She thinks I hate the cat.
She sent me a picture of her cat, curled up on the bed next to me, after I'd passed out face down on a corner of the bed.
I'm not sure what I was supposed to take from this scene.
In this picture I have fallen asleep alone again, faceplanted on one side of the bed at 2am, waiting for a companion who is never around, and seems to have minimal tolerance for my company. Perched next to me is her high-maintenance pet that she pours her affection into, physically touching, petting, cuddling, cooing, and stroking over and over, collectively no less than a couple hours of physical affection each day. Earlier that day I received a brief hug, which was nice, but later was brushed off for another.
If I say something positive, it'll be criticized as needy or demanding. If I say something negative, I'll be told I'm depressed or dismissed as low-bloodsugar-angry. If I intone in any way at all that I miss the days when I would get a bigger fraction of the affection dolloped on the cat, I'll get an angry stare and the silent treatment for hours at least. The least-bad-option is not to respond at all.
I wonder what this all means. She says she doesn't like or want any intimacy, and doesn't have desire for me or anyone else. With desire, intimacy, passion, and all that explicitly rejected, I am no different, I am just-friend. I am not special. I'd really like to have been special to her, to someone, sometime, in some way. But no. In the collection of just-friends, I don't rate. I've never ever been a priority over her handful of friends on the other coast. I haven't been a priority over the pet for affection or attention in years if ever. I'm certainly not a priority over her intake of social media, political shows, or newfound niche sport. She holds and stares at a device in hand at all hours of the day and through the majority of every meal, yet I haven't been allowed to hold her in her sleep in half a decade. Sparing time for food or drink with me is met with annoyance half the time, because she has to work late, plodding through documents while browsing and cooing until the wee hours and I've given up hope.
When she talks, it's one subject above all others combined. The sum of all spoken words about herself, me, the house, her job, my job, kids, family, projects, cleaning, schedules, vacations, and all the rest... all of it together is eclipsed by talk of the cat. Constant running commentary on the cat's activities this day, and yesterday, the cat's health, the cat's sleep, feeding, activity, lethargy, smells, interaction with the crows, annoyance at this or that, toys, weight loss or gain, nails, grooming, doctors, and on and on, and starting again from the top when there's an uncomfortable silence. It is never less than half of all words spoken in a day.
And she sends me a picture and asks: "Isn't this cute? Don't you see the cat loves you?"
I've heard a dozen lifetime's worth of cat talk. I didn't realize I was in competition with a Hemmingway-esque "love-sponge" until I'd already lost out to it and a glowing cybernetic implant in her hand. I have grown to hate the cat, not as an individual or because of it's innate cat-ness as she says, but because it is the absorbtive wadding packed around me, packed around everything I care about, packed around my desire to give and to receive, preventing me from moving, from coming closer to her, or from going too far. The cat represents her desire for me to just... stop... moving. I joke with her about feeling physically dead, but it's just a mask over already feeling dead inside. I'm not all the way dead yet, but it feels like I can see it from here.
Posted Aug 14, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC
You have such clarity about every single solitary negative thing/behavior your partner does/says/feels about you. What keeps you from acting on such clarity?
Weakness. Sadness. Hard to move while broken, even if it's understood. Pretty much the same stuff that brought all the other long time lurkers here.
well, you can stay weak and unhappy, yet crystal clear on your partner's/relationship's faults; or you can do something to change your narrative. No one else can change it for you, no matter how much clarity you have.
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