the inevitable decline

First, it's time to figure out what happened. I think it's safe to say I screwed up, but even if I hadn't I'm fairly certain things would have ended up the same. When it came to the topic of marriage, she was completely ready and I was not. But it's not that I don't want to marry her specifically...up until a few months ago I had been firmly convinced that marriage was not for me. Only recently have I begun accepting the idea that yeah, maybe I do want to be married someday. After all, why let a stubborn distaste for ceremony stand in the way of building a beautiful partnership with someone special to me? So I've decided that I'll buy into the whole marriage thing...but that doesn't mean I'm ready yet. And that doesn't mean I can give her any guarantee of when I'll be ready.

People keep telling me "you just know". The way I see it, something's going to click in my head eventually and I'll be ready. When? I have no idea. I am in no shape for it right now though. My goals and convictions are terribly weak. I grew far too complacent during this relationship and lost sight of all the self-improvement work I had been doing before-hand. I think this is a big reason for why I'm not ready for marriage and for why we fell apart. I let myself get excited about the wedding ideas even though I wasn't really feeling it because she seemed so happy about it. If it makes her happy it'll make me happy, right?

Nope. That's a pretty clear symptom of the problem right there. Because I let her enthusiasm override my own feelings on the subject, I ended up sending very mixed signals about my readiness. Near the end she repeatedly accused me of playing mind games and toying with her future..and wants me to see a shrink. But I'm not sure if she realizes that at any given moment I was being as honest as I could...I just wasn't being true to myself. It was all downhill from there.

I'm pretty sure that neither of us is happy with the way things turned out but I think we both have this feeling deep down that it's for the best, even though right now it hurts like hell. Although I've been having breakdowns every few hours and crying like crazy I'm still not certain the full effect has hit me yet. Four years is a long time and what we had was pretty awesome. We survived a lot of tough times, not seeing each other for months on end at some points. We put a lot of work into making it last and now...only the wonderful memories remain. I feel like I could probably get her back if I tried...but I'm not sure if I should. I feel like I'd be holding her back at this point. She's so ready for the family life and I'm just not there yet. In the words of Ben Harper, sometimes you just have to walk away. She's going to do such amazing things though, oh man. I'm so proud of her...that's a topic for another post though.

So, basically, what went wrong was that I let my guard down. I changed...allowed myself to get thrown by the transition to a new home and take shelter in old habits. Not good. Time to build myself up again and get back on track. This detour to the deep south has derailed me pretty severely...but I have my job, my health, my family and friends. I will learn from this loss and will always cherish the time we spent together.

Enough rambling for now.