Ice-Nine and the End of Romance, Thing of Beauty #47-101

There will be no more thoughts or indications of growing intimacy between Mr. Wisdom and me.  I have said a very reluctant and very sad Good Bye.

The long and short of it is that getting divorced isn't nearly as easy as Mr. Wisdom initially imagined it would be.  I had a feeling we might find ourselves in this quagmire which is why I hesitated to get involved with him in the first place.  I just wish we had never gone to Cafe Lux that night because I had made it clear that if we moved forward, I would get attached.  We moved forward; I got attached, and then his life got too complicated for a relationship.

I wish it were as easy to accept in real life as it is to explain on paper.  We still haven't even talked about it.  He sent me an email during a break in a marathon mediation session last weekend saying he was sorry it took him so long to recognize what had been clear from the beginning, but he used words like "significant," and "postpone," and said he wanted to talk face to face.  All I heard was "significant," so I felt like if I were significant to him, we should be able to navigate through some choppy waters.

Silly me.   For the most part, I've been leaving Mr. Wisdom alone ever since he started traveling for work because of all the pressure he gets from other directions, and because as recently as last week, I believed that he and I were moving toward something significant.  I don't think there's any reason to rush into a relationship at our age - or any age at all for that matter, unless you're so eager to have babies that you dive right into Lovey Dovey Land.

Even though I accepted the situation with equanimity at first, it wasn't long before I began to get the idea that he was actually dumping me.  Naturally, I got mouthy about it - but really, when you've told a man that you're going to get attached and he moves forward anyway, I think it's fair to believe he's open to the idea of a relationship with you personally.  So when he no longer has time for a relationship, even though it's all about relationships in general, it feels like you personally are being thrown away with all the other stuff nobody wants anymore.

We've had words - virtually not in real life.  I meant to say that now I realized I was, in fact, ditched and to wish him well gracefully and all that short, sweet, mature stuff.  Somewhere in the process, I concluded that he had taken advantage of my good nature.  The situation deteriorated further once I entered into that downward spiral most women know all too well - the one where we start thinking that if we were smarter, thinner, prettier, nicer and just all around better, we wouldn't be getting dumped.

Fortunately I didn't say any of that shit, but I said plenty of other shit - which may have been justified under the circumstances - but after talking to Woody about the whole thing, it may be that Mr. Wisdom has done everything that a man in his position can do to show he cares about me.  I just don't recognize it because he's been talking about time management and I was looking for words of affection.  And it definitely didn't help anything that he gently referred me to Occam's Razor in answer to the emails where I asked him to help me understand the situation since in my view, he clearly didn't like me anymore or he wouldn't be ditching me.  Wikipeida says:

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor) is the English equivalent of the Latin lex parsimoniae --- the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.

I could only point out that this law clearly didn't apply to women, but I must admit I felt like I had been reprimanded for talking too much.  Sadly, his next response wasn't any mushier.  He simply reiterated that his life was fucking fucked up right now and that he was thinking of my feelings when he said there was no space for a new relationship.  That's when I had to call Bull Shit because if he cared about my feelings he wouldn't be ditching me at all.  He'd say, "Tricia, I want to be with you but I'm so fucking fucked right now I can't breathe.  Can we get together on 4-20?"  I'd have said, "Sure, you handsome thing. But can you squeeze in a quickie the last week of March?"

Personally, I don't understand why a man can't say that.  Woody says it all has to do with the way men and women are enculturated in the Patriarchy so that we can't understand each other - but then Woody and I both agree with Deborah Tannen's position in You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men Conversation.  Woody was so happy to explain Occam's Razor to me that he was compelled to include Grice's Cooperative Principles of Conversation with specific emphasis on implicature because it appeared to Woody that my insecurities had dominated my implicature which led to the issue with Occam's Razor.

One of Woody's blogs is Blogito

In other words, my ego got the better of me and I reacted with anger instead of responding from spirit - but a million years could go by before Woody would ever talk about ego and spirit.  Anyone familiar with Eckhart Tolle - or yoga for that matter - understands how ego relies on fear to keep us separate from one another, whereas spirit connects us.  It's all about Love vs Fear, and I was 100% afraid that Mr. Wisdom didn't like me anymore.

It all makes perfect sense today, but yesterday I was pissed off and loaded for bear.  Despite being hit with both barrels, Mr. Wisdom said he would be happy to talk with me next week if I still wanted to talk, but he wasn't taking any chances yesterday.  He was supposed to call me last night to arrange a time, but he never called.  I'm not bent out of shape by that because he was with a sick kid, he's got an irate wife on his ass and who knows what else could have interfered.  Nevertheless, the silence illustrated why it was necessary for me to say good bye, which I did with as much grace and as little drama as I could manage.

Once I realized that even a loving, supportive, affectionate woman can feel like pressure to a man trapped in a Category Five Shit Storm, I could see that I was more shit.  In the end, as all good Bokonists know, everything happens as it is supposed to happen.  At the moment,  I feel like sucking on some Ice-Nine.

When I first sat down at the computer to write my way out of these feelings, I didn't think I'd find a Thing of Beauty in this situation.  Deciding not to kill myself 17 years ago should count for something, but I don't think it's a thing of beauty.  Those suicidal impulses never really, truly go away - and I have to say that when you thought a relationship was heading towards intimacy and suddenly find that you're more shit in the shit storm, it will trigger the impulses.  I've understood for a long, long time that suicidal thoughts simply mean I'm feeling angry and powerless, or I'm so hurt that there's no other way to stop the pain.

So even though I'm terminally sad at the moment about saying Good Bye to Mr. Wisdom and am pretty well convinced that I'm meant to spend my whole life without a partner, I'm not suicidal and haven't been for years.  I think I'll call that Thing of Beauty #47-101.

I'm still healthy and vibrant, and have something to contribute somewhere.   And maybe once the shit storm finally passes, Mr. Wisdom will come back.  Maybe not.  Maybe by next week, I'll be able to see how it's all for the best.