The night ended with a kiss

I sat resigned, in the seat next to him. We sat in the car in front of my house, and I couldn't look him in the eye.

"I have always liked you, Peter." I was quiet, gentle, as I glanced over at him. He was tense, but giddy: "I knew it!" I raised my eyebrow.

I told him I didn't know how I was going to tell Carrie. He paused and said not to, that she'd see me as a threat. He also said I'm still welcome at their house, because I'm a friend. He didn't really understand why that wasn't possible. I didn't explain.

The conversation started with me asking why he said he didn't love Carrie. For weeks I've been visiting their home, becoming friends with Carrie (a friendship I cherish), and interacting with their 18-month old. Carrie treats Peter horribly. They don't value each other. Have you heard about the Four Horsemen? Yeah, their relationship was doomed until I came along.



And with great energy, I have spent the last few weeks subtly helping them. They have all become attached to me in their own ways, as a Parent and a friend. But the more time I spent with Peter, the harder my feelings for him became to defend against.

I fell in love with Peter the moment we met years ago. It was just another weight on me causing the eventual collapse of my mental health. I've spent years trying to make that feeling go away. And here I was, walking into the fire.

For three years, I couldn't be authentic with my husband, because I was terrified what these feelings meant. I was perpetually heartbroken to be in love with the Wrong Man, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make those feelings go away. The growing shame weighed me down like a lead balloon until I was stressed beyond belief, saw no way out, and felt impossibly alone.

Welcome to therapy. First counselling, then CBT, then psychotherapist 1 and then psychotherapist 2. I worked my butt off to fix myself, in the hopes that if I were less broken, I would be able to trust myself to make a decision on my feelings. I would know exactly what these feelings were, because as hard as it is to admit: I've never felt anything like this before.

Maybe Peter's red, wet eyes were because, deep down, he knew being loved by someone like me, someone who so readily meets his playful Child with the same depth of playfulness, who is a kind and loving Parent to his son, who smiles and accepts and shows interest in his Adult self.... would be a dream come true. Would it not? For all of us? To be cherished in all of those ways?

Yes, it would.

And that is precisely why I never harboured any Adult expectation that Peter was capable of loving me in the same way. He is, after all, content with a broken marriage. His answer to not loving Carrie was that at some point he needed to grow up, and this was what life gave him.

Wow.

I felt such deep sadness for him. Perhaps we mourned together, in our own ways, how life came to throw us, two such unlikely people, together to face the same beautiful connection and the same hollow fear?

What is important is that we responded in two different ways.

Drew and I cracked under pressure. Drew was just responding to feelings I felt but couldn't explain. And when he said it, I knew I should have been the one to say it. I didn't love Drew. I couldn't love Drew, while my child parts were attached to Peter.

The simple truth is that I feel like myself with Peter. I feel like me, in a way I've not been able to feel with Drew. And that may never go away. But I am more than a Child now. By admitting to Peter that I always liked him (such a shallow, benign description of my depth of feeling, but hey-ho), I smashed through another huge wall. I gave him up.

I'm not sure he understands that was the point of telling him like I did. He may soon find out.

Yesterday was important on several levels. One, Carrie sent me a lovely email extolling my positive traits, which included:

Compassionate
Honest
loyal
great perserverance & dedication
Considerate & sincere
Confident

Note the loyal? The honest? The considerate? This email was an amazing thing to receive, but at the same time a noose, because I knew that the authenticity I was teaching to them was trapped by my feelings for Peter.

Two, I felt increasingly uncomfortable bearing witness to their marital struggles. I see everything they don't see and more. The part that loved Peter wanted more than anything to rescue him and be rescued from this horrible loneliness. The rest of me, thankfully, is smarter than that.

And one thing I've learned this week is that WHO WE ARE is not how we feel, but what we do about those feelings. With each passing day I spent with Carrie and Peter, my heart broke. At first I felt safe and secure just being near them. It was lovely to feel myself, until I stopped feeling like myself and started feeling as trapped in their friendship as I had been trapped in my relationship with Drew. Inauthentic. Loved, appreciated, but unseen. As though my feelings didn't matter.

Because I didn't make them matter. I didn't value them myself.

That has always been the lesson I needed to learn. Which is why I knew I needed to find a way to safely express them and to protect myself from further heartbreak. In other words, give up Peter.

Except it wasn't just Peter. The more time I spent with their 18-month-old, the more I realised how much I am made to be a mother. The doubts about and defenses against this desire starting flooding out the cracks in me, until yesterday there was nothing left. And perhaps little Eddie sensed that potential in me, because suddenly he started becoming attached to me. He sought comfort in my arms for the first time. He ran to me. It became more than passing interest. It became about our connection, as a Mother-figure and a child.

My heart broke completely through the last remaining walls.

Carrie noticed my sadness. I said I was fine. And when Carrie went to put Eddie to sleep and Peter went to make a phone call, I could no longer fight the tears.

I grieved.

Everywhere around me were broken, unkind, afraid people capable of forming connections to others according to their desires and needs.

It was at this moment my depth of desire and grief outweighed my fear. I knew I needed to let them go. I didn't know what would happen, but I needed to move forward. So I sat in a car and pushed that damn love as hard as I could through my fears. I left the car, walked into the house, stripped off my clothes, crawled into bed and let myself grieve -- properly grieve -- for the first time in my life.

I was finally that defenseless Child my therapists were so desperate to meet (to help).

Drew heard my sobs and came upstairs to sit with me. I continued to sob as I explained everything. He sat, listened, reassured me he would continue to sit and listen, that he loved me and he was here now as my friend because he cared.

I can't begin to describe what I expressed, what we talked about, other than to say it was me.
Finally me.

I was a swirl of all of my experiences and the grief of all of my losses suddenly felt connected. Even thinking about this now brings me to tears. I can reach in and hold that grief, that enormous grief, that finally was able to be Real.. both to myself and to the only person in the world who knows and loves me completely: Drew.

I am so unbelievably sad. I don't really know if I will be capable of being Drew's wife. But I do know I am capable of doing everything I can to overcome the weight of my broken childhood, my broken parents, my broken teachers and peers. And more and more, I become capable of seeing and appreciating what is in front of me, especially Drew.

It is the hardest thing in the world for me, but I cannot survive without learning how to value myself. Psychotherapy facilitated the process of connecting to others, while I worked tirelessly on building up my emotional intelligence and coping skills. I did all of this knowing full well this train would be facing some major crises. I'm sure there are still crises ahead.

This is my potential. This is the me I am growing to discover, appreciate and love.

I'm not going back to Drew. Not like it was. I can't possibly go back, because I'm no longer that person. I've made it to level IV (directed multilevel disintegration) and I know fully, to the depth of my heart, that I can deliberately and consciously direct my own life. Myself.

It will take time to process this human grief -- my brain is quite literally a mess of memories and my body is shattered with powerful emotions that are still coming out. But I can see through this haze already.

I am changed. No matter what anyone says. I am more than yesterday.