Letting Half-Love Leave
I noticed when he walked away this time, he didn’t see he was abandoning himself more than he was abandoning me. He didn’t see it but for the first time, I did. In the past I would be distraught and confused, consumed with ache and anxiety and self-loathing at his leaving. I would be grasping for anything to get him to stay, to see, to want, to just…choose.. me….
Today was a different day though and I was not in my own head, blinded by words rather than actions. Today, I watched. Today, though sad, I was whole, and I knew this wasn’t about me. Do you know how amazing it is to be able to say that? I finally knew I was whole and worthy of someone brave enough to stay. I was sad, but I wasn’t hollow. I wasn’t bargaining. I wasn’t striking against the will of the universe. I was peaceful, and I saw the truth. It was time to let go.
The truth of the situation, that is what I saw. I saw that this man, this beautiful man, this broken man, loved me with all the heart he had to give. I also saw, finally, that his fears and his past stifled his ability to love and to truly trust himself with another person. I saw he was loving as much as his capacity could offer. He knew how to put himself first and for fifty-two years he’d done just that. Trading the safety of his self-preservation to prioritize something so risky as trust and love was just not going to happen. After four patient years, it was time to stop. I suddenly understood that his vessel to love was like the morning shadow of a giant- small against the volume of my own. In the past as he was walking away, leaving me, leaving my heart broken and my good spirit overlooked, I didn’t see any of that. I only felt rage or fear or a missing that hadn’t even begun.
This morning when he drove away, it was early and I was still naked. He was in a hurry to go, like usual, always needing to go. I stood in my robe in the doorway, with the dawn shining down, watching him hop in his big truck with his half-smile and a half a wave and take his half-love and go. It was warm and I felt beautiful, standing there. I felt beautiful because I felt whole and I finally believed that regardless of his coming or going, I am enough. I watched him drive away, and I thought, I am nearly naked, and I am okay, and this, dammit, is the last time I will be here in this place, watching half-love leave. It wasn’t, but, we can get to that later.
How can a person love someone with all the love they have to give and still it’s only half a love? It is weird isn’t it. Confusing. Kind of tragic, really. It happens I think, when the person, the half-love person, the one who walks away, has had enough shitty strikes to the heart they aren’t willing to risk it all, ever again. They keep their cloak of rigid self- sufficiency wrapped around their pain like armor and try as you might to convince them you are different, you are safe, you will not rip their heart out and throw it to the dogs, you will be ever tender, they cannot be swayed. Their fear of abandonment is bigger than yours. Even when yours feels so insurmountable.
Abandonment, the fear of it, has driven me time and time again, to cling to the half-loves. I convinced myself I can be the one to pour hot or safe or whole enough love to melt the armor and grow their love from half to whole. It’s a delusion, really, a circular path right back to the beginning, to the birth of that abandonment fear. When I was a child I learned that if I was accommodating, if I stayed three steps ahead, planning out how to keep my loved ones comfortable and placated, then there would be peace. I became a people pleasing peacemaker, a smoother overer, a person who never learned that paying attention to my own heart was even a part of the equation, let alone the number one factor. I learned from the beginning of my life, to ignore myself and put everyone first. My parents are intelligent and well meaning, and this was never a wound they meant to inflict. It happened though, and I played this scenario out over and over and over again, in all relationships, with confusion, until four months before this illuminating moment. Then I stopped. I stopped running. I stopped chasing. I stopped forcing. I let go. I started looking at how this fear of abandonment had been ruling my life, and I let it hurt, and I let it be scary. For the first time in my life, I allowed it to be seen and held and then, to heal.
Dr. Nicole LePara, in her book, “How to do the Work,” has this to say about breakups:
“Breakups hit us so hard emotionally because we are grieving the loss of our partner. We are re-living the childhood pain and grieving the loss of a parent figure who emotionally abandoned us.” For me, this rings absolutely true, and understanding this, has allowed me to look at my childhood and understand and heal.
How then, did I find myself, four months after break-up, watching this same man drive away, leaving me once again naked and alone? Because people who love each other and don’t know how to move forward or to stop, will keep finding their way back to each other. The phrase, “love is not enough” is really hard when you are in the situation. When you want it to be enough. When you wish it would just silently heal all the everything else. We, both of us, had to learn the hard way that it just does not work that way. Both people in a relationship need to be able to be vulnerable, to reflect, to want to grow. We came back together, four months after our (last) official break-up, me with the hopes he was ready this time, but deep down knowing the truth. But this time, I was in control of my awareness and my intention. I was present and I needed to know a truth. Did this man throw me away, on that cold winter night four months ago, because I was not enough for him? Was I not worthy? Did he deeply believe the words I’d heard so often from him: too sensitive, too needy, too demanding, too anxious, too much, too much, too much….
Or, was it something else, something far more complex? Were they an excuse to run, because that’s all that’s kept him safe in the past? Was I indeed too much? Too fulfilling, too aware of my heart and emotions, too sensible, too self-respecting? Too easy to see his traumas and heart? Too willing to be vulnerable, to step in and love his kids as my own, to be a partner, for real? Was it too hard to face the fact that I was too unwilling to have a surface relationship, where I only saw him when he felt like it, where we didn’t scratch beyond the surface of anything?
This time when he drove away, instead of numb, I felt solid. I felt wise. I was not left because I was too needy or too sensitive. I was left because I was willing to share everything, every flaw and every victory. Some people cannot do that. It doesn’t make them ugly. It does not make them wrong. It just puts them on a different path than those who want to give it all. We all have battles to fight, and some of us are not willing to fight to win. So I let him go, free of my incessant demands that don’t fit his heart, because I am not afraid of abandonment any longer, I can face rejection without losing myself. I’m not going to grasp for any crumb of attention that comes my way. I am whole and openhearted and from here I will shine on.
**update to this blog- I wrote this in July 2021. We fell back into a precarious relationship after this, a once a week at most, on his terms kind of thing. Spoiler alert: it ended the same way. What that next revisiting gave me though was the ability to stop looking back, to put this to rest once and for all. There is much more written about it in my book “F*ck That” about what drives us back and how to let go. I actually had to add a chapter into the book after the final going back to this. Our minds are so hard-wired to find what we think keeps us safe, it is hard to learn a new and better way. It is so hard to let go of love. But to grow, to not stay small, it is really important to trust that staying in a relationship where you cannot communicate or express yourself is bad for everyone, and not fair. By November it was clear, and I am certain and at peace with it now. It’s a great feeling.
#Lettinggo #halflove #worth #selfrespect #don’tsettle
Meema is proud. Me too.
Thanks Chris, that means a lot. I thought about her and Beempa a lot when I wrote this one.