The Relational Litmus Test

B3 and I tested the veracity of our 11 month relationship last week. I went to Victoria to help him with his grown up paper route. Long story, but all you need to know is he is delivering over 15,000 phone directory's to several of the communities around Victoria. That's a lot. And he's been stressed about it. So I took 5 days off from work, needing a change of pace and scenery, and said I would help.

2 Air B&B's, 976 km's of driving, 56.1 km's of walking, 97,178 steps, 1 wasp bite, 1 bloody face plant, and I delivered half of the 4,120 directory's to individual households around Langford and Colwood. 

In the span of that week there were tears (mine) and some harsh words (his and mine), two fiery tempered arguments and some extended silence within the cozy confines of our rented Hyundai Elantra. The air gets heavy in there pretty quick when those tempestuous emotions fill the space. I carry the exchange with me. He expels it. 

"No angry birds this morning?" he gently inquires before we hit the road again. 

"No" I say quietly. 

Clean slate. Sort of. Every thought and every emotion he expresses in real time. I suppress it. Driving with him is no picnic. He never tires of yelling at stultifying drivers despite the fact that I'm the only one that can hear him. On the long drive home on Friday, worn out emotionally and physically, I was reassessing where we were headed. Where I was headed. What this relationship was and wasn't. 

The problem when I analyze things is that ghosts from the past hover in the background, casting shadows that obscure the vision of what's before me in the present. Nevertheless I knew one thing. I needed a break from him. We dropped off the rental car and I went home. Unpacked my belongings and my emotions as I sat in a hot bath of epsom salts - cleansing away the blood and dirt and swelling from my battered body and soul. My heart felt just as scraped up and tender as my knees. I didn't want infection setting in to either of them.

I learned a few things from this little experience.

1.  B3 and I do not work well together. We are both Type A personalities who like to see things done a certain way. When those ways are not our ways, tiny fissures start to appear. Case in point - he likes to zigzag his way across the street to deliver his phone books.  I like to go down one side and loop up the other when you reach the end. Both of us think our way is the most efficient and saves unnecessary steps. He likes to tell me how to flick the books by the spine to ensure the book hits the doormat properly. Thanks for schooling me on what I'm doing already (insert eye roll here). As we gathered books from the trunk he would say "What would you like to do dear?" (As in, how do you want to deliver the books on this particular street). I would tell him my plan then he would raise his eyebrows and give me a look that told me what he thought of my strategy. I ignored him. My strategy was sound. 

2. He wears every single stress and concern and fear of failure on his sleeve. Like a glittering sequinned dress, his whole being is adorned with the anxiety that he is not meeting his target for the hour, the day, the week, the month. Under certain light, those stress sequins are glaring to me. I - steeped in years and years of practice - am a fixer. I need to fix and mitigate his worry. My need to fix is actually a problem. Because the fact is this: he doesn't need me to fix anything. He's a grown up man. He's fixed lots of stuff before I ever came along and will continue to do so long after I'm gone. So while he was undermining me, I was undermining him right back. 

I've known for some time now that the two of us are very, very similar in many ways. I've also known that we are opposite ends of the spectrum in a plethora of other areas. In aggregate I felt that it made us, on the one hand, able to understand each other better and, on the other hand, able to balance out the other. 

But I'll tell ya the handicap I have in all of this. I'm pretty skittish when it comes to relationships. All of 'em. I expect them all to end. I've learned to hold onto people with an open hand. It's easier for me to disengage quickly and escape with a measure of my dignity intact than to play the entire thing out. And that's my struggle right now. Do I want to be all in? And if I don't, why am I even bothering to pursue this, or any another relationship?  Maybe none of us are all in. Maybe there's a peice of us that we always keep to the side. We want to be fully known yet we are terrified of it. I sat in church this morning and looked around at the crowd. Hair freshly washed and coiffed. Jewelry on our ears and fingers. Cute little sandals and sundresses. Warm smiles on our faces. And yet I know some of these people very, very well - and there is no outward sign of the tattered bits they battle every day. There was a broken bit of my heart I wanted to show everyone today - I wanted them to know about it - but I couldn't. It's unspeakable. It's one of the reasons I won't hold tight to relationships anymore. And my relationship with B3 is paying the price of that. 

The aftermath of this week (which, I might add, was also not without great teamwork, laughter, thoughfulness - there was another trip to DSW and Winners for shopping therapy and he is now ahead by two pairs of shoes in this little competition) leaves me a little tentative. I'm glad he's leaving tomorrow for another week of deliveries and that I'll be here alone, going back to my regular job and spending every moment as I see fit. I'll water his flowers in his absence and sit in his back yard and commune with Dotty the Fawn, Ellie and Eddie Eagle, and his resident hummingbird. And during that time, I'm hoping I can discern between the ghosts who fear monger and the common sense practicalities of our relationship. Maybe by next Friday night I'll miss him again. I think I will.