Drifting Away

Photo by Rick Sampson

I feel myself pulling away from you. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure when, but I definitely am.  I don’t feel as close to you.  The love is still there, but the emotion is not. 

I have this strong sense right now that I need to focus on me.  I need to be all about me.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t have you around or that I don’t want you around, but I can’t continue to focus solely on you.  I have to start living for me.

I’m so exhausted and worn out with my life—I need to start doing things that make me happy, that bring life back into my life.  And right now, you are dragging me down.  I’m so concerned with your issues and your problems, that it’s consuming me and my disposition.  I feel as though I have your same issues and that’s not the case.  At least, I can’t let it be the case. 

My emotions have no time to be carrying the burdens of two people.  I have enough happening in my own life that I need to start paying attention to.  We can’t keep having two people focused on you and no one focused on me.  That’s not fair. 

I need to get my life back to a level of fairness…I need balance.  I need to be happy. 

Being without you does not make me happy, so that’s not what I want.  But I’m not sure how to get happiness in my life when I’m focused on you.   

So I’m going to need to be selfish for a while as I focus on the things that I enjoy.  I’m going to start saying “no” to people and start doing what I want to do to bring me joy. 

I need to pull away from you a bit and start pulling in more of myself.

A Dangerous Cycle?

I feel schizophrenic.  I’m all over the place.  One minute I’m super annoyed with you and the next minute I can’t get enough of you. 

You are my drug.  I drink you in.  Even when you are annoying and bad for me, I want more of you.  I can’t get enough of you.  I’m addicted to you, to how you make me feel.  When I take you all in, I get high—highly in love with you. 

But I’m afraid to overdose for fear of being dependent on you.  I can’t let you take over my whole body, my whole being.  I must only take you in moderation so to not totally give myself over to you.

So as soon as I feel myself slipping into dependence, I pull back.  I try to wing myself off of you.  Try to handle things by myself. Try to find love, satisfaction, joy from myself.  I withdraw from you, which pushes me into—withdraw.  The absence of you makes me low—lowering my desire to love. 

I become mean, angry, bitter—my heart closes and hardena to keep out the vulnerability, to keep out the dependency.  But being in this state is lonely…and miserable. 

So I begin to open up my heart again.  And on and on it goes.  I’m high then low, up then down, afraid then lonely.   

I don’t know how to even out my temperament.  I don’t know how to live a balanced life in a state of calm.  It’s like I get a rush from the randomness.  I enjoy the adventure.  I depend on the drama….

Maybe that’s my bigger drug—drama.  Maybe I need it to thrive, need it to function.  Maybe I need drama to make my life a bit less mundane.  Sometimes relationships just go through the moments, maybe I create drama and seem all over the place because I crave the noise, crave the obstacles. 

My relationship is up then down, up then down—is it my fault?...

What's the Limit Before Enough Is Enough?

How far are you supposed to go for your significant other?  How much are you supposed to do?  Do you keep giving and giving and giving until you have no more to give or do you cut off the “donations” before you’ve reached your breaking point?

Is there ever a time when you just stop giving to the relationship?  Are you allowed to give tough love to a relationship versus continuing to nurture it?

I’ve been giving a lot to my relationship…a lot of love, a lot of attention, a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort.  I’ve been giving all of me and all of my emotions to this relationship.  And, frankly, I’m tired.  I’m not tired in terms of wanting to escape, but tired in terms of wanting and needing things to change.  I just don’t know how long I can continue to give and not get much in return.  I want to keep giving—in fact, my love won’t let me stop giving.  But I’m not sure how long my mind and my energy can last.  The continuous donations are taking a toll on my health. 

It’s not that I haven’t gotten anything from the relationship, but recently I’ve been giving a lot more.  And I’m not sure if I’m “supposed” to keep giving or if I should enable him to take care of things himself.   As the man, isn’t he supposed to take care of things and handle his own issues?  I just don’t know how to balance “supporting your mate” with “letting a man be a man.” 

Every time I try to give tough love, the “soft love” in me wants to immediately console him or work to rectify a situation or problem he may be having. 

Is my giving a lot to this relationship my duty as a girlfriend or my way of enabling him?

Trust Is a Must

Where did this lack-of-trust issue come from?

Trusting your mate is essential in a relationship. In fact, I refuse to be in a relationship where trust is an issue because it only leads to bigger issues of jealousy, lack of commitment and insecurities. 

But recently, trust issues have snuck into my relationship without warning, without permission, without warrant. This unwelcome visitor has added tension to my relationship and has introduced doubt. This tension then has a way of resurfacing any time any problem or issue is introduced that looks anything close to our unwelcomed visitor. 

This visitor really made its presence known this weekend when my boyfriend decided he needed to talk to me in that instant; however, the rest of the world had other plans. My boyfriend wanted to talk to me and it seemed as if any and everything possible was prohibiting him from doing so.

It all started when I decided to go to my mom’s house for the weekend. I always have poor reception in her house, so I truly feel like every time I go to my mom’s house, my boyfriend and I end up getting in an argument over the fact that we weren’t able to get a hold of one another. So, that was the first thing. Then, at the particular time that he was calling me, I was asleep; which really isn’t a factor because my phone never rang in the first place (because of the poor reception), but I thought I’d throw that in. Lastly, my phone froze (which I didn’t find out until after I woke up. So when I eventually went to call him, I was unable to dial out and had to restart my phone.

So between sleep, bad reception and computer glitches, the universe seemed to be saying it didn’t want us talking at that particular moment. I went with it, knowing that we would eventually get to talk. My boyfriend didn’t want to go with it; he wanted to talk to me. 

