A is a wonderful person. He's warm and loving and generous and never has a bad word to say about anyone. But he doesn't realise that all the kindness in the world can't take away the guilt I feel, knowing how much our marriage has cost him in terms of his career and his relationships within his family. I know I've trapped him in a lose-lose situation; he either follows his career aspirations at the cost of our marriage, or  invests in our marriage at the cost of his career. And I can't help but be aware that if he'd married someone else - another architect perhaps, or just someone less relational and more introverted who didn't mind spending so much time alone - he wouldn't have to make that choice. I'm also aware that there are plenty of women out there who would give their right arm to be with someone like him, and who would also give him the space he needs, and part of me wants to keep him at arm's length so that when one of those women snatches him away from me it won't be so painful.

So you see, there are no selfless motives in the things I do; only two entirely selfish instincts for self-preservation and self-destruction.

I did do one productive thing today, and that was to look at some adult learning courses offered in this area. Now that we're both earning it might be feasible for me to go to some kind of class a couple times a week. That might help, if only by getting me out of the house so I'm less aware of how often I'm alone there. And who knows? I might even make some friends. I'd underestimated the impact that moving to this side of town would have on my social life - it puts me about an hour's drive away from my old friends, which is just far enough to make it impractical during the week, and given that most of my colleagues are a good 20-40 years older than me, we don't tend to socialise much outside of the office, although the interactions we have at work are bright enough.

I'll be honest, I feel a sliver of optimism at this prospect. There are a number of courses that look interesting, from pottery to Italian to upholstery to sign language...

I'm sorry that the last few posts have been so down in the dumps. I'm still feeling kind of sad, but I think it won't last too much longer. I realise these marriage posts are a little off-topic for what was originally a weight-loss blog, too, but my scales are broken at the moment so I can't even hazard a guess as to how i'm doing or what I look like :| Will get back to that as soon as possible.

Thanks again for all your support and encouragement and for putting up with my whining...!

*hugs*