You and me, now what?

We’ve all suffered through a breakup. Whether you’re breaking up or broken up with it rarely, if ever, feels good. However, it’s generally less painful when you’re driving the bus. I feel one of the biggest mind fucks is breaking up with your spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and trying to detach, all the while you need to communicate daily because you have a child together. No matter how furious you are with him/her you need to take that phone call calmly and when asked if you can pick up your son tomorrow, you reply “of course”. Generally there are different words i’d like to be using and rarely is it “of course”. But you do it, put your ego aside, step it up. Take the high road. After all it’s about your son and not your husband. The silver lining (something I always try to find) you get to spend more time playing with the little guy, which is worth its weight in gold.

Then inevitably there is that one night period of time that you both are really getting along well and communicating. Laughing, chatting, flirty and seeing the past in a friendly retrospect. Wow! you think,  you’re really communicating and doing this coparenting thing great. Thinking that you’ve got this. Then out of the blue he blames you for something that you thought had been dealt with and put in a box on the top shelf behind the DVDs and was not relevant at the time anyway. BAM! slap in the face, welcome to the present. What if during all this you’re both unsure about the separation. Wondering if it really is best for your family. One of you inevitably will feel stronger about this then the other. Otherwise you’d be together. This position can even change roles, often depending on the disengagement and ambiguity of the scenario.

There will come a time when you’ll look at him and think that all you want to do is hold him. Take away his pain, be the husband you thought you always were, not perfect but nonetheless caring and present. All of a sudden you freak out thinking what you might feel. What if it feels too good? What if you start rethinking the separation? Do I need to give up my apartment? Do I have to change the billing addresses on my credit cards? My car lease? Even more terrifying is you feel nothing. A hug is all it is. Nothing more, no warmth, no flutter of the heart, NOTHING! Does this mean it’s really over? Do I need to start dating? Should i completely move on? Has a part of me been holding a tiny piece of hope, a false sense of security? Whoa easy big guy, lets reel it back in. It’s just a manly hug between two dudes that used to mean the world to eachother. 

My quick thinking of handling this predicament was to do nothing, So I froze for a moment and moved on. Was it right? Was it wrong? Does he think I’m no longer caring. Ug! The questions in my head won’t stop. After all was said and done it was just another page of the break-up book. A book I seem to be referring to a lot.

RTVW

(This was from an incident in 2016)