Posted by laural on October 20, 2000, at 4:09:58
Hi everybody—
I know I've been writing a lot lately and I'm going to tone it down after this last post other than offering other advice but please let me get this off my chest--
I wanted to write about something that is frankly scaring me to death. I am really in love with my boyfriend and I know he loves me very much, as I am right now. He is very moral and just and kind and wonderful and hates it when I talk about how ugly I was in the past (ie, judgement calls and personality, my drug history, suicide etc). It’s like he loves me but he doesn’t want to know everything I am capable of or wants to pretend that its all behind me. My past is something that is very much a part of me, not so much that it is who I am but that I could become that person again if I relapse. I know he wants the best for me, and tries to push me to achieve my potential with career, hobbies, friends, and school. But I have to wonder how he might react to a relapse—would he stick with me? I want to pressure him to marry me because I’ve noticed that people who love each other sometimes need an excuse to take care of the other by means of saying "well, they ARE family". But of course I don’t want to impose myself onto someone else. Most married people have been that way for a while before any kind of chronic illness arises but with me, people have to automatically commit before we have any kind of history together. I worry about what’s going to happen to me when my mother dies—if I will have become independent by then. I know he wants to marry me, he’s told me, and we ARE soul mates, best friends. But somehow I can’t talk to him about this. I wrote him a letter and he sort of didn’t really respond to me, although I’m not sure what he could have said. What if we drift apart because he can’t bring himself to marry tainted material? I know I know, it wasn’t meant to be, but you know, I don’t think anything is really meant to be. I want to know how I can try to educate him without force, as I think he just might be really scared about what this might entail. First, scared about what my diagnosis really is and then being in a way somewhat responsible in detecting signs and symptoms and offering support. I don’t just want anybody for security reasons, I want to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. But it just makes me wonder, if my best friend can’t commit could I even expect anyone ELSE to? I almost wish we weren't living together so that things could go more slowly but its hard to slow down once things are to this point. And its maybe not the marriage thing that bothers me so much but the apathy toward my disease. . . maybe marriage is just a symbol of comittment for me (and I think rightly so, but maybe it doesn't have to be the ultimate committment right now, just acceptance of all of me. . .)
BTW, we’ve been together almost 2 years and knew each other for years before that. We’ve lived together for almost as long, but next fall he’ll be going to law school and I’m thinking that I should stay here, as this is where my mother and doc live and my mother IS family, if you know what I mean . . . should I be moving on? I don't want to, ever. I know this is the right man for me. laural
poster:laural
thread:1359
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001011/msgs/1359.html