When it's a one-way street...part 7

[Accuray]

Hi CV,

I think your explanation of your pursuit of options 1 & 2 are a bit different than what I was suggesting. An important ingredient in option 2 is that if H will do something for you, then you will do something for him -- i.e. if you stop making me the focus of your jokes, I will go boating with you and your friends twice a month and be pleasant and upbeat. Find something that matters to him. This should NOT need to be a long term approach, it's a short term approach to change direction by exaggerating the rewards that should come just by doing the right thing. I KNOW it makes you frustrated to have to reward what should be expected behavior, but if you want to DO something, that's something you can do, and as I said, it should be temporary.

Option 1 was not meant to be equated with resignation. It's a conscious effort on your part to find joy in what you have and to celebrate it -- not to resign yourself to loss. This does not come easily and may not be possible, it takes an incredible force of will.

Now what?

Give it time, two weeks is not enough. Investment + enforcement of boundaries + patience

With regard to your commitment versus obligation argument, I think you're kidding yourself -- you are committed, although you wish you weren't. If you weren't committed, you wouldn't be here. You've said yourself that you love him and you want this to work -- that's commitment, not obligation. At the same time, you don't "like" him, and are hugely frustrated by him, so it makes you want to be able to abandon this feeling of commitment. If you weren't committed, you wouldn't be so tortured, it would be easy to regard him with contempt and a lack of pity or empathy, but you're not there.

I think you're writing about how you want to feel, but the fact that you're spelling it out this way indicates to me that you're trying to convince yourself. If you already felt that way you wouldn't need to explain it, because you wouldn't have any motivation to.

Accuray