Change in all the areas of my life...

I'm glad you've worked out some difficulties and are on a more even keel. It's nice to figure out what WE can do to change our behaviors and attitudes to make other people feel less annoying.

And, not to boast or anything, but my last 2 years with Aries have been so amazing sexually/romantically, I can bet I do know what you've been experiencing with Artist. haha We actually go beyond opposites to an eternal state where opposites (male/female, young/old, matter/spirit, mother/son, father/daughter, brother/sister, etc.) cease to exist.
 
Wow. I realized when commenting on another post that I hadn't updated this blog in nearly a year! I'm really shit at keeping journals though and I just wasn't feeling like I needed to process "out loud" here though - I've read through past entries a few times and I really like having the record of things, so I might as well update.

It's been a hell of a long summer/fall. I mentioned here, I think, that Knight's mom was diagnosed with cancer back in fall of 2022. Pancreatic. At the time, she had surgery and chemo and actually did surprisingly well - so often that's a practically instant death sentence. But cancer being, well, cancer, it came back - she found out fall of 2023 that it was back, and chose not to do chemo again as it was miserable and frankly probably wouldn't have worked more than a few extra months. She stayed surprisingly healthy through Christmas/early spring, but then started declining pretty rapidly - we managed to take one last family vacation in July, to St. Thomas. (St. Thomas is lovely in some ways but not somewhere I'd choose to go; I did get to go snorkeling so that was great and honestly I spent most of the rest of the trip either slightly tipsy or slightly stoned as it was the easiest way to deal with her illness and my son's complete lack of wanting to be there.)

That was really the last good week she had, though - Knight ended up living at her house for the last month and doing most of the end-of-life care himself, as she really didn't want anyone else there (including me, really - our relationship never truly recovered from Covid, and I have a lot of anxiety-to-almost-the-point-of-phobia around illness so I wouldn't have been helpful.) Like, the last time I saw her was about 2 weeks before she passed because I spent five minutes by her bed, said "I love you and we'll be ok", then more or less RAN away, drove home and sobbed for the rest of the day. Yeah. Not proud of that, but not much I can do about it - the whole thing brought up way too many triggers for my mistakes around my own mother’s death (I was . I'm not the only one who failed at dealing with death - her brother and sister didn't come down at all. So anyway, she passed away September 12.

To some degree we're all dealing both better and worse than I expected. On... too many levels it's a relief, really. Hate to say it, but I've talked here before about how we've been in parent-caretaking mode since I started writing here, more or less, on top of actual parenting. Hell, I think parent-caretaking got in the WAY of actual parenting far FAR more than it should have. On the other hand, Knight's been doing the drown-his-feelings thing again and I'm so fucking tired of it.

We were in a good place last fall, but as his mom got sicker he got more and more distant, which I tried to give him space for but... he swears he’s ok after his mother’s death but he’s doing the absentmindedly get drunk thing. We ended up having a huge fight about it last weekend, after the third date-ish evening we spent together in a row (over a few weekends) ended up with him “going to sleep” (read: passing out) at, like, 9pm (when I was expecting to hang out until at least 11). I called him on it the next morning - it’s not even that I wanted sex, though it might have been nice, I just thought I actually got quality time and clearly that wasn’t important to him.

Cue the promises of being better. Probably will even happen for a while, given that this time I flat out told him that I’m barely romantically interested in him anymore because I can’t trust that he’s not going to do this again, hurt me the same way again. I think that shocked him, especially since I wasn’t even angry anymore, just… exhausted. Like, I’ve lowered my expectations SO many times over the past five years or so… and each time I did it both made us more peaceful and yet also made us farther apart. If he’s going to be this unavailable, if he’s going to keep choosing alcohol over me, then… :🤷: I’m not going to try to take our lives apart but at some point the romance really will be forever dead. It’s not, yet..

The amazing thing was that he seemed almost surprised that I was this hurt? Like despite all of our zillion conversations about it, he somehow didn’t realize he was still doing it. Seriously, he almost has this idea that if he doesn’t get sick and he’s not hungover then he wasn’t drunk enough to affect anything. Didn’t notice he was passing out early, really (he just thought he was tired), didn’t realize he got pissy and/or verbose… mostly because he probably didn’t remember it. This time we happened to be watching a TV show we were both looking forward to and when I asked him the next morning about specific plot points he had no idea what I was talking about, so I had mostly emotionally neutral / factual evidence of exactly what he was doing to his memories and his interactions with people. (I think he believed me intellectually when I had told him this before but not, like, *deep* down.) I don’t blame him, his family ran on denial so it’s an easy habit to pick up.