So when he finally was able to get in touch with me, he was mad and frustrated and thought the perfect blend of sleep, reception and glitches was a lie! I must admit, it does seem improbable; however, very true!

So here we are—in an instant, trust issues were introduced. If I would have known that, I might have woken up earlier or put my phone in a part of the house that has better reception. But since I can’t change the past, I will work on kicking out this unwelcome guest!

Battling the Various Sides of Self

Sometimes my mood dictates my love for you. Depending on the type of mood I’m in, I will either be really affectionate or really distant; not on purpose ,but nevertheless it happens. I can tell when it’s happening too, but I feel as if I can’t control it. It’s like a different person is ruling my mood, my emotions, my attitude. A different, meaner person is telling my mind how to act and react. 

This person I almost don’t recognize; it’s not me. At least, I don’t want to believe it’s me. I want to believe the real me is always sweet, always patient, always affectionate. But that’s really not accurate or realistic. It’s not realistic to think that I will ALWAYS be a nice person to be around, right? Well, I’m just going to tell myself that in a feeble attempt to justify my ill-mannered behavior. 

Because whatever I end up telling myself, the action is the same. I act like a crazy person sometimes and I don’t know how to manage the crazy! When I get in this “certain mood,” I feel like I turn asexual. Any thing or being with a pee pee is annoying. It’s like my estrogen is the positive end of the magnet and his testosterone is the negative end—when they get close to each other, they repel each other. They can’t even get near each other, let alone touch. 

I wish I could really use that as an excuse: “Baby, it’s not that I don’t want to be around you…I can’t be around you!”

Unfortunately, he will not use that as an excuse…in fact, he has absolutely no tolerance or patient for that behavior. And who would blame him? If he had an on/off switch for love, I would have zero tolerance for that as well. 

The sweet me wants to scream out to him, “Wait, I’m sorry…don’t get mad!” But the mean me is strong and doesn’t let Little Sweetie Pie come through. I’m at war with myself…Sweet vs. Mean. I’m afraid to see who will win this war!

Putting the Spark Back Into Your Relationship

What’s the key to keeping the spark in a relationship? When the honeymoon phase is over, how do you ensure the passion remains?

When relationships transform from leisure into work, a shift occurs within the dynamics of the couple’s interactions where they start to become complacent and bored. They are not turned on as easily as before—they fall into the “danger zone” called status quo.

When you are in the “danger zone,” the way your man touches you or tries to tickle you, is annoying instead of cute. When you’re in the “danger zone,” the random, erratic way your man breathes when he sleeps is irritating instead of endearing. When you are in the “danger zone,” the cute little things you used to do to get your man’s attention just seem like overkill now.

The “danger zone” is ridden with eroding relationships, dissatisfied couples and jaded individuals. The “danger zone” is a place of forced acceptance of your reality.

When I come in contact with couples in the dreaded zone, I am saddened. I am saddened because here are two individuals who were once in love, but have let life get in the way of like. They have fallen into the trap of thinking lack of affection, lack of communication, lack of passion, lack of spontaneity and lack of intimacy are just the natural evolutions of relationships. But, really, those things are present in a relationship that has been taken for granted. When couples begin to assume the other will always be around or assume they don’t have to do anything extra anymore since they are married, or assume that the passion doesn’t need to be there as long as the love is there; that’s when they may begin assuming the title of “ex.” 

Couples need to start working toward a healthy relationship to enhance the love instead of letting an unhealthy relationship erode the love. 

The Power of Love

Love truly is powerful—it can make you do things that are seemingly out of character for you. Love can transform your mood or perspective on life. Love can encourage you, motivate you and persuade you. Love can put a rosy outlook on a bad situation. 

Love can do many things…but what Love cannot do is take away the little things that annoy you. Love can mask those little things for awhile, try to pretend like those little annoyances do not exist; but it cannot eliminate them completely.  And unfortunately, the one you love the most ends up being the one that can get you to that “annoyed” state the quickest. 

My boyfriend’s ANNOYING QUALITY OF THE WEEK is that he refuses to get a new cell phone charger. A couple months back, he misplaced his phone charger and has been using his car charger to charge his phone battery. Normally, I wouldn’t get upset over such a minor detail because at least he still has a method by which to charge his phone (i.e. the car); HOWEVER, it’s not that simple because his lack of a wall charger is impacting our relationship. It all came to a head one night when I thought he must be dead:

I’m sitting at home Wednesday evening watching TV when I get a text from my boyfriend saying he is on his way home and will call me within the hour. One hour goes by—no call. Thirty more minutes, still nothing. I don’t worry about it because I just figured it was taking him a bit longer than he expected to get home. Two hours now have gone by and I decide to text him: “Where are you”?  No response. Texts, calls, more texts—no response. At this point, 2 hours and 37 minutes go by and I’m thinking the worse.  Did something happen? Did he get in an accident? I hope he is okay. God, please let him by okay. Somewhere in the midst of worrying I fall asleep on the couch and am awaken at 3 in the morning by a phone call. My boyfriend is on the other line apologizing. I’m sorry, blah blah blah. I accidentally let my phone on the charger in my car and fell asleep.

So…all this time I’m thinking something awful has happened to him and he was just charging his phone! I was SUPER annoyed…and still am a little bit…

Clearly I still love him and my feelings for him have not changed. BUT my love for him was not able to overcome the extreme level of annoyance I had in that instance. 

Love is powerful—but not powerful enough!