On Insecurity
Sat ,03/10/2009Edit for Disclaimer: I’m in no way trying to paint a negative or misrepresented picture of anybody here, this is just the perceptions I’ve had in my mind lately, and the thought process I’ve been through today. Like any story, there are more than just one side.
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I have a problem right now with insecurity, that has grown larger in recent weeks. It’s gotten a little out of control, and well… time to confront this. For me, that means exploring it. Writing it down, talking about it, getting it out in the open. I’m just writing as I go, and posting it raw. No editing. No spelling corrections. Open-mouthed “bleeeeeaarrrrrgh-plop” to quote someone. I just need to get what’s been inside me out, drain the poison, so life may flow back.
I recently broke up with Lyon, as the situation we are involved in has been preventing us from growing as a couple, has actually been regressing us. I hope this isn’t forever, that after all this we have a chance to see about us, but she needs to be able to figure her situation out on her own, and I need to not be involved for my own mental and emotional wellbeing right now. So I finally voluntarily stepped back. We started out open and honest, sharing anything and everything. I won’t tell her story, that’s her’s to tell. The main point is, while dealing with her divorce, she hasn’t had a lot left over to give to us. And being able to give in a relationship is important… no… imperitive for a healthy relationship. And the lack of this openness, honesty, of communication, and of certainty, brought out my insecurity to a level I haven’t seen it at in a long, long, long time. I own responsibility for how I handled that.
I’ve been pondering this for a few days now. One of the things that triggers this insecurity, even jealousy, that is to be expected, is hearing about the ambiguity of feelings she has left for her husband, and pondering what to do there. NOT a help for a guys feelings of security with the woman he loves to be sure. But more surprising, is a trigger that is to be less expected. She’s made some new friends, and she’s an affectionate person. But when I see her calling them by pet names that I had only seen reserved for me, seeing how close they are when I’ve barely seen two words spoken between them… wow.
Am I threatened that she has friends? No. Am I threatened that she can be affectionate? No. I’ve been exploring this, and I find I’m threatened because she’s growing so much closer to other people, and finding affection and openness with them when she doesn’t have much for me. While I was shown less and less, they were shown more and more. Soon, the only terms of endearment used to me were the ones being used with everyone else. Again, not good for feelings of security in a relationship. And another part of feeling threatened here, is that… I hear nothing about these friendships in the day to day, no, “I was talking to my friend about X today, and our discussion ran along these lines”, no indication that there’s any sort of friendship at all, nothing shared with me, until it’s already to a point where one need to rave about how fantastic and close these people are. Do I care that she’s doing all this without me? Well….. kind of. I don’t care that she has a life outside of us, but I DO care that she has a life outside of us that I NEVER HEAR ABOUT, that she feels she can’t share with me. Secrets were never really our thing, and when suddenly they start stacking up, even if they’re not intentional…. yeah, I feel threatened, and I feel insecure. Especially with the tenuousness already inherent because of the situation of being in a relationship on the heels of divorce. Secret social networking sites, friendships with people I have barely ever even heard about, getting to a level of that much closeness, and… it’s hard. Especially when I saw her drawing further away from me. It’s not that I’m not doing the same things with her, it’s that she can’t share with me afterwards. How do you NOT feel insecure?
Perhaps my past plays some part in this. The girlfriend I gave my virginity to, who insisted I too was her first, had a girlfriend in the romantic/sexual sense on the side, that I never knew about. She didn’t see anything wrong with that. She didn’t feel it necessary to tell me, didn’t understand how it could possibly be cheating. It’s taken a long time to get comfortable with how close women can get and still JUST be friends. It’s been a long and rocky journey. But when suddenly there’s the closeness there, and then the closed off as well … maybe my mind wanders back to another time when secrets and girlfriends were an indication of something else.
This isn’t about sex though, or being hurt in the past by a surprise girl/girl romance. Don’t get me wrong. I trust her. I know she wasn’t being untrue, that these are innocent friendships. This is about sharing an important part of ones life with one’s lover. I think if there was more openness, more sharing, that this wouldn’t have even been such a trigger in the first place, that any twinge from the past could have been handle with a laugh, a shrug, and a modicum of reason and thought. I have friends, I have close friends, of both sexes, that I can be affectionate with. And they are part of who I am. Just as hers are part of who she is. And this is where I felt insecure. That somebody became a big a part of who she is, and she couldn’t share it with me. In our relationship, being able to share ALL of ourselves was the cornerstone. What we built the whole thing on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her or that I suspected her, that caused the insecurity. It was that she had time and heart in her enough to grow and evolve and be close to new people, take a chance on opening to strangers…. and she couldn’t with me. And maybe I needed to be more compassionate too, and not react directly off the triggers. I own full responsibility for how I reacted, and I’m sorry. It doesn’t excuse anything knowing what contributed. But it didn’t help either.
I don’t know. When I was littler I had a bigger problem with insecurity, because I didn’t understand how anybody could love me. And through age and time I learned and accepted and KNEW, that I was worth loving, and why. I’ve held onto that. Now, I find myself coming from the other direction… I know why I deserve to be loved, and it’s hard to accept that anything could hold her back from doing that. That where once we shared and were open about even our deepest, darkest secrets, now she can’t even share something so simple and innocent as making and growing close to new friends. Why can’t she share something innocent and light and positive like THAT? It’s positive, it’s a good thing, right? That’s something worth talking about. This isn’t another negative “it takes too much out of me” emotion from the divorce, this is positive! It’s supposed to be. If it’s not something worth being insecure over, why is it so hard to be open about something as mundane as that?
These are the things I wonder.
A lot to think about for me today.