my valentine.

yeah.

well, it's all out on the table now.

well, not ALL. but almost all.

it makes sense that after the worst christmas ever, this would be the worst valentines. and i can hardly wait for the coup de grace, the anniversary, in just over a month.

i felt so much better earlier. better than i do now. now i just feel lied to. again. i'm so sick of that part, the weed part.

so this morning, he gave me a card. i didn't get him anything. he'd written in it, among other things, that he's sorry that he's a terrible husband and that he is my friend and just wants me to be happy.

so that ignited a huge conversation. which was his intention. i knew when i read it that a conversation would follow. and as is my new style, i embraced it, and dove into it, not really holding back.

it started as a discussion of our problems. revisited. i told him that i thought he was getting sloppy with his work. blowing deadlines. and he said that it's an effort to keep him from panicking.

he is, of course, primarily concerned with our future because of its impact on his business. he knows that when i go, his financial backing leaves with me. and i told him that i'm trying to get him to the point where he can be self sufficient, if i'm not around. whether it means a credit card in his name, or just separating the money he makes into his account, from the money i make in our personal account.

i told him that i am trying to minimize the effect on his business.

the end of the conversation was him asking me what the first thing i'd do when i left him (to accomplish my dream) would be. i said pay off the debt. i told him that, by not funnelling my money into his business, i could pay off the debt that his business had racked up.

he asked why i felt that i could only have my dream without him, basically.

and i said that i'd have my money, and instead of investing it in his business, that i'd be able to pay off the debt and start saving up to do what i want to do. that a marriage of two entrepreneurs didn't have room for one of them, by design. and that as much as he keeps telling me that my time is coming, that i'm not getting any younger, and that i'm still so far from it, that it just won't happen if i stay here. he understood all of that.

this all came after about 30 or 45 minutes of discussing where i am and where he is. sometimes i think he finally understands it, gets it. and then, sometimes, i think he's still in denial.

but he wants to be friends. which is really important to me, and confuses the hell out of my friends. i can't just let everything i've inadvertently been working for the past eight or so years fall away. i've got too much vested in it, and i don't intend to just make a clean break and never see him again. or any of the people i've been supporting. or any of our mutual friends. it's not an ugly breakup. i'm just exhausted and hopeless. i told him that.

i told him that in the fall, i begged him to stop treating me like his business partner and to treat me like his wife. but he didn't, and that led to december.

i told him that in december, when i felt like i realized what our problems are and pointed them out to him, that i was hopeful and determined to fix our marriage. but that after the past two months of him not making any effort to work on it, that i'm hopeless now. and tired.

he doesn't feel like we're on separate teams, but by me saying that i can never win, means that we're on different teams. because i said that as long as i'm with him, i'll never have what i want for myself.

his dream will never allow for mine. he's been telling me for five years now that he's getting his business to the next level, and that pretty soon i could just work for him. that i wouldn't have to go to a clock in job or wake up to an alarm, which was my definition of success.

and for most of those years, that is what i wanted. i wanted to work from home. i wanted to have a baby and be a work from home couple. and i so wanted him to succeed that i was willing to put my dream on hold until his allowed for me to have mine.

but the thing is, it doesn't. and it won't. and seven years later, i'm no closer, none whatsoever, to getting to that point. and that it is time to take control and get it. i realized almost as soon as i thought that i wanted a kid that i could never have a kid with him. that if i did, it would be worse than if i just tried to be a single mom and raise a kid on my own. and i'm so grateful that i didn't act on it when i felt those feelings.

because he is so determined to get to the next level. and he always will be. no matter how much i give, and no matter how much he gets, he'll always be trying to get to the next level.

and i think that he should. i believe that he will. in the industry he is in, that's how it works. there is a top, but it's such an impossible top that it's really not attainable. but getting very close to that is his goal. and he's still not there yet. to get there the hard way, which is how he does things, it will be several more years of time and money and energy.

but if i stay with him, that's all i'd ever be. the person who helps him get there.

his work is where his motivation comes from. not my happiness, not his love for me. his dedication to his company is what motivates him.

he admitted that he is married to his job. that he doesn't have time and energy left for me at the end of his day. and that he understands why i feel that way, and what it means for us. i told him that i don't believe that he'll ever have the time and energy for us.

