Fundamentally flawed? in Feelings

Below is an entry I wrote a month ago. It got cut short at the time and I decided to save it as a draft to revisit. Mostly because I know there is a pattern to this ‘thinking’, that I end up at this same place probably every month. Is it something I need to change within myself? Is it something we need to work on together? Is it really just trying to revive something with no life left? Does it even matter?? Life should not be like this. I shouldn’t be getting to a place like this every year, let alone every month. What kind of living is that? What other possibilities are out there? Perhaps I am destined to be alone? I used to see people who have never married and lived alone as lonely, I felt sorry for them. Now I wonder if they have found true enrichment and satisfaction in getting to know the company of themselves.

I often wonder, when did things ‘go wrong’? I try to pinpoint a time or event, perhaps a collection of events? The fact is it doesn’t matter what lead to here, only what happens from here. Right now life is like this - K gets up early and has some alone time meditating, writing or doing what she wishes. The kids and I wake up, I shower/eat/leave for work all in as little time as possible. I’m out all day, I get home and either K and the kids have already eaten or part of the ‘bedtime routine’ is underway. This point is about where we *used to * come together to watch TV. Now K ‘goes to bed early’ which usually means going to her room and reading a book or texting on her phone. I usually go and finish some more work and go to bed with everyone already asleep. Sometimes I try to go in the room early to try to spend some time with K, but she will turn the light off and roll over or get up to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. I swear that if I hadn’t come in the room she would have continued doing whatever she was doing for another half hour. It seems as though my very presence repulses her.

We have sex once a month on average, and it feels strange. It feels disconnected and almost as if it was another chore that had to be done. Conversation is stale. Intimacy is non existent. Truly, what is left? These are the times that I wonder if we would flourish going our separate ways. Then I start to think, how could we even afford to be apart? We can barely afford to be together while I work every spare moment, what would we do if we were paying 2x rents and child support and food etc. What a fucked up thing to think?! That we should stay together because we can’t afford to be apart. Seriously. I just can’t live like this much longer, I look back and think that I’ve basically just ‘literally’ wasted the last few years of my life feeling like shit, feeling alone in the presence of others. Every time my phone rings, it means somebody needs something. It’s not an opportunity for conversation, for enrichment. It’s somebody needing something. Family, friends, clients, it’s all the same. I really do feel alone. I think mentally I’m preparing myself for living alone, I’ve only really had 2 long term serious relationships, and both times I’ve given more than I’ve had to give, and now there is nothing left for me, just an emotionally drained shell of a man. I don’t think I have the capacity to do that again with anyone. It makes me sad, because I look at K and still see a beautiful woman, but how can you repair something that is barely acknowledged as a problem from the other side?

I often wonder, what does happiness feel like again? How long has it been since I truly felt it? I will have a giggle here and there with the kids but when did I truly feel joy last? I think my tendency to tv in any spare time I have is for the manufactured emotions, the deliberate and calculated ‘feels’ it produces.

Anyway, this is where I’m at, it’s where I’ve been and I hope some way or another it’s not where I’ll be in another 6 months.

17/01/2016
*Ugh. I’m just feeling like my relationship with K is already dead, and we’re trying to revive something with no life left. I hate to feel this way, I hate to even acknowledge it, but it just feels SOOOO strained. We are like two complete strangers living in a house with a common goal to raise our kids. That is practically all we have in common now, and I honestly do feel 100% that if the kids weren’t a factor, one of us would have left by now. I would have left by now :-(

I think about counselling, I think about the ways we could reconnect, but I just can’t see it, and I can’t help thinking that perhaps it is foundationally flawed? I wonder if had K not gotten pregnant so early into our relationship, would it just have been a passing fling we both could have loved and lived through before moving on with our lives in different directions? How to know if the problem is us as people heading in separate directions, the relationship never quite being ‘right’ or the strain of parenthood that’s brought us here? Truly, it probably doesn’t matter and we may never know, but ‘life’ at the moment just does not feel right. It hasn’t felt right for a few years. The amount of strain we’ve had over the last few years has taken such a toll. The common interests have gone, the communication is broken and I’m really feeling that our personality’s just don’t match. Kati is full of fire and passion, one of the things that I love about her, and I’m the easy going-calming influence. Lately it seems*

Last updated February 19, 2016