Hell, I’ve been in denial for years that he’s either a borderline alcoholic or really truly doesn’t give a damn about me anymore. I still believe him, that the latter isn’t true - which means the former must be and I don’t know what to do with that. Especially because after Joan moves out, and we sell the house we just inherited, we’re considering moving into a new place…on the one hand maybe I shouldn’t get even more entangled (for weird 2008 financial reasons, I’m actually not on the mortgage for this house, only the deed; this probably won’t be the case for the next one). On the other, if his drinking gets worse my life is going to get blown up anyway, so I might as well go with the hopeful option and believe that maybe he gets it this time.

At this point I’m more… curious where this will end up than hopeful or worried. That probably sounds weird, but I don’t want to hope anymore and I don’t want to give up, I *haven’t* given up. I wasn’t sure until I was in a group chat with two friends who have known me about as long as I have been here, so they’ve heard the ups and downs. One is having different but maybe even harder problems with her marriage and the third person in the chat asked her whether she still saw anything good between her and her spouse… but I thought he was talking to me and like, wrote paragraphs about why Knight was still worth it even if nothing changes. (I won’t do so now, feel free to read back in this blog for examples).

I saw the phrase “the liminal space between Pandora’s and Schroedinger’s Boxes” the other day and I think that’s where I am. I think that’s where he is. But… at least he knows that there IS a problem? Ironically, the other thing that really, truly meant I hit the end of my tolerance was actually something else that happened that evening that started out with him being sweet/romantic. For reasons we needed to send a photo of us to someone for a website, and the one he picked was of me kissing him before a medieval fighting event - he’s in armor and holding his visor up, it’s adorable. And terribly romantic. And entirely wrong for the website (the person was looking for more of a formal portrait) so he had to send another. I wasn’t in the conversation, so he’s telling me about this early in the evening and is all cute about it, I think it’s wonderful because he’s so rarely schmoopy and I’m thinking “oh yay, maybe now that all this stress is over things will be better”… and then… yeah. I don’t know how he didn’t realize that he just wasn’t treating me like the guy in that picture anymore, that we weren’t the couple that we were then. Maybe he does now.

To be continued (splitting here to avoid character count limits).
 
Ironically it makes things more difficult that things between Artist and I are really good right now. Kind of surprising, really… I actually came the closest I’ve ever come to starting a fight with him a few weeks ago, though the nuances of why will take some back story.

So right now Artist is working a contractor job - originally supposed to end this month but it was extended until next April, but that was close enough that it made ArtistSpouse freak out at the idea of him being unemployed agaiin, after it taking a few months last year (in a better job market) to find even a contract one. On the one hand that’s fair. On the other hand, when ArtistSpouse gets anxious, they get controlling. In this case *really* controlling and are basically “requiring” Artist to spend X hours a day doing job search stuff. I put that in quotes because obviously he’s his own person and he’s choosing to do this… but he’s also a people pleaser and especially in that relationship… but I also like having employed partners so it’s for a good cause… eh. Complicated feels there.

This “requirement” has somewhat messed up our midweek dates in that he’s still coming over but spending a couple hours or so on job stuff while I read or work on some personal projects. I honestly don’t mind - it’s kind of nice, we don’t have to be actively interacting to be together. I end up having to do the same occasionally for work deadlines, so I’d be a hypocrite if I got too upset.

Hell, I feel like Artist is more attentive/flirtatious when we’re officially doing things separately than Knight is sometimes when we’re technically watching tv or something together. But I digress again.

Point here is that the issue isn’t the “what” it’s the “how we got there” - but I haven’t really said a lot about it because it’s their relationship, y’know? Artist knows I think his spouse is being unsupportive and I don’t think I’d do the same thing, but I’m not going to repeatedly bring it up unless it’s actually affecting me negatively.

It does, however, color / confirm my opinion of my meta and not, perhaps, for the better. Especially as they also have a habit of texting/calling during my dates with Artist for “emergencies” that… aren’t. At least IMO. But it’s a minor enough interruption that I roll my eyes and keep going, right? It just feels entitled… but then again maybe I’ve just trained myself so hard not to do it anymore that I’m just being holier than thou, I certainly used to, and used to feel the same way.

Anyway, so a few weeks ago I’m at Artist’s place for the evening - we had gone to dinner, come back and edibles, and they were _just_ hitting when the power went out. OK, that’s kind of fun, sex in silent darkness instead of dimly lit sex with music, it’s a change but not a bad one. So we go back to what we were doing… and then there is a POUNDING on the door between the apartment and the house. At first it was ok, I actually thought there might be some medical issue or something (potentially side-effects from an earlier procedure or the like). It… was not. It was ArtistSpouse thinking that it was fuse or something instead of a broader power outage, and expecting Artist to Do Something about it, despite there being two other adults in the house AND there being no particularly urgent reason to try and fix the power. So knocking on the door like its an emergency - despite us clearly having missed/ignored earlier texts - was apparently considered an appropriate life choice? And worse, when he picked up the phone to see what was happening while putting clothes on, he KNEW that that was all the issue was and went anyway.

