EDITORIAL NOTE 6/7/10 At the Specific REQUEST of Crow, whom I have nothing but the deepest respect for because he has EARNED that respect, I have done a small amount of editing to the original editorial note. This editing consists solely of removeal of a couple of specific phrases which I personally felt were well deserved, but which some others might view as inflamitory, and clarifying a couple of other things with minor rewording.
This being reposted remains a means to teach an object lesson in facing the consequences of your actions - or your refusal to act. When you give your word to someone, you should do your utmost to keep it, or not complain when the consequences come home to roost. A person who's word is no good is someone I view as being devoid of honor, integrity, or ethics.
EDITORIAL NOTE 6/6/10: I originally removed this post based on an agreement that I made with Urso. He was warned when he made the agreement with me, and when I posted the heavily edited version, that this would be reposted if he did not keep his end of the deal. The agreement was that I would take down the original Fish Fry post from my blog, pending him allowing me to deck him - exactly once - without repercussions.
He has been back in Oklahoma from picking up his new "friend friend" Teresa for several days, lying and prior to today having others claim that they hadn't even left Ohio yet. It is my belief they have done this in order to leave some of his worthless shit at my home, eatting up my storage space apparantly for his own convenience. The items left behind are things he couldn't be bothered to move prior to leaving to pick her up to move in with him, and I fully believe that one of his primary motives in refusing to do so now is to avoid having to keep his word. It's not like I expected better out of him - he's never managed to keep his word yet, and I fully expected him to break it again under any excuse he thought he could find.
He's currently claiming to Crow that I've refused to Allow him to pick up his worthless shit unless I got to take that swing at him. Fortunatly, Crow is aware of the truth, as he was instrumental in me agreeing to take down the original post pending Urso/Ogre/Sheamus the Shameless/Matthew giving me that small piece of satisfaction.
I placed only ONE condition on him getting his shit - and that was that he do so in a Timely Manner, or it would all be sent to the dump. That is where all of the remaining items are going, since he has refused to come pick any of it up unless I allow his female "friend" to come with him, and agreed that she would be the only other person present besides himself and me. The demand that she be the only person present besides urso and myself was sent to me by way of 3rd party, because urso has also claimed that he did not have my phone number to contact me directly.
So... ya know what, Matthew? This is for you and that "female" you just moved to MY city - because you've proven to ME that you aren't man enough to keep your deals, or tell the truth, or refrain from betraying people, or to balls up and not attempt to use people for your own convenience.Everthing past this point is the Unedited contents of that original post.
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When it comes to dating, and most especially when it comes to break ups of any sort, people inevitably spout the old saying that there are always more fish in the sea. Trust me on this one, it's a truism for a reason. And since that particular truism equates all humans of one's opposite gender to fish, I've decided that it's time to light a fire, heat up some oil, pick over the bones, and dispose of the carcass. This little rant is about 6 weeks overdue, really, and it's being written now with a bit of hindsight perspective. I've waited to write this in order to examine both my own shortcomings when dealing with my recently ended relationship, and to bring myself to a point where I could examine his shortcomings with a touch less rancor than I would have been able to accomplish had I attempted to write this sooner.
Another old saying, when discussing breakups, is that there is her story, his story, and the truth laying somewhere in the middle of the two. For the most part, this is indeed the case. And such that it is, I make no claim to being faultless or guilt free in the destruction of my former relationship. I cannot say what his true motives were, or his true reasoning in his decision to terminate our relationship rather than attempt to work on it further in the hopes of salvaging things. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a mind reader. I can, at best, divulge my own perspective on things, seasoned with hindsight and what he has chosen to give me as his reasoning. While this will no doubt leave as many questions as it answers, and by it's nature will hardly give a complete picture of the situation, it is the best available to me until such time as I suddenly DO become a mind reader.
This particular comedy of errors - or perhaps tragedy of errors, depending upon your view - started at the beginning of October, 2009. Not very long ago, was it? No, not very long at all, and yet in some senses, a lifetime ago in learning about myself.
He and I were introduced by a mutual acquaintance at an SCA function. This particular acquaintance is female, engaged to be married, living with her fiance for most of the past year and a half, and at the time she introduced me to my former - having an ongoing affair with him behind her fiance's back.
That was, without doubt, my first mistake in this whole shebang. I ignored one of my own rules: never get involved with someone who is willing to cheat. If they cheat With you (or someone else) they will eventually cheat On you. I ignored that rule of mine by justifying things to myself. It wasn't Him who was cheating - it was Her. He, after all, was single and not in a committed relationship with anyone - not even her. Or so I told myself to salve my own inner voice screaming "Don't Do It!" To give him credit where credit is due, he did not Physically cheat on me during the entire time that we were supposedly a committed, monogamous couple. Physically. Emotionally, he began cheating on me within days of when we made the commitment to each other, and he never Stopped emotionally cheating on me right up to the day that we finally agreed to go our separate ways. He didn't have much Opportunity to Physically cheat on me - between work, school, and me being a stay at home supposedly Suzie homemaker, he would have been hard pressed to find opportunities to do so. Not that he didn't make Plans to do so, or spend part of his time Looking for opportunities to do so - he simply never actually managed to find one.
