Nearly 2:00am, I am at my workstation with no work to do. Thank God. It is one week before Christmas and I believe I am in the worst state of mind and spirit I ever have been for the holiday season. This was not the case until this past Monday morning when my I felt like my life’s blood drained from my body.
There is a woman. A very special woman who has taught me more about life and myself than I realized possible. We have known each other for just over two years and I love her like no other who has come before. I admire her for her honesty, loyalty and faith in her God. These are all areas I am working to grow in within my own life.
We do not live together or in the same town but we are not far from each other either. We have had days on end together and then times when we could not see each other for a week. I have often thought about the idea of cohabitating with her, possibly getting married. This would involve relocating for one or both of us. I know I have work to do before I am ready for the vows. I know she would say the same for herself.
In our time together we have had ‘ups’ and ‘downs’. I would attribute most of the ‘ups’ to her. Similarly, I attribute most of the ‘downs’ to me. We are very much alike in many ways. We are on the same path of progress and growth in our lives. She has a head start on me by a number of years. I respect every minute she has been on that path and every ounce of energy she has poured into changing & improving herself. She exemplifies all that I desire in a partner, to love, honor and respect. My history is not filled with a lot of these traits, thus my desire to change and grow.
I have, in our time together been guilty of being less than totally honest, not totally forth coming and having a case of wandering eyes at inappropriate moments… GUILTY.
I have been guilty of down-playing ‘friendships’ with women ‘on-line’. I really only ever thought of any of them as friends and had no romantic interest whatsoever in them. I wanted to believe in innocent, fun friends… without motives for anything else. I was wrong… GUILTY.
I have frequented some ‘not so nice’ web sites. Some of these I had even registered with, before we met and even before changing the course of my life to where I am today. One site was initially joined for artistic networking and I used it briefly, then interest waned. Some time later I discovered there were certain types of photos on there, passed off as art, bordering on pornography. I unthinkingly marked a bunch as favorites and left a few comments on some of them. Why? I don’t really know. I wanted no interaction with anyone there. I was happy and in love. I think it was just having too much time on my hands and nothing to do… GUILTY.
There was another site that was more of an ‘adult networking’ site. I had, with a previous partner, registered with this site and perused it a few times. Never did I communicate with or contact anyone on there and had no desire to do so. This was intriguing to view but not to take part in, way too risky for me. I would receive occasional emails from this site containing potential matches based on my criteria upon registration. None of this interested me and I requested that the emails no longer be sent.
There was a breakup, my doing. I was in a state of mind that was less than stable. I, like many, have issues from the past to deal with. This was a time when many of them were waiting in the wings, needing to be dealt. As such, a few of these issues had their way with me and I caused my love pain and heartache. I did then do the work I needed to in order to get through these core issues. We soon came back together with a firm resolve to move beyond it and things were awesome.
Then came the above mentioned websites, out of the shadows of secrecy. She became aware of my ‘favoriting’ and ‘commenting’ photos on the so-called ‘artistic’ site. I was ashamed and angry at the same time. I thought I did nothing wrong. It was made clear to me that I was opening a door for communication between myself and these people by commenting and such. There was never an exchange beyond my comments with any of them.
It was at this time I was asked to put it all on the table. Anything else that might be happening behind the scenes in my boredom. I claimed nothing else, without much thought.
A few months later, a blatant stare at a woman in a store, modeling a Halloween costume. There is no excuse for it. She was not all that, not someone I would have ever been interested in. It wasn’t a sexual fantasy type of moment or anything. She was half falling out of the top end of the costume and it caught my attention, I was waiting for ‘the show’. Then my love, standing 15 feet away caught me in the stare and came to see what I was looking at… GUILTY.
This was a major issue and a signal for me to look into possible obsessions in that area. I began to explore ways of dealing with this and asked my God for help with it. I have a great network of friends who are there for me for anything. If they can’t help me with something, they try to find someone who can. I am blessed to have the support I do in my circle of friends. As one of my friends explained it, that incident was like carrying her to the top of the Empire State Building and throwing her off of it. That really hit home with me, hard. I vowed to never do that to her again.
Then it came, what seems to have been the final straw. One day after leaving her house she began questioning me aggressively via text. I could not figure out for the life of me where this was coming from as we had just had the better part of two really nice days together. It seemed I had left an email account logged on at her house. I had logged in and when I was done I just closed the browser without logging out. When she brought up that same site to go to her email account, it brought her to my inbox.
This was the email account that I setup mainly to receive junk mail from sites I registered with in order to keep my primary email account spam free. This was the account where the ‘adult networking’ matches had been received and had gone undeleted. I told her the complete truth about how I came to be getting those emails. I then tried to login to the site to un-register, I did not know the password. When I requested they send me the password I got a response that I requested no emails from that site so they can’t send me the password. I have not received an email since thankfully.
The thing is, this last event undermined the little trust she was beginning to build in me. In the following six weeks things changed between us, a lot. She started a new job. She said she was feeling too much pressure between work, her kids and other needs to see me as often as we were getting together. We agreed to limit our time to once a week. In hindsight I see that she was just backing away because of the lost trust.
I have been making good use of the time working on things I need to address. I actually, in my mind felt that we were ok and getting better because I was respecting her needs for more time for herself as well as working on me.
Then I went to her house Sunday night, as had become routine the past four weeks, and spent the night. We slept cuddled together and it felt perfectly natural. It has never felt so right to have someone beside me, in my arms as I slept. We were both off the next day and I was looking forward to spending the day with her, possibly going with her to get a Christmas tree when the kids got home from school. None of that was to be. After the kids were gone, after about ten minutes of seeming normalcy, she told me she can’t do this anymore and that she needs time. I totally did not see it coming and I was crushed.
I have slept about 12-15 hours since Monday and have lost 6 lbs. I miss my lady, my friend, my love. I know I can’t fix this, us overnight. I thought that time together would help more than time apart. My heart aches. We have not spoken since I left her house on Monday. I promised to give her time and space. As of last night I am doing that completely.
Things have come into my mind making me think she has someone else that she is interested in already. I am thinking it must be my lack of sleep and proper nutrition coupled with the shock of the turn of events this week. One day we were exchanging Christmas gift ideas for each other, the next we were done. The woman I know and love wouldn’t jump to someone else that quickly. Based on my knowledge of her history and where she is today, I know she has grown and is smarter than that. She has never given me a reason to doubt her. She says there is no one else so I must believe her. My hope would be that if there was she would tell me. Considering how open she was to telling me we were done, I believe she would be honest enough to tell me.
My only wish for Christmas is to speak with her. To know if there is any hope for us for a future. I do not want to let go of her but I have. She has become such a part of my life that I find myself instinctively wanting to pick up the phone to call or text, based on where I am or what I am doing or even what time it is.
I know I have not been a perfect partner in this relationship but I have been working towards progress as much as possible. I have never cheated on her. I never want to hurt my love ever again. I miss her more than I ever thought possible for one to miss another. I can still feel her next to me when I try to sleep. I just want to stroke her hair gently and tell her everything will be fine. I know it…
I love you Donna! I am saying it here because you may never give me the chance to again.
I love you…
Now… two hours after I started pouring it out I will now post this… for me and for anyone who might benefit from lessons I am learning. Thank you and God bless you if you actually read this to the end.
Written by Dave Baun for Donna Fahy-Hrobak, my love
