setting the record straight (so to speak)
Well, Shobhit and I had some difficult discussion last night. I think we both told each other some kind of hard truths. Don't misunderstand me, though -- I have not lost hope in this relationship. Far from it. I really need that to be clear. That doesn't mean I'm taking it for granted that we'll just sail on into the sunset just fine, and certain adjustments may still need to be made. But I do still have hope in it, and in us.
I also think it might even qualify as one of the most mature conversations we've ever had about our relationship. I still think it would have been far more productive with an objective third party moderating, like a couples counselor. I have a suspicion Shobhit resists that idea so much because he knows he'll get pushback from a counselor about a lot of things, and he won't like that. I wonder if he's ever considered this: there is no doubt at all that I would get pushback too about ways that I think about certain things, and things I would probably never expect to get challenged on. That's the whole point of therapy, to open your mind to ideas you either can't see otherwise or are otherwise refusing to see. I know full well that I am not immune to that.
I believe very strongly we could benefit from outside help. It seems like we keep thinking we can handle things on our own, and all that results in is a cycle of the same shit that keeps repeating itself. At some point that becomes intolerable.
I think Shobhit also was not a big fan of when I wrote about using vacations as "relationship insurance," which I have to admit was a kind of pointlessly glib thing to say. I've used it as kind of a running joke over the years, but it's probably not as true a statement as one might assume at first. It is true that I kind of use long range planning as a sort of security blanket. I am comforted by it, and it makes me feel a little bit safer. It encourages me to work a little bit harder in the meantime. But that does not mean that without it, our relationship would be guaranteed to fall apart. I would still fight for it however I could.
It's the same thing regarding the condo itself. Shobhit asked me last night if I am just staying with him so I could keep living in the condo. I won't lie, that's part of it -- I am very invested in where I live. If I sacrificed that home I love to be somewhere else, and still nothing changed about this vicious cycle in our relationship, that would be a lot more of a problem for us. But the condo is not the whole story. I don't just live for that condo. I live for the whole picture: the condo, and the husband who lives in it with me. I'm not sure Shobhit understands how devastated I really would be if we broke up. It may happen eventually if I ever decide it's the right thing to do, but even then, the emotional turmoil I will go through will be unlike anything I have ever experienced. I have never broken up with anyone before, and the prospect scares me. I don't avoid it just out of fear, however. The bottom line is that I have not decided it's the right move to make. Because, as I said, for now at least, I still have hope for us.
It can't be just up to me, though. If I am the only one fighting for us to stay together, then what's the point? I can't be the only one willing to take some responsibility.
One of Shobhit's favorite arguments, or things he thinks is an argument but really isn't, is to challenge me to tell him what I've ever wanted that I haven't gotten: he never gets in the way of anything I want, he thinks. I always feel put on the spot when he asks me this and I have difficulty coming up with examples, which only makes him feel vindicated. I managed one example from this very year during our conversation last night, and all he did was come up with arguments to try and prove it somehow didn't count. But of course it counted: it was something I wanted, and I did not get it. Any otherwise objective and reasonable arguments for my not getting it are beside the point. It still fits the original parameters of what examples he asked for. I feel like he wants me to feel as though he is the only one who ever makes compromises for this relationship, which is a claim that is wrong on its face.
I was thinking about that this morning and I thought of several other examples over the years. I won't enumerate them here, because it's a bad idea to go out of my way to embarrass him publicly about specifics, which is a mistake I have made too many times and am making an effort to correct. But, I have written them down. I have six examples so far, which I consider pretty notable, and now I will have them as a ready defense the next time he tries to say in the midst of an argument that I always without exception just get whatever I want. Because that is absolutely not true.
I’ll give just one other example. We have had his mother visit us for six to seven weeks at a time, twice. This is a woman who had deep resentment about my very existence in Shobhit's life. How is that not a compromise on my part? Granted, that has not happened in eleven years, but Shobhit often talks about having her stay again, and I am willing to live with it. It'll be fine. I understand why it's necessary, given the family culture of people from India and perhaps more importantly the distance and time it takes to travel all that distance. But, just because I understand it doesn't mean it's not a compromise. I would never in a million years have even my own mother stay in my home for that long, and she lives 300 miles away, as opposed to seven thousand. I'm not even trying to say that she should not come visit -- I quite accept it as a possibility, maybe even an inevitability. But that hardly disqualifies it as being a compromise.
As for Australia? I also won't lie about this: I still really, really want to make it work. And yes, I suppose I probably want it more than Shobhit does, and in this case Shobhit has probably been going along with it largely because of how much I want it. But! There is a lot about how this trip has been planned that has been due to what he wanted. We are aiming for visiting Sydney during Gay Mardi Gras at his suggestion, not mine. I was delighted by that decision, yes -- but it was still his idea.
