What do you do when you love someone unconditionally and you have given them over 11 years of your life, but you question their love for you? Do you stay and keep loving them with the hopes that their love is genuine? Do you realize that if you question their love for you then maybe it isn’t so genuine? Do you give up or do you hold on?
Love is not only beautiful and amazing, but it is also confusing and challenging. It seems that love is never equal both way and often times one is giving more than the other or one holds back even a little rather than giving their all. For me, when I love, I love with my everything. I would do anything for my partner and I never want to give up or quit on love. Some may say I live in a dream world and that love is not eternal, but in my heart I believe that it is and all it requires is two people with open hearts. The problem, is when one’s heart is so closed down that the other person’s heart begins to wither.
I have shared with my husband how much I love him and how willing I am to try anything for the sake of us. Problem is, he is very closed, very shut down and unresponsive. In fact, he almost seems to fear my true love and pushes me away in some strange effort of protecting himself from having to be vulnerable and open to another. He has the love, I see it in him, but he displays an extreme fear of it and a resistance to all the beauty it has to offer. It is as if he would rather set our relationship up for failure, fights and pain then to accept that true love is actually possible in this world. It is a very sad thing to see a person fight within themselves over and I am beginning to question if I keep trying to help open him up or if I just takes his fear and walk away.
I try to talk to him openly. I try to tell him I love him and I accept him as he is. The only problem with my talks is that I explain to him the things he does that hurts me, such as his rage-filled anger, name calling and silent treatments. In my saying these things he takes it all so personal and lashes out that it is who he is and he wont change. I do not try to hurt him or blame him. I simply try to get him to see the blocks he has in our relationship and how he acts out against our love. I try to help him see that I love him even with his short comings and am with him 100% of the way in helping him overcome these areas of our relationship. I do not judge him or hate him for these things. I see why he does them and I want to work with him as a couple to beat them and see love win.
He is so afraid of letting down his guard and me rejecting him that he would rather push me farther away. He takes no responsibility in our marriage and expects me to just forget any pain he causes me. He won’t sit and talk maturely with me about our relationship and instead closes me off and yells to leave him alone and he hates me and I’m a bitch and he is so tired of my drama every day. I try to explain to him that he has a choice to change this….and that choice isn’t just give up. That choice is to face what is causing the problems and tackle it head on….together!
I want to stay and love, but only if the love is true. I want to leave and move on but only if he continues to avoid the real issues and disrespect me and our love. I am suffering cognitive dissonance and am fighting two very distinct thoughts at the same time. I am battle within myself and teetering between staying and going. He says he is too, but the funny thing is with all I do and try to do, and the fact that I do not hurt him and only want him happy, he should be happy to have me and more fearful of losing me. He has no reason to think he wants to leave, unless of course he really is afraid of true love and letting down his walls to share himself and his life in a truly unconditional and eternal way.
I have told him I want to start figuring out a way to live separately and move on apart from each other since he shows no signs of wanting to love me or fear of losing me. He didn’t respond. Then I told him if he is willing to try, and really try, then I will not quit, but that means we find a counselor, we go back to church, we find him some anger support and we focus on the positives, not the negatives. I do not know what he will say but from his patterns in the past I am leaning towards his wall…he will he reply with force and blame. He will mirror all that I have said to him and he will say he is tired of living like this and he wants to be happy. He will fight it to the end and will expect me to pull the love out of him, but I can not do that anymore. If he loves me, he will see my genuine attempts to try mean that I truly love and accept him. I reminded him to reply with out anger, insults, blame or negativity so maybe, just maybe, he will. I pray that God and the angels will be with him as he reads my messages and that they will battle the demons inside him and help him to see the path that is better for him, for us and for our children. I pray for a miracle.