Sad

Feeling sad off and on today.  Woke up to an email from S, which was a response to an email I had sent saying, in part, that I felt grief that we were at the cusp of changes that might have improved things for us - i.e. breakthrough insights on his part around his anger, my going off DHEA, plans to spend more time together, using new communication tools.  He basically shot down the validity of every aspect of potential improvement.  DHEA? Nah, that did not make much difference.  Communication tools?  Not nearly enough, as we weren't even close to a positive shift, etc. 

My email was not advocating we try and work things out, just expressing sadness.  I must have hit a nerve to trigger such a detailed and defensive response.  I imagine he is not as confident as he seems about his reasoning. 

Even though I believe breaking up was the right choice, it's still hard sometimes, and I would like to hear more sadness and complexity from him in his thinking about it.  The one thing I am accepting through this whole ordeal, though, is that I cannot control or change him.  The fact is that I was not happy with him and was less and less so over the past few months.  I had fears and doubts and was anything but certain about being together long term.  There was a time where I felt a lot more positive about it but not for several months now.  I still had hope and I still wanted to get to the other side of the developments mentioned above.  But he did not, and I can't change that. 

He pulled the plug, and he told me that, even though he said differently at one point, he is not now capable of controlling his anger and communicating without constantly attacking me personally.  Even if he wanted to stay together, I would not want to go forward if he told me things would continue as they have been, and he was not going to even try to work on things.  It had gotten to the point where I felt verbally attacked on a regular basis in a way that was not healthy. 

It does bother me that both his and my patterns repeated themselves.  I had judgmental thoughts grow and settle into my mind in a way that blocked my expression of love for him.  He became increasingly negative and jealous and was constantly accusing me of "bad" behavior and not caring about him.  How much did these two things feed into one another?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps we truly are just not meant for one another, considering how much we seem to "trigger" one another and push reactive buttons.  That, added to the question I had about whether our overall level of chemistry was adequate does make me doubt our lasting power over time.

We are going to meet in-person (finally) tomorrow at a coffee shop to process the break-up.  He would have just gone on without that, but I felt our relationship and history was deserving of a conversation beyond phone and email.  Wish me luck.  I hope to come out of it feeling like I have been understood to a greater degree and vice versa.  And ideally, with a sense of care for one another. 

On another note, I attended a community meeting today from 10am to 1pm, during which we got to know each other better, talked about co-housing and intentional community possibilities, and ate a delicious, healthy potluck meal.  The people were great, and I'm excited about possibilities there.  This community will be based in a specific geographical area, however, and I'm not positive where I will be living come next summer after my housemate gets married (now that S and I will obviously not be living together).  He may even move in with his fiance sooner than that and said he should know the timeline in the next few weeks.  We will see.

Speaking of potlucks,  my leadership training pod is coming to my house for a potluck on Monday night.  I get a little anxious about hosting people but am looking forward to checking in on our leadership assignments together.  I have been doing writing on my "creative scene" (ideal vision) for relationship and will do some writing on my work scene tomorrow.  The project I will focus on over the next several months in the program will come from this exploration process.

Lastly, I still have not figured out a plan for Thanksgiving.  Looks like I may be eating the full spread I bought myself (well, not all at once!) and watching movies with Zoey... The sweet thing is that several people, including some of you guys, have said they would hang out with me or would invite me over or whatever if they were in town or didn't have set plans with their in-laws, etc.  So, I do feel cared for.