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What caused my past relationships to fail?
Why were there topics that neither I nor my partners could discuss without it leading to emotional scenes, covert battles, confusion and final withdrawal? It felt to me that if I ‘surrendered’ on an issue I was dismissed as a wimp, and if I ‘won’, I would have to pay for it later. I hated the conflicts and in the end hoped they would simply pass by, or I would ‘tread carefully’ so as not to upset things. The battles would pass – but then eventually, so would the relationship.
Why did I yearn to be with a woman when I was alone, and yet feel trapped when I was in a relationship with a woman and secretly yearn to be free again? Was it that I had to accept the bad times in a relationship on the basis of ‘this too will pass?’ or ‘that is the way it is – the ups and downs of life.’ In the end, like everyone else I knew, I had give up on relationships; it was just that some chose to stay in their relationships on the basis of it being as ‘good as it gets’. Others stayed because the thought of starting again was too much. I had chose to give up. I simply wasn’t willing to get to the same place of ‘stuckness’ and compromise, nor did I want to inflict that on anyone else.
As I now look back on these relationships I find it amazing how my attitudes and actions were formed by my social conditioning, and that those instilled beliefs, ‘truths’, ethics, values and morals inevitably ensured the failure of an unliveable ideal. I had simply been re-taught that which had caused the failure of men and women to live in peace and harmony since time immemorial. It became obvious that there was something dramatically wrong with the whole male-female relating business, and that the problem was universal. I simply played out, like a puppet on a string, ‘my’ particular role in a play that was pre-scripted to failure or, at best, a second-rate compromise.
It was only when I was finally with my current wife, with a firm, mutually agreed pact in place that I was able to experience, investigate and make sense of the full range of feelings and emotions that arise in a love relationship between a man and a woman. Then subtly things began to get a little awkward, which I first attributed to the radical issues we were discussing and my particularly chaotic and nomadic life at the time. But something else was at the root of the problems between us – something else was causing this ‘dis-ease’ I felt.
I found myself continuously bringing up the issue of her not wanting to live with me and would strongly question her motives for wanting to maintain her ‘independence’. I began to become jealous of her around other men and of her time when we weren’t together. We both started to get anxious about meeting times and some misunderstandings occurred because of this. Once I misunderstood something she said, didn’t bother to check, and took it completely the wrong way. By the time a few hours had passed, I had made a mountain out of a molehill, interpreted what she had said as her wanting to get out of the relationship, decided this is how women always treated me, and that I wasn’t going to stand for it any more! However, finally I came to my senses, thinking what a good boy I was as I had ‘seen’ an old pattern of mine. Little did I know that what I had ‘discovered’ was to prove to be but the tip of the iceberg. The final straw came as I waited to meet her one evening and she was late.
As the time ticked away, so my mind raced away, and after about thirty minutes I was furious. How could she be late? How could anything else, or anyone else, be more important in her life than me? As my fury built and built, as my mind churned over countless possibilities as to why she was late, suddenly I began to see the stupidity of it all. Here I was, comfortably sitting at a seaside café, cool drink in hand, looking at a spectacular sunset on warm summer’s evening. I’m involved in the adventure of a lifetime, I’ve found out more about what it is to be a human being in the last few months than I have in a lifetime, there is this wonderful woman in my life – and I’m being neurotic because she is thirty minutes late! Gradually I came out of it and was able to be where I was, delighting in the balmy evening air and the gaiety of the scene as the last of the beach-goers drifted home. When my wife arrived she apologized for being late, and I explained what had happened to me. We had a beach walk, dinner at a nearby restaurant, and tootled off home to bed.
Over the next few days something continued to nag me. Why was it that this relationship seemed to be going off the rails? Why, increasingly, were there misunderstandings, petty conflicts and difficulties between us? Why was I becoming more and more obsessed about what she was doing when we weren’t together, and what she was thinking about when we were together? Over the next days I contemplated on what was wrong and suddenly it dawned on me that, despite our matter-of-fact contract and investigations, we had fallen in love! We were both exhibiting the classic symptoms, emotions and feelings associated with being in love. I was battling her and trying to force my opinions on her. I realized that I had been jealous, possessive, pushy, demanding and obsessive with her. And, most appallingly, I saw how when the impossible demands of love are not fulfilled then it can all so quickly turn to disappointment, resentment, withdrawal, spite and eventually hate. It had got to the stage where it was obvious to me that, unless something changed, this relationship was heading exactly the same way as all my previous ones – doomed to failure.
So this where I am. The future is wide open, I have no way of knowing what will happen. As I've written before, my wife is already questioning love.
It's so funny you say that because time and time again I find myself thinking that male-male relationships are universally fatally flawed (I'm a gay man) and to hear someone say the same about male-female relationships makes me question my priors regarding gay relationships. I think at the end of the day every relationship is going to require compromise and this compromise can make things seem less than ideal but it's just the best we've come up with so far.
As for the rest of your comment, I hate to sound like a broken record on these threads, but develop self esteem and learn gratitude for what you have and try to cultivate a charitable mindset that's realistic. Look at what you have that other people envy. Learn to appreciate it. When I imagine someone with something I want, and that they're miserable, it makes me hate that person. Don't be that person. Be the person who has what others want, and are grateful and happy for having it, not miserable that you don't have something slightly better.
You spiraled into self doubt when your partner was 30 minutes late because you are insecure in your ability to respond with grace and kindness toward yourself so you project it onto those around you. It is an immature and out of touch reaction so you should aim not to respond in immature and out of touch ways. When you are able to forgive yourself you can forgive those around you as well.
You wanted your relationship to fix the problems in your own mind, and when you brought someone into your life, she didn't fix them because you didn't have them worked out previously. She just highlighted your problems. Fix your inner issues on your own and then you'll be secure enough to have a woman who is fully human, as all women are, and not your imagined ideal of a woman who can fix every issue within you who doesn't exist.
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