Here’s something most close friends don’t think to tell you–probably because they are close.
At some point you are going to fuck up. Then you are going to do it again. This may continue over and again in a radiant pattern that the people in your life can see, shake their head at, and say, “there s/he goes again.” The people who love you will try and point it out, but the problem is that you are blind to it by now and moreover you probably see it as ‘a part of who you are’
This is a mistake.
Like the fucking up, we are often mistaken in accepting or blaming the fucking up. This allows us to bury the bad action and continue to fuck up–if sporadically. Odds are you are not able to fix the problem on your own. Psychologists and Psychiatrists exist for a reason, in spite of the waning social stigma surrounding the profession. The problem is embedded deep in you, and try as you might to root it out, you cannot because you have another problem.
Your partner sees the problem and doesn’t understand why you keep doing it.
So, every time you dig to the root of the problem your also trying to have an entirely different conversation with your partner. In other words, you are speaking in two different languages at once and nothing is making sense anywhere. So, it continues. And things get worse. And things break down. And then you realize that the entire thing was always your fault and the best solution is to leave, because there is no way another human can still feel good about you being in their lives if you are such a fuck up.
So you leave.
But you don’t leave. Not on a slab and not out the door.
You stay. What happens next?