Morning.

As this phase of my life takes root, I find myself becoming increasingly selective about who I spend time with.  It isn’t as selfishly narrow as only seeking out those who support my quest to answer such questions as “Who am I?” or “What do I want?”  It is more centered on seeking those who have the capacity to welcome love into their lives and with whom I can genuinely bring an open heart.

For a very long time I lived with someone who was bound to a closed system of thinking. The ability to connect from the heart, non-existent. I believed he had it all figured out; he was my hero. I believed love meant aligning myself to his carefully crafted world view. I largely remained oblivious to his emotional bankruptcy and his own lack of psychological insight.  I accepted his contention the problem was me. For years I accepted the label as the flawed one, as if only one individual in a relationship can harbor flaws. 

The awakening which led to the decision to leave was gradual. For several years I tried to shift the dynamic of the relationship with multiple attempts at couples therapy and was consistently rebuffed. Eventually, I understood the target for what would earn me his label of loving supportive partner would remain elusive and ever changing; it became something I no longer sought.  I slowly began to understand he despised me, though the degree to which that was true was not completely clear to me until long after I left.

I feared the disruptive impact leaving would have on the children, yet I felt my ability to be present and caring while under the same roof dissipating. I increasingly hid, in books, headphones and naps with the dog. Eventually, I came to the realization a friend’s words were true, “It’s likely never going to work if only one person is willing to change.”  

Shortly after she died, I found a letter from my father among my mother’s papers.  Their relationship was a textbook example of codependence gone awry, yet his love for her, expressed in the written word was palpable and real. When I thought of my own marriage, I realized love, if it ever existed (and I doubted it genuinely did) was gone and there was no rebuilding.

The decision to leave nearly killed me. That sounds rather dramatic, but I think it is true. As friends and family warned, once I spoke aloud of my decision to leave, I unleashed an anger from within him from which there would be no recovery. I was somewhat prepared for this. I was not prepared for the proverbial long dark night of the soul and the existential spiritual emptiness I experienced.

While I no longer view myself as a victim, I understand how my choices and manner of living left me victimized. I had made the choice to live with someone who was emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically abusive probably because of his own emotional, spiritual and psychological bankruptcy.  When one spends so much time accepting another person’s view of who you are, when you are willing to give up your sense of self and your life decisions to someone else, there’s fallout that must be acknowledged. If I am not what I believed and professed to be for a quarter of a century, what is left? Who is really there? Was I soulless and void?

The path to living a life with a healthy sense of self and learning to trust the direction I am moving in took a long time.  Because there were children, it wasn’t as simple as walking away. Three years since leaving I remain exposed to this individual’s machinations and meddling attempts to undermine and tear down my relatively new sense of self. For a long time, I continued to respond to such goading. Eventually I was able to stop stepping into the circular fight and my responses were only internal.

This weekend, a small moment brought into consciousness an awareness that I am not only non-participatory in his dysfunction, but I am barely affected, if at all. I have managed to withdraw and cease engaging in dialogue that leads nowhere. I am no longer drawn into point – counterpoint arguments.  I no longer wish to disengage his smugness or correct his misinformed conclusions about who I am. It simply doesn’t matter. 

With this awareness I realized an exquisite freedom.

Although unfamiliar and unchartered, this freedom is knowing I am on solid footing in what I know to be true of myself, and knowing nothing much else reaches that level of importance.  [The word “footing” carefully chosen here, as this is not a mental exercise; this is full body, full lifestream experience.]

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this freedom is finding myself wholeheartedly ready to relish in the experience of others who are open-hearted and capable of welcoming love into their lives, and experiencing pure delight at the prospect of asking, “Who are you?” or “What do you want?”