I Ruined My Relationship

I ruined my relationship.

It was the fear that gripped my throat after he got down on one knee. After the rush of love and excitement that I felt for the man I spent so many long years with the moment I had been so desperate for had finally come. I said yes! Of course I did, I had given everything for this man. I had changed myself, reworked and reshaped myself for him, but… why didn’t it feel right? Why did the rush of being engaged fade so quickly? Sitting in the car while he went into the store to grab a tool for work after having just proposed his love to me, why did it fade? Why did the smile slide off my face as I stared at that ring? That beautiful, glittering jewel that I never thought I’d be lucky enough to finally see on my finger only left my throat feeling dry. My heart sunk… Then the thoughts whirled around in my head, chasing each other faster and faster.

“He had been bragging to everyone about how much he loved me and the romantic way he was going to propose to me and this is what he does? Behind an abandoned train when they have no significance to us? He snapped at me right before that special moment. That special moment that was suppose to bring us closer together. What if this is just a glimpse at what married life would be like with him? Constantly waiting for the next outburst to come. He’s in therapy now and yes things are getting better, but will he always have this upward trajectory? Will he always be improving for the betterment of himself and ultimately our relationship and future together? Or will he stop going once we’re finally married and he feels like he’s ‘won?’ And now we’re at a hardware store… Is this really all he had planned? His outburst made me afraid and anxious. That special moment didn’t feel special…”

When he returned to the car, his joy was palpable; it radiated off of him like light and although it felt like I was ripping out my own heart, I had to tell him.

“Babe…”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I love you so much and I’m so excited to marry you, but this just didn’t make me feel special… This is not me telling you no, this is me asking if you could maybe do it again..?”

“… Oh. Yeah I can do that.”

“Would you like the ring back so you can have it with you when you try again?”

“Yeah… That’s fine, I’ll hold onto it.”

…

We both sobbed our hearts out. Me for feeling like I ruined my chance of marrying the man I loved and breaking his heart due to a misunderstanding and him for feeling as though I was telling him I didn’t want to marry him in some round about way. That spring, he dove into a new, reckless hobby and spent less and less time with me and would tell me I was overreacting when I told him I missed our quality time because “we lived together and had plenty of it.” Then the cheating started again… Only this time it was more calculated and sneaky and I only found out about it years later. I shrunk myself, made myself more pliant, easier to handle and digestible because I didn’t want to seem like a burden or difficult. The disrespect and neglect grew until that’s all that held space in the place that should’ve been our love. What happened? Is this my fault? I didn’t want to push him on the proposal at the time because I knew it was a sensitive subject and I didn’t want to tear open the wound or make him feel as though I was pressuring him, so I waited and in the end that was part of what damned us.

“If you had just asked me you would’ve known how much your rejection had hurt me!”

If you had come to me I would’ve held you and reassured you of my love until I had no breath left in my lungs.

“I ruined my relationship”

This is the sentence that plagues me to this day. The words that rip my heart apart leaving it torn and bleeding in the cavity of my chest. This, the man who loved me so much he wept at the thought of how horribly he treated me in the past, wept at how grateful he was that I still stuck by him, weathered all the storms with him and came out the other side together. The man who loved me so much he wept at how great his desire was to have a child with me. If his love was so great, why was it so fragile? Why did it break because I said that special moment didn’t make me feel special and I would like him to do it again? What could I have done differently? What could I have done better? How could I have changed? What if I-?

In reality: it was not my fault. I brought my heart to the table, I laid myself bare at his feet willing to be anything and everything for him to take away his pain, to bring peace to him when he had only known chaos.

And in the end that is the relationship I ruined, the one I had with myself.