I am also deeply invested in not postponing this trip in particular, because I am so afraid of falling into the trap of postponing until it's too late. And with visiting Uncle David and May Ann as a big impetus for the trip, I feel strongly that now is the time. Uncle David is not getting any younger, and he has some health issues of his own. He's 72 years old now. That may not be "old-old" by the same standards as it used to be, but the further into his seventies he gets, the closer to it he will become. And I certainly want to see him in Australia at least once while he's still in relatively good health.
I know that doesn't mean as much to Shobhit as it does to me. And his willingness to make it something important to him because it's important to me, is something I appreciate. Also: generally speaking, Shobhit and I travel well together. I usually really enjoy going on trips with him. Sometimes he acts like it's an imposition that I want him to come with me on certain travels, but why does he think I want him to? It's because I love him, and because when we are actually getting along -- which actually is most of the time -- I enjoy being with him. It's not like I'm just trying to inconvenience him, which he sometimes tries to characterize it as when he happens to be mad about something pretty much unrelated.
And now, I feel like I am actually kind of obligated to write this all out here, just to make my thoughts, intentions and positions clear, especially after some of the problematic things I stated in recent-past posts about so-called "relationship insurance," a phrase I perhaps should never have used. It suggests a subtext of taking the relationship for granted, which I should not be promoting. I do not want to take this relationship for granted. Nor do I want to take the love of my husband for granted. I may love my home, and I may love traveling, but I actually love my relationship and my husband more than any such things. It is having a husband, in fact, that enhances all of those things, and makes them better. It makes life in general better.
Most of the time. That's the part that is the kicker. It takes work. Hard work. But, as I said, we both have to be working. That is what it takes for my faith in this relationship to last.
So in other news, last night I took myself to see the documentary Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, which I really liked a lot. I've already added one of Molly Ivins's books to my library list -- her last one published before she died in 2007, called Bill of Wrongs, at a Facebook friend's (Jill L's) suggestion.
I biked home with the intention of packing a quick dinner, feeding the cats and then taking a bus back down to Lower Queen Anne to see the movie at the SIFF Cinema Uptown Theatre. And I almost made it! I nuked some leftover shahi paneer, and did my afternoon push-ups, and used the bathroom, and fed the cats. I stupidly let the One Bus Away app dupe me into thinking I had time. I really need to learn a lesson about that app: it's not entirely in real-time, and buses often make up time as the app says it's a certain number of minutes delayed. This is especially the case when the delay is only by a few minutes. As a result, I got downstairs, only to watch the bus pull away. Shit!
So, that left one option: ride my bike again. I had to go back upstairs to get my helmet. I got into the elevator as someone else got off, not realizing the elevator was still on its way down to pick someone up from the garage. This created several minutes of wasted time that I would not have wasted if I had just taken the stairs to begin with. Instead, the elevator I got on went down first instead of up; then stopped at the ground floor again to pick up what it thought was someone waiting there to go up (me), and then also stopped on another floor before reaching mine, for that other guy riding up from the garage.
And yet, in the end it was fine. And this was a kind of amazing thing for me to realize: I mapped out four different bus routes to the theatre, two of them one bus ride and two of them involving transfers, and all four of them had start-to-destination transit ride durations of either 29 minutes or 30 minutes. You know how long it took me to get there on my bike? Twenty minutes! I'll never stop thinking of that as ridiculous, biking always being the most efficient mode of travel around town. It's too bad I can't handle enduring rain and cold on a bike during the winter months and can only use it for about half the year.
I also figured out, for the first time in many, many years, that there is an easier and quicker way to ride this route, which I used to take down to 1st Avenue from 2nd on Broad St, and then ride up the long-ish and somewhat steep hill up 1st alongside Seattle Center and Key Arena. This time, for once, I took the 2nd Avenue bike bath straight to Denny Way after bypassing Broad; rode up the steeper but much more brief hill up 2nd for the first block after Denny, and then had mostly smooth sailing right through Seattle Center, where there is a wide paved area for mostly pedestrians and no traffic allowed at all. Why have I never done this before? I took the same direction back after the movie and it was a dream compared to having to use sidewalks for two blocks on Denny Way from Queen Anne Avenue (the street on which the theatre is actually located, up near Mercer) back up to 2nd. Now once I get to Denny, I'm right back to that fantastic separated bike path on 2nd Avenue and I never have to get on a sidewalk. It's so simple and obvious -- things I miss all too easily for far too long a lot of the time.
Nobody's perfect, okay?
[posted 12:21 pm]