Forced

It's a pretty big question. When you're in a relationship and you have to ask yourself when it's OK to think of yourself first. When is it OK to disrupt other people's lives to make yours better? I don't want to live my entire life feeling lonely and empty. At what point do you look at who two people are and reconcile the fact that the things that may have held them together at one point are no longer existent? And maybe actually never existed. It isn't just that there is no passion, there's no like. If you don't really even enjoy the other person's company. You don't like the same things. You find yourselves passing in the night, mostly you, because you're just tired of this vapid relationship being held together by a strand of obligation. 

And you can judge the depth of it because you know better, you have had connections with others that are deep and meaningful and pretty life altering, yet found yourself stuck in this relationship because of the sheer volume of lives affected by it's success or failure. Guilt. Duty. Religious rules. 

I'm torn. When you find yourself doing menial tasks listening to the radio and suddenly you're crying thinking about the weight of this. 

Either way you go someone's going to lose. 

It isn't fair that you can't make everyone happy and that's what my whole life has existed for. Making others happy. I led myself through the fire and burned up just to please everyone else all the while too afraid for once to say no I'm doing this for myself. 

You get into relationships to help fix someone. A terrible, horrible, no good idea. Hindsight is 20/20 and you don't really understand until you're in your 30's and have to think about how much of life has passed by you and you've just been miserable in it. You've been biding your time like you're clocking into a job. And then you stop for a moment and get just smacked in the face with the years that have disappeared. 

You distract yourself with tasks, hobbies, being a parent, even political passions or projects in church; you're just trying to find happiness outside. 

No one can complete you and that's truly not what I'm talking about. Why would God create two people who fit so perfectly, who understand each other, who enjoy every moment just talking? If He didn't mean for marriage to be that way? 

Everything else I do in my life I say the common good isn't good enough a reason. It's how I make my decisions on everything else in life, why not this one? Why is it such a terrible idea to want to stop settling for an empty connection out of convenience? Doesn't everyone deserve to have something meaningful? 

And I'm not even taking into account the years when he truly deserved me leaving. I won't even get into all of it, because it isn't even part of the equation mentally for me. I'm glad I didn't leave then because that would have really caused him to spiral and possibly ruin both our lives. 

It isn't a quick emotional get out of jail free and it isn't because I've found greener pastures. I just recognize the difference. I see marriages that work. I see the friendship. I see how it must feel to be able to say both of you want the same things, both of you care the same amount, but it never has. 

It's never been good. On it's very best day it's been doable. 

I don't want to live my whole life being a convenient fit for someone and I don't want to live my whole life like a cowardice waiting for to grow old and have my children leave the house and then look at each other and say, I don't even like you, I don't enjoy you. And the whole relationship stifles who God meant for you to be. 

I wish I could talk to someone who won't just tell me what the bible says. I know what the bible says, I know what my religion says. I've spent so much of my life trying to do the right thing for everyone and I certainly wouldn't take back my children. I've spent this whole time making the best of what is in front of me, what I chose. 

But at some point it just isn't good enough. A round peg just can't fit in a square hole and it hurts trying to be forced into it.