It is my son’s 2nd birthday, but the only thing I can think of is the three hour conversation of confusion and conflicting emotions Josh and I had last night. It started because he asked me if he made me feel beautiful. And I told him that that was an interesting question. The truth is absolutely not. I told him while I was pregnant and after I gave birth to Jashar; I was at my most vulnerable place physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was in a cave of haze. It was hard to function beyond giving Jashar the care he needed as a newborn. When I was at my most vulnerable, Josh should have been the most supportive to me and at his strongest. But he was at his most vulnerable point as well as his most selfish. I still felt like I was trying to carry all three of us on my back and balance my attention between the two of them, and it completely broke me down. I still feel like he has never even fully acknowledged or appreciated what I went through in that time. I remember him even being jealous of Jashar which bears witness to how intensely selfish and immature Josh truly is. This was already so difficult that when I began to find out about the cheating it only pulled me down further. Before I was pregnant ans even up until shortly after Jashar was born, I was on cloud 9 with him. He could do no wrong, and I felt completely confident in us and who we were as a couple and what I meant to him. Then, as he continued to drop one bomb after the other I realized that we were existing in completely different relationships and it tore that fantasy down slowly and securely leaving me inside of a brick wall of suspicion and questionable motives. Not to mention in complete wonder of everything that escapes his forked tongue.

His biggest complaints about me are confidence and negativity. He says that I don’t hold myself as a confident woman, and that everything I say is negative. He says it’s unattractive and it makes him not want to be with me. How am I suppose to ooze confidence when the person I love the most is berating me and bringing me down instead of pulling me up?

That conversation about him not being there for me turned into one about me being unattractive to him turned into me telling him that he is trying to convince himself to be with me turned into him saying he never thought we were right together and thinking that we were breaking up. He thought that I wanted to break up with him on our son’s second birthday. He says maybe he needs to be by himself and start over and leave us in order to prove that he can be a man. Which, to me, sounded like a complete contradiction of bullshit. I told him nothing would change if he was on his own, he would still drink and fuck random women and squander money. But I’m sick of feeling like I’m trying to convince him to be with me. He should want to be with me because to him I should be the most beautiful woman for him, inside ans out. He should love me for who I am and be willing to grow and rebuild together. He should want to conquer all these challenges together and come out better hand in hand on the other side. How can he say he wants me to get pregnant again? How can he think I would want to with him feeling this way? He says to me he doesn’t know what’s in his heart, only what goes through his head. That he’s never loved anyone with the exception of his mom, and he doesn’t know if he loves me. I told him what is in my heart is different as well than what has gone through my head. But the difference is that it’s what is in my heart that has kept me around. Because I have always loved him and seen the great man he could be and believed in him and in us together conquering each other’s separate and joint challenges. He he loves me, he should feel that too.

I told him out of all my friends and family, he is the only person in my life besides my father that has ever told me that I am negative and that I have no confidence. Unworthy as I would call it. Unworthy of either of them. Once again I am reminded that in finding Josh I have only fallen for my Father’s worst attributes when I had initially intended to forsake them. He said I need to face my Father and tell him how he’s made me feel my whole life. I told him that it wouldn’t matter, because my Father saw a different reality than I did. I’ve been fighting these feelings of inadequacy and unwant my entire life. I remember first grade, going to school morose every day feeling like shit because all I woke up to was my Dad screaming in anger about everything and I thought it was my fault. He destroyed my outlook on women, dismantled any possibility of me getting to know his mother for the amazing woman she was, because he beat it into my head that she was a disgusting human being. He made me hate myself and have an unhealthy relationship with myself, my personal expectations and goals. He caused me to fail even before I started. But he was a provider. He put a roof over my head and has helped me financially the majority of my life. To him, that is all that matters. Anything else that I am feeling is my own fault and a bunch of weak-minded hippy garbage. I do agree with Josh that eventually I need to confront my father in order to truly let go and grow. That will probably be what it takes in order for me to finally find that confidence that I have been searching for. But I am not ready. The thought of it makes me tremble in my soul and nauseously quake in my stomach. I’ve tried in the past, only to result in feeling like a blubbering idiot not worthy of occupying his presence or space in the room.

I know I have these things to work on. I have many things to work on. Things that I have been working on for 10+ years without infallible success. I know this. But Josh makes me feel like this is every day of my life and I know it’s not. And by him continuing to tear me down only hinders any personal progress and increases my feeling of insecurity and inadequacy. I said to him, how do you know that I’m not confident and you are just projecting your own issues onto me? What I’m saying is in fact not negative at all but you are sensing the dislike of your own faults and you are projecting your negativity onto me. You are creating a version of me in your own alternate reality and it is not in my benefit. Where are the men that put the most truly unworthy women on the highest pedestal? The selfish ones who don’t do shit and spend frivolously and squander a good man’s appreciation and affection, and he in return swears that she walks on water! How am I getting ridiculed and punished for being selfless and supportive and patient and loving and understanding and as close to a goddamn saint as they come. But I guess that isn’t sexy.

This is when things seemed to take a turn for him, but only leave me feeling more confused than ever. He told me he loved me and if he left he knows he would miss me and Jashar and that I helped him realize something tonight. That all he’s ever done is try to start over, but he restarts back into the same problematic and stagnant existence. He keeps running into his old habits because that’s what’s safe and comforting and comfortable to him. And that’s not what he needs to do in order to be a man. There was more that he said, but I was so lost at this point that i just let him embrace me and enjoy his apparent breakthrough. He thought that leaving me was going to be the answer for him, but he knows now it’s not…?

He kept telling me what a good talk we had and that both of us got a lot of emotions off of our chests that were necessary to move forward. I’m glad he feels himself in a better place and he agrees that it is all him….for the time being it seems. I, however, am left feeling no less secure about today, tomorrow, or the future of our strength as a couple. I long to get back to where my heart once resided before.