there was a time when i was married to my job. and i admitted that when he pointed it out today. but the difference was, it was less than a year. and that i saw what it was doing to my marriage, and that i quit, to avoid it's impact on everything. i quit for him. obviously, its toll on me was the bigger factor, but i knew that my marriage wouldn't survive it, so i ended it.

but he won't do that for me. i learned that when he said that he'd never go to work for anyone else, because it would mean that he was giving up on his dream.

i guess, at the end of the day, that he's trying to be okay with it. he knows that i want to separate. he knows that i am separating from him, and that i've been physically/emotionally/mentally separating from him lately. he has felt it and noticed it, and asked me to just be open with him and to tell him where i am, so that we can move forward.

because it's valentines day, he asked to lay in bed together. so we got showers and into pjs and got into bed and napped curled up for over two hours. i hate laying in bed. it wastes my weekend and makes me regret not doing other things. i drifted in and out, thinking permanent thoughts about what he'd do without me. who he'd sleep with first. how i could not imagine myself being with someone like that again, ever.

but i stayed in bed anyways. after the talk we'd had, i was pretty surprised that he wanted to be anywhere near me. but maybe it's because he knows that our days are numbered, and that he won't have me to be with anymore, so wanted time with me.

he loves me. and i guess that's where it comes from.

and at one point, he said, 'when you leave me...' i forget now what it was about, but it was followed by a statement i cannot recall.

so i know that, on the most basic level, he knows that it is over. ending.

we have friends, a couple, and they recently split up. they were living together and had been together for a very long time. several years.

and a few days ago, i was telling him about the split, because he didn't know yet. and i was saying how bad i felt that the girl (who is more my friend than his) was crashing at friends because she couldn't stay in her place, where they had lived together.

and this was before our big conversation today. this was a few days ago. but he said then, 'when you leave me, you're going to have to do that.'

and i said that i won't.

i guess it's because i feel like it's already happening. the beginning of it was just separating the books. and one thing my friend said to me today was that everything is so entwined, and that it's killing her to have to go through everything and separate it all into his and hers. and she was a little confused when i said that i knew exactly what she meant. and that as much as it sucks, it's going to be okay. and to be grateful for a chance to redefine her dreams BEFORE she got married.

i'm in no rush to get out of this house. it's a big house. i don't need to stay with friends. and i won't leave it until i'm in a position to. there are a lot of things i have to set up first. financially, legally. alot.

he said today that he felt like i already have a game plan and that i'm not telling him. which is entirely true. but i didn't tell him that.

he also said that he feels like i think he's helpless or something, and i didn't admit to that either. just said that i'm trying to help him become more self sufficient.

i told him today, which was repeated from a conversation we had a long time ago, that i have no place in this house. i thought that getting out of the apartment would give me space enough to feel like it was mine, like i wasn't just living where he worked, which was the case in the apartment.

but in this house, everything is his. it's everywhere. and there's no space that is just for me. and it bothered me before enough to mention it. but here it is again.

and i admitted that i thought of it the way some people in distress think of a baby: it will fix everything, it will bring us together, it will make us stronger. and i'd never say that about a child, but i believed it about the house. i thought that if i could just feel like i had something of my own, and some space of my own, that i wouldn't be so bothered by the fact that his dream is my life.

i thought that if i could just have a place to call my own, a big beautiful house, that i'd be happier. that it would give us something to work on together. that we'd both be happier with a lot of extra space.

but like everything else in my life, he's consumed it. now we just have three times the space, but i'm still living where he works. it's not our house. it's not even a home. it's his headquarters. ceiling to floor, it's his.

i also told him that i think we're both rebelling in a way, and that by regressing, we're moving further away from each other. he's rebelling to a time when he was younger, smoking weed, not bathing, shrugging responsibility.

and i'm rebelling by hanging out with my friends a lot, going out more, drinking more, and making more time for my friends.

and that i'm very aware that our regressions are moving us back in time to a place before we knew each other. and that it's making the distance between us greater.

so. my game plan.

i think that this is what will happen:

i think that this summer, i'll go home. well, i'm definitely going hom. but i think that just before i go, i'll get all my shit out of the house. which, redundantly, isn't much.

but i think that when i come back, it should be to my new place.

i think that i'll be ready for a vacation after the trauma of splitting up and moving out. and i think that there's no better place for me to be than at home with my family in the days that follow the split.

yes, i'm sure it will dampen the fun. but i think i'm just going to need my mom. and my sister. and to try to let the sun take some of my problems away.

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