Love Stinks!

Baha you're no bigger an a**hole than anybody else.

Some way or another it can all work out. Even if you have maniac depressive tendencies (which to my untrained but tainted with experience eye seems more than a little likely...) it is good to see a therapist who may refer you to a practice that works with pharmaceutical options. It works for a lot of people. There is plenty of reason to keep moving forward.

I've had my share of shit that I bring on myself. Occasionally Mrs. Adams will have to be out of town for a couple of days for work. This is such a week. She got to Dulles Sunday night and I have been running non-f**king stop since. I whine. I have my mom helping out. It is a nightmare. I toss my son in the car at 7 AM drive, like a maniac to get him to daycare (which is at my wife's office site, 18 miles north). Jump back in the car to drive 15 minutes to a commuter train close to her office. Shove four quarters in the damned parking slots. Sprint to a train. Sprint to the office. Sprint back 8 hours later. Hope to hell my 83 yr. old mom doesn't get in an accident getting my daughter to kindergarten and aftercare. Mrs. Adams is due back Wednesday night. She says shes dreading getting back back she knows how "needy" I'll be. She complained last time I talked to her that I was not being particularly sensitive to the fact that she does most of the child shuttling by herself routinely, that I was shopping more for a phone for myself than a simple replacement for hers and that was not being romantic. Right now I just think I'll be lucky not to suffer a seizure...

Mrs. Adams has the kids signed up for "summer care" a few days a week up near her office and a sitter the rest of the time. That should do a number on her crazy pace, our finances and the impact our finances has on both of our moods. I sorta wish I would have gotten a giant mortagage and gone all non-performing on it so that Barney Frank could kinda sorta bail my ass out but I'm not enough of a schemer to have thought that far ahead. I did want to pull the trigger on a giant remodel/addition but I chickened out on that last fall...

I know next year when they are both in gradeschool a mere 3/4 of mile away things ought to be much more tolerable schedule wise, but I dare not think 12 months out and figure out wtf we are going to do for summer of next year and how we'll pay for that. If we survive till then.

I actually made a nice frittata for Mrs. Adams and her mother for brunch on Mothers Day. Hand sliced two leeks, hand shredded 3 ounces of Gruy?re and broke out the semi-busted food processor to make the thing before I took Mrs. Adams to Midway Airport. Did I mention that our power was out for about two hours before that?

Truth be told I've thought of stepping off the train platform more than a time or two myself. I've also sort've plotted out how f'ed that would leave my family. I have even toyed with the idea of going all murder/suicide rampage in the whole "domestic homicide" model but it seems like a helluva lot more effort than I'm inclined to undertake:

http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/44/4/468

http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Doesnt-Look-Murderer-Margie/dp/0972021833/ref=sid_dp_dp

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Domestic-Homicide-Northeastern-Gender/dp/1555533930

I sorta suspect that guys from the generation of my dad/grandfather put so f**cking much time in at the local bar or Moose Lodge or what have you that they missed out on these feelings, or at least were numbed out by the cheap booze that most "fraternal orders: doled out...

So yeah, you're not any more of an a**hole than anyone else...

Hmmm... I really don't know how scary that come off.

Things are not THAT bad most of time.

I sorta see myself as a having bouts of "poetry slam" thinking more than anything else.

Really. I'm generally a nice guy. And not in in "he was so quiet and kept to himself" sort of way. Really. I'm practically Stuart Smalley with out the sweaters.

two quick things. i've been told that it's usual for it to take half the time your old relationship was to get over it (or at least don't beat yourself up if it doesn't happen more quickly). and that expect to have a "transitional" relationship or two before you're really ready to be in one again. it's rough going in with a new person to lead with that, but everyone should be aware up front.

as dan savage says: every relationship ends. until one doesn't.

just to add to the misery: i had an email exchange w/ my ex-GF's ex-husband. it was very enlightening. i found out that she's met him when she was living with another guy, told him how "miserable" that was, hooked up with him, married him. she met me when her marriage was on the rocks, told me how "miserable" it was, divorced him. and finding out from the ex-husband that last summer, she had lunch with him and asked him which of the pro racers she knew she should sleep with. this was while she told me she wasn't interested in sex because of her anti-depressants (in retrospect, what she was looking for was the thrill of the "forbidden", which was what got her off). and she was already luring in another bike racer, a guy who used to be a mutual friend, even while i was still living with her. it helps me to know that this is her pattern, and she'll repeat it until the day she dies; not entirely my fault. so she's humping the new guy (who used to be engaged to her teammate, until the teammate dumped him) and he's living with her. he wrenches part-time in a bike shop and was couch surfing for years. so she's found a guy who'll fix her bike for free and never giver her guff or contradict her.

ddt

Well, I don't see much fault of your own here DDT.

At most you were trusting and open and thats not a bad thing--you couldn't have known you found someone that wanted to take advantage of you. I know from my own experience that a woman unhappy in her marriage is likely to be looking for an out where ever she can find it (whether they realize it or not). No matter how real it is for us, its just them trying to paper over an unfillable void.

