Tag Archives: Relationships

Passion, Anger, and Relationship Stuff

Posted by Evan on

I’ve been pissed off for the past couple hours on and off.

My gf and I just had a talk where I started off pissed off but settled down and where she ended up crying. We were supposed to be meeting to make dinner and we decided to stil meet up, despite our talk because we haven’t seen each other in a couple days and we both need to it eat. We just put the food in the oven but things are still tense.

When we walk anywhere we usually hold hands. We were walking to the store and I went to hold hands and she had this limp hand. Like I was holding her hand but she wasn’t really holding mine. I gently squeezed, “hey, we’re okay”. But no, I get a limp hand. And my feelings were hurt. Well,I said what I needed to say. All of it true. All the stuff I’ve said before and I’m tired of having this conversation. I just want her to take care of herself and be responsible for herself. I only have a little bit of money to get me through the rest of the month. We’re both students and we’re both on a budget. She usually spends her money fast (rent, cell phone, utilities) and she’s been paying people back money she owes them, including me, so she’s out of money. She’s doing the best she can and I know that we all are but I’m tired of this.

The other day she had a headache. She gets headaches when she’s dehydrated and stressed. I’d been buying her things to drink and I gave her the last of my tea. Later she reached for my water and it was less than half a bottle and I was thirsty and I said no. I didn’t have any water at home and I didn’t have any money. I texted her roommate to ask him if he could give her a couple of bucks for food and something to drink without her knowing that I asked. He managed to do it :) The point is, she says that it was a stress headache and I’m sure it was but it was also due to dehydration and not eating and not having money for her basic physical needs.

So, what got things started today was earlier, when we were talking about making dinner, I told her if there was no dishsoap I wasn’t going to do the dishes. We have a rule we usually go by, that whoever cooks does the dishes. Recently we both have been cooking a portion of the meal and I’ve been doing the dishes. There’s very little dishwashing liquid. She hadn’t done any dishes in the past few days but I didn’t know that. I thought that the dishsoap was gone but it’s not. There’s no handsoap and there’s no toilet paper here either. I decided in February that I wouldn’t buy anymore toilet paper, dish soap, laundry detergent, hand soap for this house. I can’t support two houses. There are 3 adults who live here for fuck’s sake. The only reason I’ve been buying all that stuff on and off for almost a year is because I care about it. I want to use toilet paper to clean myself up after i use the bathroom and I want to wash my hands afterwards and before I eat or anytime I want my hands clean, you know? They obviously don’t care as much as I do and so I decided to carry my own little soap and always have napkins just in case I need to use the bathroom here when there’s no toilet paper. This seems really ridiculous as I type this and that’s another reason why I got pissed off. This is a stupid waste of energy. Blah!

Then I told her I think she needs help. Either a counselor at school, for academic planning (she just dropped a class and has C’s or low B’s in her other two classes), or carrer planning counselor to help her with her resume and job search, or a psychologist. I feel that there is something not right with her. She says she wants to be a nurse but doesn’t study, focus, or do well in her classes. She hangs out, watches TV, plays video games etc. Fine. It’s her life. She says she doesn’t like not having money, doesn’t want to ask people for money, is embarrassed because people pay for her to eat, embarrassed because she has holes in almost all her pants and some undergarments, socks, and she needs shoes and so on. She didn’t say any of this until today when we talked. She cried and said that’s why she doesn’t ever talk about it. I don’t think not talking about it is helping. She doesn’t think talking about it will help. I told her that I’m pissed because I’m tired of looking at her and seeing her do without and I’m pissed off because I can’t help her any more than I have. I’ve spent more money on her than I want to think about and no, she rarely asks for anything but how can I sit by and not help. So I’m pissed off because I care so much and that sucks. She says she’s tired of being broke but I don’t see her looking for work. She says she’s put in applications but no one calls back, I asked her where did she apply and she told me. I should have asked when.

But this isn’t pick on your girlfriend day. I’m done with this vent. It’s Saturday. It’s my only designated day off. I go back to doing homework tonight and I need to let this go. I’ve said what I needed to. She’s said what she needed to say to me. And she has her life to live and I have mine. Is this trouble for us? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m not at all at break up point but I’m definitely in the mind set of stepping back and minding my own business. I like to be supportive and helpful in my relationships and I don’t really know what else I can do here. I’m going to focus on my stuff. School, health, trying to figure out what I’m going to do with myself as far as money goes, especially this summer. And what I need to do to improve my life.

More on school and career aspiration in another post.

Ta for now. Happy Saturday! And thanks for reading.

A Decision Made

Posted by Evan on

Early this morning I spoke with my girlfriend and told her that I wasn’t going to move in and that I would find a place. She paused and said that she was going to call me last night to talk to me. Apparently her mom came storming in the house, yelling, that she was not going anywhere and that they can’t push her out and that I was trying to get her out of there. I spoke to her last Monday to see what her plans were so I could make plans of my own. She was freaking out and my girlfriend and her roommate told her for the umpteenth time that she was not getting kicked out, they just wanted the drugs out and she could choose to stay or go. So she’s chosen to stay as I thought she would. I am happy that I made the hard decision myself last night and was at peace with it and myself.

After that got settled my girlfriend and I talked about our relationship. We talked for over an hour and a half. I’ve been distant the last two weeks. I haven’t been feeling sexy so our sex life has been on hiatus. It’s a combination of stress and feeling cramped in. The house isn’t clean, the bathroom, the room. I’ve bought cleaning supplies in the past, I’ve cleaned. I contribute. I’m just tired of caring more than they do. There’s a very large pile of laundry in the corner of the room that has been there for at least 9 months, no kidding. I gave her money in the fall to wash them and told her I’d help her but she spent the money on something else. I don’t know what. Maybe food. Who knows? The point is, that it’s still there. I told her the other day, if you want to know what I want for my birthday, I want you to wash your fucking clothes. So yeh..

