Unconditional love

Over the past few months I have learned a lot about what I think about love. Books have helped me and lots of thinking. Too much thinking and not enough books. I find myself avoiding reading the parts that might help me. Like I am not ready just yet to give up the anger. I do find myself trying to deal with the sadness and not letting it turn to anger, I was being fairly successful, but this past week has been bad. It's been a long time since it's been this bad, although it is more crying and less screaming, that may not seem like an improvement but it is. I am starting to really accept that he cheated. Accept that I won't ever know how he could do that to me, to us. Even as I learn some of the possibilities of why.

And that brings me to the title. Unconditional love.

I believed that I loved him conditionally. I believed I loved him BECAUSE he was a good man, BECAUSE he would never cheat on me. Even after I learned he was a liar. I never really believed
he was trying to cheat on me with the emails to the first woman (Holly). I believed that this betrayal of trust was solely about his lying. And I made myself believe, with help from him and my friends, that I was overreacting. I knew it was a big deal but only my mother and sister agreed with me and I guess I just feel that their response is always going to be overprotective and not necessarily the proper response...overreacting, just like me. So I told myself I was wrong. I told myself what everyone else told me "He loves you, he's not the type to cheat". And I really believed it. I believed it with all of my soul. I allowed myself to believe he didn't break one of my conditions for loving him. I don't even know if it's really that horrible to love someone with conditions. Especially not this condition. I love you because you aren't a cheater. That seems fair, right?

So with the reasons he has come up, most of them from my overthinking and asking him and him saying "That sounds like it could be it". (He's still incapable of committing to a reason, always adding a "maybe" or "possibly", he just doesn't KNOW what he was thinking and that blows my mind and terrifies me. It was more than a decade ago that I nearly cheated on him and I remember where I was when I got the text inviting me to have sex, I remember the feelings it gave me (not good ones) and I remember why I didn't (nothing was worth risking losing him)). This happened last year and he remembers next to nothing. I think it's perfectly normal for me to worry that he doesn't have the capacity to think his actions through and therefore could easily accidentally end up in this situation. again...after all "it just happened". Anyway I digress...his reasons (possible reasons) make me realize he, too, did not love me unconditionally. Apparently his love was based on me loving him. But not just loving him...loving him enough, in the way he needed to be loved...without him informing me what that was. So what we have concluded is: I finally believed in him, finally felt safe, finally felt confident in our love and he misinterpreted that as me not needing him, or my confidence came off as disinterest or boredom or my high self esteem made him feel unworthy, it made him feel less than and he needed someone with an equally low self esteem, so they could feel shitty together (this is actually from a book...people with low self esteem seek relationships with people who have self esteem issues). I have asked and not gotten satisfactory answers...If you thought I didn't love you or didn't love you enough, why not leave the marriage...his reply "I still loved you" my retort..."Can you claim to love someone and cheat on them? Were you waiting to get love from someone else and then leave? Because you got it, so why not leave?" Him "I didn't want to lose you" and we go round in round in the ridiculousness of what her purpose was? Was she just a temporary "fill up" to fuel him with some love so he could go back to his loveless marriage? If so when would be enough? Why when I wrote him poetry, love notes for lunch, shared songs with him, sobbed hysterically with guilt and fear for accusing him of cheating, pleading with him that it felt EXACTLY like when my ex cheated on me..why didn't that make him realize I loved him? Why didn't that make him stop? He claims he was stuck at that point...he didn't want to hurt either of us. And this is where I really get angry....I may overthink but why didn't he think at all? Consider the possible scenarios? Realize continuing the affair was hurting both of us (all of us really, but who the fuck cares how he was hurt? He did it), why did he continue the affair full force, trying to find a fucking loving nickname (one of this last texts was him "trying out" calling her "babe" -- to know Dave (or David as he for whatever fucking reason let her call him (he doesn't use that name even legally unless absolutely necessary)) you would realize how absolutely ludicrous it would be to hear him call a woman babe...but isn't that what the whole affair was? Juvenile? Ridiculous? Out of character? Not Dave...but David.