But what do I know... I'm deeply in love with my current girlfriend, but it could be that her insecurity (stemming from her recent divorce after 10 years of marriage) will doom any long-term relationship between us.

Try to do what makes you happy, Baha. And I know that sometimes that can be the hardest thing to figure out. All the best.

do what makes me happy if that whole thing about making yourself happy goes south on you.

I'm just glad to know that the rest of you as as fucked up as me. It's good to have company.

And baha, you ain't an asshole (at least about this, let's not go all soft and fuzzy here). If you where, you wouldn't be agonizing about it.

Let me take off my lurking cloak for a while and offer some thoughts that may or may not help. Therapy can help, in fact it can literally be a life saver. Since this is an area of some expertise for me though, let me offer a couple of suggestions. First, the single best predictor of therapy success is the relationship between the therapist and the client, so if you go see a therapist and the "fit" does not seem to be a good one, don't hesitate to try another therapist. This does not mean that the person you were seeing is not competent, simply that therapy is a massively interpersonal area, and you should try to find someone that you are comfortable with and can work with. That said, any therapist worth their pay is going to make you uncomfortable and say things that piss you off, so you can't go around changing therapists just because you are pushed on a point. The most successful therapists are generally those who have a cognitive/behavioral perspective, but since I have a dog in the fight of theoretical framework, there may be therapists of other theoretical perspectives that are very skilled. There are some amazingly skilled therapists out there, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, the degree is not the most important thing, but the skill level of the individual therapist and the client/therapist interaction. And as with any profession, there are quacks out there too and people who are simply incompetent.

That said, relationships are probably the most staggeringly difficult thing for us to do and to get right, whatever right might be. Like most of you, I sit here having had several relationships that were not successful and each was painful and required time and work to get past, not over, but past. At 63 I still find myself occasionally looking back at relationships in my twenties and wondering how I could have made them work. Having kids involved makes it even more painful and difficult for everyone. To preach the standard perspective, the needs of the kids have to be kept at the fore.. but if we could not have a good marriage, gawd, a good divorce is even harder, but is possible.

Anyway, Baha, DDT, and all of us.. keep in mind that all you can do is the best you can, find a good therapist and struggle to point to the future, since we cannot change the past, not matter how much we focus on it and talk about it.. trite but true..

Take care and be well..
Jerry

I agree with psychprof. I've seen a shrink for a very long time and I find it enormously helpful to have somebody professional and competent like that who understands me and is helpful.
Some family member have also seen therapists but they've cheaped out in their selection methods and it shows. Get somebody good.

thanks, jerry. i'm so not good at bailing on a therapist i tried (so wimpy), but learning this. sucks to start over after paying.

ddt

I was fortunate to find some gratis counseling that is helping. There is no way I could afford to pay right now.

Just cried my eyes out over the movie "PS, I love you"
my freaking gosh can anyone watch that and not cry.

Know what you mean; saw it on the flight from India to Paris. Had to swallow a few times.

Bah humbug.

Irritating formulaic chick-flick based on a book by a mediocre and overly-sentimental Irish author...

did you cry, strong man?

I cried when I watched Conan the Barbarian. No. I wept.

But then the snakes came.

And I ate sand.

Fire and anger! Wheel of fortune! Free the little guy!

well, the ex-GF was at the same bike race i went to today and parked about eight spots away. had to go past her multiple times; made sure i was smiling and never looked over at her. stared neutrally at her new BF (a mutual friend whom she started seeing while we were still living together) as he raced and had fun noticing he glanced over at me each time, like he was scared i was going to beat the shit out of him. though really, he's a victim. even ignored the ex-GF as she yelled that my number was on upside down (which it was).

racing was the only time i didn't think about her. the rest of the day was ruined by me mumbling to myself, reading her the riot act over and over, enumerating her lies and self-serving deceptions. "you gotta move on," my friends and family say, and i agree. if i could, i probably wouldn't be in therapy and on two anti-depressants. and wouldn't be posting here.

ddt

Wow Daniel. Tough day. I guess it's really hard to 'get over it' when you're confronted with the situation over and over again. It's really good that you keep doing your own thing, not let them get in the way or at least give them the impression that they don't. I respect that.

Not scary, Stan, I understand. It sounds all too much like things were at the worst.

But now, well... things are taking an interesting turn. I guess both of us had reserves we never knew were there? And the therapist said some interesting things too. Both my wife and I have parents in bad relationships so we never really learned how to behave in relationships together.

We've been talking for at least an hour every night for weeks now. At the start, this was about how all this would end. Now it's about how to make it work out. The result is that we're closer now than we've been for a few years. This may not last, but at least we need to give it a shot. As for my other situation... hmmm... we'll see. Seems like the break-up with her partner was messy enough she needs to get her own life back together.

We'll see. Quite a soap opera this is.

thanks, ton. wish i knew how to just "get over it".

baha, i'm so happy you guys are kicking emotional ass on this bad situation. it's things like that that give me hope i can be a better person (who knew baha would trigger that response?). you guys are amazing.

ddt