It came out in the conversation this morning that I am starting to not trust her. She doesn’t do what she says she’ll do. She told me that if she says she will, she will and when she says she will do something, it means future tense. I told her I was losing faith and not believing her when she tells me things. She told me she’d get a job a couple of weeks ago. Her friend is coming to town this Thursday til March 11 and I specifically asked her if she was seriously going to look for a job while her friend was here and she said yes. Today she said she meant that she would if she had to but she’ll be getting her school money in March at some point, and they told her mom if she’s staying she’ll have to pay rent, and besides that, she doesn’t want to work outside of her chosen field of health care. I understand this. But she shouldn’t expect everyone around her to give her money for tampons, drinks, food, bus pass, phone, rent and so on. She doesn’t have experience and she can’t get a job without experience so she’s going to school for Medical Assisting and will work as a Medical Assistant as she goes to school for nursing. That’s the plan.

My issue is that I think that since nursing is her dream and school is part of the journey towards her dream and the way she earns income why does she not take school more seriously? Why doesn’t she treat school as her job? So this is part of the judging. She said that she can’t study like I do. She can’t study a little bit every day, she’ll forget things. I know we all have our ways of learning and studying. The thing is she’ll wait til the day before or the day of and if she get’s a headache or gets in a fight with her mom, her homework doesn’t get done. She’s already missed a test in one of her classes. The nursing field is competitive. I don’t think C’s in her class will cut it. Withdrawing from classes will delay her finishing. The VA money runs out 3 years from now. She says she’ll get loans and scholarships if she has to. I ask myself, what business of it is mine? Just let her be. It’s her life.

My whole point in all this is that we’ve talked about moving in together but we can’t if we don’t have our finances together. I don’t have a lot of money. I scrape by. I can take care of myself, sometimes barely, but I know I can and will do better. I know it’s easier if there’s another person there. I feel if she were responsible for herself and I for myself (I am) then we could come together and create together what we say we want. We had decided last year that we wouldn’t live together before a year of dating. We’ve known each other for a year but we’re just shy of 9 months as a couple. I told her that I think she depends on everyone to take care of her and that it’s not fair. I told her that I feel that I’m alone. I don’t feel like we’re on the same page. I don’t feel like we’re working towards the same things. I told her that she’s a good friend and she’s generous spirited but she says she wants things but doesn’t move towards them. I told her maybe I’m picking at her because I’m unhappy and angry with myself. I want something I can’t have. She said that I need to remember that I’m a lot older than her. I told her I do. But even when I was 23 I was way more responsible than she is. I told her the morning that I turned 16 I woke up around 8, got dressed and rode my bike to apply for jobs. I’ve been living on my own since shortly after I turned 17. We agree that we’re different people. She told me she doesn’t like to be judged. I told her no one does and I feel bad about it.

I know it’s semantics, but I have been accessing her character. Observing her behavior. I have been distant lately. I’ve been trying to gain perspective and choose what I can live with and what I can’t. What’s a big deal and what isn’t. I’ve been asking her questions and listening to her responses. I am attempting to move beyond my rose tinted glasses and seeing if I am okay with aligning myself with her. I want to believe her when she tells me she’ll do something. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I don’t want to keep reminding her to do things. I don’t want to keep paying for things that she’d be able to pay for if she worked 10 hours a week. I don’t want to feel bitter. I don’t want to enable her. I told her about the butterfly. If you help a butterfly out of their cocoon, they’ll die. The struggle to get out of the cocoon builds their wings so they can fly everywhere. It’s a beautiful thing. I want her to grow up and be responsible for herself and I worry that me being who I am and being in her life the way that I am will limit that growth. I worry too much. I just don’t want to take care of her when I know she’s capable of taking care of herself. I want to care for her and her to care for me but I want her to care about herself. To value herself. To value herself more that I think she does.

I’ve only know her when she’s been out of work. She lost her job a couple weeks before I met her. She’s been really poor. She says that this is not typical of her but for me, it’s all I know of her. And she has by now account seen the best of me. She’s seen me stressed about my living situations last year. Stressed about school. Stressed about money. The difference is that last year, all I wanted to do was be with her. I didn’t care so much what else was happening. I wanted to be with her and I felt like I could deal with anything else. I feel differently now. I feel that I need to move forward with my life and I’ve put things on hold because I’ve been so focused on her, (worrying about her education, her lack of money, her health, her toxic relationship with her mother) and I have abandoned myself along the way. I can’t do that anymore. It’s not her fault AT ALL. I’ve made the choices I’ve made. I’m okay with the choices I’ve made and now it’s time to move forward with my life.

There’s a saying, “You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. I think about that often. I don’t want to align myself with someone who’s okay with things being the way they are. I want to work towards a better life for myself. The thing is, I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t want to be alone. My girlfriend is amazing in so many ways. She’s a good friend to me, a good lover, a terrific artist. She’s one of kind. Irreplaceable. We have the potential to create great things together. I don’t want to break up. I know our conversation this morning was upsetting for her. I’ve written a letter to her that I’ll read to her if/when she lets me. I feel better in general about everything. Knowing that I won’t be living there has lifted a large weight off of my shoulders. I feel hopeful about finding a good place for myself. My only sad feelings at this point is that I know she’s feeling hurt and frustrated. I hope we can talk soon.

As of now, I’m off to rest. And later, homework.

Happy Sunday All!