But again I digress. My love, I thought, was conditioned upon him being faithful...not out of obligation, but because that is who he was. I was wrong. I love him unconditionally, it seems. Because I still love him, dare I say, as much as I ever have. I certainly don't feel safe and I certainly don't trust him unconditionally. But I do love him unconditionally. His love...not so much. "If she doesn't do this, I get to do that" That's how I feel about his love now. He had expectations from me, not ones he cared to share with me, so I might have a chance of meeting them, but expectations I was supposed to magically know about. I don't even think he knows what they were because he admits that when he looks back now, he sees how much I had trusted him, how much I showed my love for him, that he misinterpreted my actions. My feeling safe came across as boredom, that I didn't need to be up his ass 24/7 was disinterest, not trust that I knew he'd always be there for me. He chose to overlook the loving things I did for him, because he felt inadequate. There is nothing I could have done to prevent this...except not becoming a stronger person, not becoming the optimistic, happier person I became. And you are right if you think that to go back and do things any different so that he wouldn't feel the need to cheat at the expense of my not being who I am now is too big of a price to pay. Because I wouldn't. I wouldn't do anything differently. I am sure this is all on him. After the Holly incident he got self esteem books, it was on him to fix himself. He didn't. Because, he too, believed he wasn't cheating with Holly, wouldn't have. Because he chose not to think about what he could have lost or why he did it, we are here. IF he had spent more time thinking, more time considering that maybe he was doing something worse than lying...maybe this could have been avoided. And that's where my fear comes in. I don't see him thinking anymore now..ok maybe a little more...but I don't think he thinks enough. I still think he believes things are just going to be alright because he WANTS them to be. If he dreams it, it will be. But it won't. He needs to think more. He's reading mindfulness books and I don't think they are working. I ask him questions that he answers mindlessly and when I mention it later doesn't even remember me asking. Sure we all do this, but it is like a neon sign to me. I am hypersensitive to needing him to know what he is saying, what he is doing. And I still don't feel he is. I want to know WHY he picked up that phone and started texting her, WHY he didn't stop when he realized where it was headed. WHAT he told himself to justify it. And "maybe it was this" just doesn't cut it. I think this week has been hard because I am coming to the realization, I really will never know. And I am realizing I am not leaving. Realizing I don't even want to. Not even a little bit. There were times when all I wanted to do was run...get as far away from him as possible, as far away from me... But now...now I am trying to allow myself to love him unconditionally. It feels like a betrayal to myself to now say "It's ok to love a cheater". Last time I let myself believe it was ok to love a liar and we see how that ended...it's not ok to love a cheater, or a liar....but here I am doing it. I am so afraid of telling myself "I told you so" of what my "self" will do if it has to say that...how mad will it be..will it be able to forgive me? Does all that 3rd person shit sound crazy? I miss the voices I used to have in my head....they were way easier to listen to than myself. They fled when this all started.

And so with all the happy memories we are trying to create this summer, with concerts and beach trips and just loving each other...there are still bad days and bad weeks. He gave me an analogy about a hurdler. When she first starts learning she trips on all 10 hurdles and over time she gets to the point where she is still tripping but not as often, but that trip still hurts and feels like failure, but she is improving. And I am ...I am improving, things are getting better, they really, truly are...but oh when I trip it still hurts, and more than that it frustrates me. It makes me feel out of control, it makes me feel helpless and hopeless...but I do have him here...doing all of the right things. Being remorseful, being supportive, being loving.... I guess I just need more time. And patience has never been my strong suit.

I still feel lonely. I know I have friends but I don't want to burden any of them with my annoying thoughts. They annoy me, why would I want to annoy you with them? I don't want advice. I don't need advice. I know what I am doing. I am staying. Unless you can tell me how to trust a liar, there isn't much you can do to really help me.

I have realized I am using work as an avoidance. If I am work I think less and I can avoid reading the things that will help me. I am starting to not want to work so much, I take that as a good sign because the reason is I want to have more time to read, so I can really begin to heal.

I am making progress. And I do believe we will make it through this.

Who knew I was capable of loving anyone other than my son unconditionally? I sure didn't.