Hello, world. Today, I went hiking with my soon-to-be ex-husband. He really wants us to be friends, and I feel bad for him because he’s never made an effort to make friends. He wanted the relationship to be everything for the both of us. Codependence at it’s finest, friends. I’m lucky that I’ve always made an effort to maintain my support system and community of people whom I care about and care about me. I don’t want to lose him from my life, but I’m not entirely sure I can have a true friendship with. My stepdad, Heath, actually warned me about this in February; he said something along the lines of “being friends with your ex sounds nice, but it’s harder than you think.”
I didn’t believe him at the time. But oh boy, do I believe him now.
No matter how much I want to be friends with him, it doesn’t feel the same when we are together. Somehow, I’m not able to really be myself. I’m much more timid and quiet with him compared to my friends, or even other men. I didn’t feel sad. I think I felt a tinge of scared. Often times, our freshest memories are driven by the negative emotions someone creates in us. I know that we had really great memories together over the years, but the most prominent ones at the moment are those from the last year. They’re the painful ones. It makes sense that I do feel scared when I’m with him—I’m scared of being hurt again. I’m scared of being myself because I tried so hard to change for him in order to be accepted. At this point, I know how to be myself, but I don’t know how to be myself around him.
These painful memories that come to mind first and the fear of being hurt again means that I’m still healing. It’s better to feel than to feel nothing at all.
But I also need to put myself first. And I need to ask myself: why do I want to be friends with him? I don’t think I do! He’s like that family member that you love and would be there for, but you don’t know them enough to be yourself around. And I’m realizing that I don’t know who he really is. He’s not the person I thought he was and he changed so much over the last couple of years and I didn’t even realize it. He turned into a person that I don’t know very well, and I’m afraid to get to know him because the only experience that I have with the changed him stabbed me in the heart and twisted the knife. On the other side of that, the part of him that hasn’t changed is that he’s always supportive and one of the most open-minded people I’ve ever known, and I don’t want to lose that and I want to be there for him as well. But maybe that means we’re meant to be family, and not friends.
I think what I need to do is think about what I want my life to look like and feel like moving forward. I need to imagine what the painting will look like, and see how he fits in it.
I need to do the same thing for dating too. I need to imagine the essence and feelings that I need to feel in my next painting, before it’s painted.
And I need to figure out how to be myself around him. I think this would be really helpful, but maybe that just comes with time.
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