Relationships. I think I have always sucked at them.
It’s
difficult for an introvert who lives 75% of her life inside her head to blast
outside her skull enough to really do justice to a connection with another
person. Hard…so hard to go from implode
to expand. It takes a monumental effort
of will. Constant pep-talking and
second-guessing and trying to keep yourself going in the face of uncertain results… So much easier just to not bother. The older I get, the easier THAT gets—the not
bothering.
And then
there’s this: when you do it, when you actually make contact…or
you think you have…you expect WAAAAY too much in return.
Maybe
nothing less than an eternal commitment.
Maybe an understanding and at least a pat on the head for the herculean
effort it took to put yourself out there.
People
come and go out of each other’s lives all the time. I know that’s the way of it.
But for
those of us (those of me?) for whom
investment in a relationship costs almost more emotional capital than we possess,
the parting is so difficult. It’s like,
once we finally get the connection flowing, it’s hard to shut it off and reel
in the cord. Because it’s not just a
little skinny extension cord. It’s a
big, herkin’ 220-volt rubber-encased cable that has the capacity to transmit
more emotion and attachment than any normal person would want with
another. You don’t reel those in and
out with wild abandon.
And that
says nothing of the tangle of cables, wires, ropes and pulleys that develop
over three decades of marriage. Nearly
all of which were broken, severed or seriously frayed between July 1, 2006 and
May 10, 2011.
But, you
know…we’re working on it.
Or maybe
we’re not so much working on it as that the connections are finding their way
back together through the kind of magnetic attraction that develops between two
people who live together for a very long time.
And we have finally—after 3 ½ years—learned to leave them alone and quit
yanking them away again when they get close to reconnecting.
I write
this because it struck me, the other day, how long this reconnection has taken. How many months had to go by before I could
once again feel as if my husband does not just stay with me out of loyalty or
the constraint of the wedding vows or just pure inertia.
There is
at last that glimmer of recognition that we do actually still like each other.
A little
more time…a couple more months or years…and we might find ourselves in love
again.
That was nice to read. Gently gently.
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