Thursday Thoughts

I have been struggling this week/month with expectations. I told Jim a couple weeks ago that my goal in life is to try not to have expectations. That way when things don't happen as I expect I am not disappointed. In Al-anon we say that expectations are premeditated resentments. And for the most part, I think this is true.

However, as Jim reminded me... you have to have some expectations in life. Realistic expectations keep your life and your boundaries in check. There are people in the program who live with active alcoholism and addiction. I often hear these people talk in meetings and wonder if they have any expectations left at all. Some of them are struggling but some of them seem to be happy right where they are. I am not them. As much as I would like to not have expectations I very much think Jim is right. There are certain things I feel like you should be able to expect of your partner and when you live with active alcoholism and addiction you don't get those things.

Which brings us back to my expectations. Realistic expectations. Before I begin, #1) I asked Jim if he read my blog, he told me he was here a couple times after I gave him the link but has not been back in a month or so.... which is why I am posting this here. Which leads beautifully into #2) unlike the previous topics of discussion last week and this week, I have not talked about this with him. You'll understand why in a minute.

As I'm sure you have figured out from reading here, Jim and I are not engaged, nor does he live with me. He started telling me he was going to marry me at the beginning of February. For a long time he told me at least once, if not multiple times, every time he saw me. When I asked him why his answer was that he was 36 years old and had never said that to another woman. He liked saying it and he really wanted me to believe it and know how important it was to him.

Sometime in March, he started telling other people he was going to marry me. Casual conversations, talking about future plans, flat out questions to him by his friends & family, things of that nature. Somewhere between March and April I started forming an expectation in my mind. He talked about it so often and was so excited about it I just figured that it was something that would be happening sooner rather than later.

We had talked about him living with me and I had basically told him he was welcome any time after April 15th. Slowly April 15th kept getting closer and closer and there was no mention of Jim living with me. So, one night I asked him what the plan was. He seemed to skirt the issue any time I brought up him living with me and I was wondering how he could be so excited about marrying me but avoid the topic of living with me. That's when he admitted to me that he didn't plan to live with me until we were engaged and also not until we had been together a year.

In his mind all too often people move in together before they are engaged with the intention of getting engaged but it just doesn't happen. A week turns into a month and a month turns into six and before you know it you are settled into a routine and not yet engaged. In his mind he is only getting married once. He is only picking one person to say that to and that person is me. So if he has to wait a few more months to live with me than that's what he is going to do to make sure he does it the right way.

So... I adjusted my expectation. A few more weeks went by and one day we were at the mall with Zack and we passed a jewelry store. He wanted me to go in and look at rings, I almost passed out. At that point, he was convinced that I still didn't believe him and so he started telling me that he had been in stores, that he had been looking, that he had talked to sales people, etc. Sometime around the end of April he told me he had found the ring and that he had bought it (or put a down payment on it or something to make me believe that he had already picked it out and they were holding it for him).

It was at this point, like it or not that my expectations changed. I knew from discussions with him that he would not be giving it to me in May but somehow I just figured that once we made it to June we would be engaged and he would be moving in. I would tease him about not having it until 2012 and he would say to me it will be sooner than you think. During one conversation I told him I didn't care what date he picked but not to make it September 20th (my old anniversary) and his answer was you will have it by then. So, somehow I convinced myself that sooner rather than later meant June. I don't know why I got that in my head but I guess there was a part of me that didn't figure he would buy a ring at the end of April and then hold on to it for 4 months.

I was wrong.

It is now June 17th and from what I can tell the possibility of us becoming engaged before the middle of July is slim to none. See Jim sells iPhones and the preorder was on Tuesday and the new iPhone 4 launches next week. He will be working eight days straight starting Monday and will be lucky if it slows down before the first week in July.

And suddenly, there is a part of me that wishes he had never told me about the ring.

If I didn't know that he had looked, if I didn't know that he was thinking about it, if I didn't know that he was planning to ask me then there wouldn't be this part of me that continues to feel overwhelming disappointment as the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months.

I guess for me, it's not even the being engaged part so much as the living together part. When I redid the house the timing of it was because I thought he would be living there soon. This is the part where I explain to you why Jim and I haven't had this talk. We haven't had this talk because I don't want him to ask me to marry him and move in with me simply because he thinks I was expecting it or because I'm disappointed that he hasn't yet.

I didn't redo the house so that he WOULD move in sooner. I redid it because I thought he WAS moving in soon. Because my expectation was that he had a ring, he had a date he had picked and surely he would not wait until July or August to ask me since he had been saying it since February.

And now... I'm kinda kicking myself. I love the house, I love all of the remodeling. The new feel and the new design is just as much for me as it ever was for him but at the same time I'm disappointed. I sit alone usually 3 - 4 nights in this house that I want to share with him. Last night he was off work at 7:00 and he went back to his place on a technicality. And it drives me crazy.

He will be at our house tonight, he will stay until Monday morning which in my mind means that he might as well be living there but he won't. He won't "officially" move his things in until we are engaged and we won't be engaged until lord only knows when. I'm starting to think 2012 again.

And believe me when I tell you, I get it in the grand scheme of things. What is a month or two when I am going to be with him for the rest of my life? I am seeing him 3-4 nights out of 7, why can't I be patient and just let things work themselves out in their own time?

So, this is why I come here to tell you, oh great people of the Internet. Because I can't tell him. Because I can't tell this wonderful man who has been loving and supportive and who is trying his hardest to make sure he does this the right way for all of the right reasons that I'm disappointed or that I'm frustrated with how things are going. Because that's not fair to him. Because he loves me and he loves my son and he is just trying to make sure he does this right.

And really... in the grand scheme of things... what is another month or two or three.... however if it becomes six... we might have to revisit the expectation talk. :-)