I am working the various steps of ACA and am up to Step 8, which involves compiling a list of people to whom I need to make amends. In the process of trying to figure out to whom such amends need to be made, I was called upon to recall the end of my relationship with my girlfriend prior to Kathy. For the purposes of this post, we will call her Stella.
As I was working with the crew on putting my list together, I had to get into the gory details of how we broke up, those that I skipped in my prior post on the subject, to explain why she was on my list of people to whom I needed to make amends. In the course of explaining, I also had to explain that a large part of what ended us was my actually getting better as far as being an ACoA is concerned.
As I have gotten better it has become easier for me to be honest with other people as to who I am and what I actually like. But as I was more and more myself with Stella, it seemed that Stella liked me less and less. Part of it I think has to do with the loss of Mr. Nice Guy, the one who would acquiesce to every whim of hers. And part of it was just I wasn't who she thought I was and who she thought she was in a relationship with. That is the part that is my fault and for which I need to make some kind of amends.
I have learned my lesson from this, and Kathy has seen me warts and all. Well, I don't have actual warts, mind you, but if I did, she would have seen them by now. Again this is a common struggle for those of us in ACA. Because we would at our worst do literally anything to keep a relationship alive, we often lie in this way and then wonder why we are so misunderstood by our partners.
So now I know that if anything is to be real and lasting at all, I gotta be me, as the song says.
The song.
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