Clearly I wasn’t happy with ANYONE in this situation… and had absolutely zero filter when he came back, despite trying to not say much(see above about it not being my place to criticize the inner workings of someone else's marriage). In my defense, I was both in a rather altered state and had been startled out of having sex which is always an adrenaline dump anyway.

So i was more than a bit upset. The thing is, it wasn’t really anger, per se - I wasn’t happy, obviously, but what I was feeling wasn’t anger so much as fear. It’s not like they’re the sort of poly people to have an official veto - I’d have noped out of that at the beginning… but I’ve experienced what felt like a “pocket veto” before, whether it was or wasn’t. And all these instances of feeling disrespected, feeling like Artist never said no to his spouse even at my expense… yeah. So that was… not a fun conversation… but I did, at the end of it, really believe that if his spouse ever tried to veto me he’d leave rather than give me up. Not something that has ever been stated in exactly those words to each other, though I had had similar conversations with Knight once upon a time. (Fortunately he and I have the same philosophy on that and he would never).

So maybe it’s just the increased safety I felt after that conversation? Whatever it is, Artist and I have been falling much deeper down the kink rabbit hole lately - not so much in actions, per se, but in … attitude? I don’t know. I find myself wanting to wear my day collar more and more - basically whenever I’m not spending deliberate time with Knight. I wonder if Knight has noticed that?
 
Glad you're back.

I'm sorry about Knight's alcoholism. My best friend has an alcoholic husband. He's a lovely man. It's a disease. But it makes her life hell in many ways. She's been to Al Anon a lot. Most women with alcoholic husbands-- the guys are either dead, or the women have left them, after multiple failed attempts at getting sober. My friend is one of the few who has stuck by her man. She knows she was codependent. That goes with the territory. Al Anon will tell you that if your partner is a drunk and you are still with him, you are also sick. She's learned to let go of a lot of the begging, pushing, nagging, demands, requests, etc. He finally got sober for four years, and then this year fell off the wagon again. (Two people he was very close to died and he just couldn't handle it.) This may be it. His organs seem to be failing. He's barely eating. She's being pretty fatalistic about it. He doesn't even want to go to the doctor to get diagnosed.
 
My bio father was an alcoholic and he died when I was 9, but it still left scars.

Sounds like it's been a rough year, icesong. What happened with Knight and Joan that she's moving out? Did I miss something?
 
My bio father was an alcoholic and he died when I was 9, but it still left scars.

Sounds like it's been a rough year, icesong. What happened with Knight and Joan that she's moving out? Did I miss something?
Nothing dramatic - they’re still in a relationship, though we’ll see how distance (her new place is, oh, 45-60 min from here) affects that. But the reality was that, as I mentioned before, this is/was not a great living situation for her - I think she’ll be much happier living on her own, in a kid free house, with more space…

I will say that since I wrote this:
Cue the promises of being better. Probably will even happen for a while, given that this time I flat out told him that I’m barely romantically interested in him anymore because I can’t trust that he’s not going to do this again, hurt me the same way again. I think that shocked him, especially since I wasn’t even angry anymore, just… exhausted.
My prediction that he would, in fact, be better for a while is so far true. 🤷🏻‍♀️
 
Joan closed on her house, so the moving date is set for mostly next weekend. It’s going to be really interesting to have the house back to the three of us.
 
So Joan moved out the weekend after Thanksgiving, and it's been... actually really good. Knight has been WAY more chill, as have I, as has MiniMe - I'm not sure any of us realized just how much tension had built up in the house due to just general living style incompatibility. Joan is still really stressed, I think - but that's also about her other relationships, and about life and money and family and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with whether or not she lives here.

Haven't sold the extra house yet, but given that this house starts to feel a bit more "right size' for the three of us rather than the four of us, moving feels a bit less mandatory and honestly? I would almost rather continue to spend money on going out and toys etc rather than sinking it all into a house. It's definitely something Knight and I have been discussing.
 
Whew. Ok, January was a LOT. Knight got laid off, then re-employed within the space of a month. And poor Joan had not one but TWO partners dump her, after she was already struggling with the move and various dynamics thereof - Knight is the only partner she has left, which is not good for either of them, I think. And I worked something like 60 hours a week a couple times, while also trying to find some time to work on a medieval feast I'm doing later this month. Speaking of which, I should get back to that... though I admit I'd rather go back and re-read schmoopy posts as tomorrow is my TEN YEAR anniversary with Artist.
 
Time to update that signature! Congratulations on the 10 years.
Sorry about the hard stuff.
 
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