My second mistake was in failing to recognize my own state of emotional neediness at that point in time, and to take it into account. I jumped, head long, at the first opportunity presented to me to meet certain emotional needs. I did so without pausing to consider the potential consequences, or whether such a liaison was suitable, sustainable, or healthy. I knew better. I had internal misgivings about doing so. And I subsequently ignored them in order to satisfy my need for companionship and affection with someone who was of my age group, enjoyed some (or in this case many) of my hobbies, was of a suitable gender, and not a family member in need of a full time caregiver. I wanted to feel loved, and to no longer be lonely for the company of someone other than casual friends or dependant family. I should have simply bought a dog. (Oh wait - those tend to fall under the category of "dependant family member" in short order, since you have to feed them, water them, potty train them, clean up after them, and see to all their needs. Now I remember why I didn't simply go buy a dog!)
My third mistake was telling myself that he wouldn't do certain things Again, after I caught him doing them the first time. I knew, deep in my heart, that such was not the case. Once a cheater, always a cheater, and I'd known from day one (regardless of how I attempted to justify his behavior to myself) that he was willing to cheat. However, one of my great failings in life is that I hate to admit to failure on my own part - even if it's a failure to acknowledge the truth to myself, and perhaps especially when it's a relationship failure. I caught him cheating - emotionally, online - with the very same woman who had introduced us. Not once. Not even twice. But three times. Each time, I confronted him. Each time, he made excuses which I didn't believe but accepted anyway for the sake of attempting to salvage a broken relationship. If it had only been that one woman whom I caught him emotionally cheating with, or making plans to meet with behind my back, perhaps we Could have eventually salvaged things. That is, had it not destroyed my faith in him the second time I caught him breaking his word to me and lying to me.
When I caught him the second time (a few weeks after the first) and listened to him make excuses for his behavior which indicated plainly that he knew what he was doing, and knew that it was wrong, and knew that it was causing perhaps irreperable damage to our relationship ... my trust in him, in his honesty, in his capacity for loyalty, in his capacity for integrity and responcibility for his own actions..... died a rather painful death. I didn't really admit to myself that it was dead and gone. I certainly didn't admit to HIM that it was dead and gone, although he knew it anyway. I convinced myself, at least for a time, that my trust was merely wounded and could recouperate with sufficient time, and a bit of effort on his part. That effort was not forthcoming, nor did I really expect it to be. That death of trust on my part started a rather nasty downward spiral for both of us. I became depressed - a condition which I was already far to familiar with, since I've been diagnosed as having Clinical Depression - and that depression increased until apathy set in. The more depressed I became, the more apathetic I became. The more apathetic I became, the more he withdrew from me physically and emotionally, to turn ever more frequently to his various online chat room potential romances. The more he turned to his various "female friends" online, the more depressed and apathetic I became.
It was a spiral that we could have put a stop to, had things not already been destroyed by his emotional cheating and my (by this time) complete lack of faith or trust in him to refrain from emotionally cheating. The sex died, the playtime died, communication - other than occassionally snarling at one another over various slights and faults - died. By this time he'd already made up his mind to leave as soon as it was convenient for him to do so. And I had already made up my mind that if I could get things sufficiently in order not to need him Financially, I would tell him that it was time to end it and for him to move on. I resolved myself to simply maintain the status quo until such time as I could free myself from him financially. He had apparantly resolved to maintain the status quo until he located what he considered a suitable replacement for me.
His opportunity to do so came at the beginning of April. I missed a court date, having written it down wrong on the calender (and not thinking to call and verify the time/date with the court - a mistake I won't be making a second time!) and it landed me in the county jail for 2 weeks. Within 48 hours of my incarceration, he had informed all of our mutual friends that he had dumped me, and had started a relationship online with a woman from another state. A woman who subsequently attempted to pretend to be my friend, and whom he is in the process of moving to Oklahoma to live with him in his new place, which he rented with her financial help and backing. The only person he Failed to inform that our relationship was over - was ME. I didn't find out until after I got out of county. And even then, he continued to lie to me and tell me that we could still work on things, never hinting that he had started a relationship with another woman, who was in the process of packing up to move here to be with him. I came to the conclusion that he had been lying to me concerning the possibility of working things out when I logged into facebook, a week after getting out of jail, only to find that he had changed our relationship status while I was in. It was at that point that I informed him that I no longer desired to try working on things, and that I agreed our relationship was over, done, dead, and finished.
It had been dead for quite a while by that point. I simply hadn't allowed myself to consciously Admit that it was dead and needed to be buried, before the rotting corpse brought about a level of contagion that couldn't be contained. He finally moved a little over a week ago. I had allowed him to continue living here, as a rent paying tenant, after having him move into a seperate bedroom. I would have been willing to allow him to continue living here as long as he needed, as a rent paying tenant. He, however, had other ideas - mostly because he got angry when I confronted his new gal, and informed her that I knew who she was, that they had both been lying to me blatantly for quite some time, and that I did not appreciate either of them doing so - or treating me as though I were too stupid to recognize some of the more blatant lies. She apparantly paniced about being told such by me, called him, and he came rushing back to the house in a near rage to being throwing his things into his van to move. He should have thought it through a bit better, since he'd already learned that the rental property he was supposed to move into was uninhabitable at the time - he ended up living out of the back of his van and their moving truck for several days, and while he's currently sitting in Cincinatti with her, preparing to finish moving her back here with him, for all I know their new "home" is still an uninhabitable shambles which the landlord is dragging feet about repairing.
Ah well. Lessons have been learned. I've woken up to some truths about myself, and the consequences of putting off my own needs for too many years. And I've quit grieving about the ended relationship. I honestly wish neither of them any ill - only what each of them deserves, whatever fate might decree that to be. As for myself, I move on with my life, and have resolved not to forget the lessons that this ill-fated attempted has shown me.
