You Gotta Decide

At our first counseling session, I confessed to fears that taunted me right after my boyfriend proposed.  One of which was the fear that he would leave me.  As this was met with assurances from my fiancé and our counselor who had counseled us earlier in our relationship, I explained where those fears came from.  We were talking about a wedding date and my fiancé talked about one of the things that had to be worked out before we got married.  To those listening, I'm sure they didn't hear what I heard in the way I heard it.  In fact, they didn't seem bothered at all.  I, on the other hand, was shaken by it.  My fear whispered in my ear, "See, he is back peddling.  He doesn't truly want to marry you." 

Both my fiancé and counselor sat patiently as I told them about my struggle with abandonment issues.  I was so spooked that I could not even think.  I recalled having a dad that was in the home: still, I found him to be absent emotionally.  If I didn't perform as he and my mom thought I should, I was wrong.  I got a whipping or worst, my dad would fuss at me.  "I felt like someone was pulling my skin off without anesthesia," I explained.   

I've read so many books that describe how people with abandonment issues seek to leave before they are left.  It's called fight or flight.  What was given to us as a instinctive way of surviving was not meant to be the response to everything, only to perceived danger.  For those of us who fear abandonment, just the idea or thought of being left is enough reason to defect.  Sadly, our efforts to protect ourselves can pervert something harmless.  "It's as if you have a warped sensitivity," our counselor clarified.  That's exactly what it was.  Men have that sound of authority to their voices.  It brings order.  It commands attention.  It is a gift.  Though my responses were real, I can no longer let the little girl decide.  It was time for the adult woman to stand up.  This she knows.  She can teach those she loves to leave her by creating such discomfort in the relationship that they have to leave to save themselves.  It's a self fulfilling prophesy.

"I am not afraid that he'll leave me physically," I clarified.  "I'm afraid that he'll abandonment me emotionally."  "I'm scared too," my Robert admitted.  "I'm afraid that you're going to leave me."  That surprised me.  I had never considered that he was scared too. 

"In order for you to build a solid marriage, you both have to decide right here and now that you won't leave one another," said our counselor.  That was my moment of truth.  No fantasy, no escape from a life of loneliness, no psyching myself up, none of that could make this decision.  Again, it was time for the grown up to decide.   I knew that unless I did that, it was a waste of time to continue.  As great a counselor as she was, counseling alone was not enough.  Without a sober commitment, there was no need to continue.  I had to resolve for once and for all what side of the street I was going to stand on. 

It didn't take tossing and turning all night long or a long hard honest conversation with myself about why I said "yes" at the marriage proposal.  As I sat and breathed in the moment, I felt my insides release.  "You don't need this," my Inner Wisdom said, informing my consciousness what my spirit knew.  I didn't need to police this side of the street anymore.  Robert was not like the other men I had known before. 

I felt my soul open.  I was sitting beside the man whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  He was my friend.  He was my lover.  He was my partner.  I didn't have to shield myself.  I was patting the leg of the man I love.  Our shortcomings, our temperaments, our history, what might happen, none of it was enough to change that.  There's the truth and then there is the bigger Truth with a capital T.  The Truth was he wasn't the one feeling off balance.  It was me.  When you are off balance, you try to stabilize yourself.  As Ketut from the book, Eat Pray Love, said to Liz (or was it the movie?), "to lose your balance in life is to find your balance in love. (or something like that...lol)."