Today wasn’t a good day.  I’m glad it’s just about over.  I’ve been dealing with some family and work issues as of late, and a few minor things happened with Superman that ended blowing up into a phone conversation cut short.

Since I was already on edge today, things that I may not have noticed or been bothered by were more pronounced to me today.  He’s also been going through some things, and was talking to me about some of his work problems and how he wished his life could be “normal” for a while.  He started describing what that would look like, and it included coming home to his son, but I wasn’t mentioned at all.  During that conversation, I did what I could to support him, mentally paused when I realized I wasn’t part of his normalized ideal life, but did my best to let it go. 

Later in the conversation we were discussing a mutual friend who had a baby.  I said that I had expected to find out sooner than I did after she was born, as we are close friends.  Superman went on and on about how things were when he and his late wife had Superboy, how exhausted they were and used his lengthy discussion of his experience only to explain why I didn’t find out about this friend’s baby sooner.  This is the part of the conversation that triggered me.  I didn’t want to hear about him and his late wife’s experience together.  I don’t even know if any of my thoughts were actually conscious, but later when I was telling him what was bothering me, I said that it bothers me sometimes that he’s had all his firsts with another woman.  He said, “Do you think I’m so shallow that the birth of our child won’t be special?”  I told him it’s not that – I don’t want to be going through the pregnancy, birth, etc. hearing “When we had Superboy . . .” when I’m not part of the “we”!  He said I’m projecting something that hasn’t happened yet.  He got really upset and then focused on how I said that it bothered me a little that I wasn’t part of his description in the normal life he wanted, which in the grand scheme of what I wanted to tell him was not all that important to the story.

I’m just disappointed that my confidence and comfort level with our relationship was so short lived (not saying I’m not going to recover it).  Lately he told me he thought I’d been doing well dealing with the widower stuff with the exception of Mother’s Day.  Guess I changed his thoughts on that today.

What I wanted to tell him and never got the chance to, was that in the context of the above two topics, he kept a little bit of a distance from me tonight at church.  Sometimes we hold hands during service and he didn’t take any of my hints that I was throwing his way this evening.  Right after I typed that, I thought, my goodness, I sound like I’m in high school.  At any rate, usually I don’t have to work for his attention, and I felt like it wasn’t there tonight.  I didn’t know why, and unfortunately it made me a touch insecure.  It didn’t make it any better that he was ready to take off as soon as church was done.

In the past, he was almost desperate for my attention.  It may have been the intensity of his loneliness, and possibly its a good sign that he’s not bothering me to be with him every second?  I guess I got used to being asked to get tea or dessert or appetizers after church that now when he doesn’t ask on a regular basis, it makes me feel less desired. 

For those of you familiar with the stages of grieving (see links under header Articles for more on the stages of grief), I had talked with someone who believes that Superman and I started dating while Superman was in the bargaining stage.  The theory is this resulted in him trying to quickly create a new good life since the life he had with his late wife fighting cancer was so difficult.  It caused him to desire to spend all of his time with me and do what he could to create the “perfect” relationship (I’ll elaborate on that in a future post).  So now that he has moved through that stage, I’m still remembering the behavior of that stage and interpreting it as the way he is normally in relationships, when it really isn’t.  Simplified – he used to want to spend a LOT of time with me and now he doesn’t want to spend as much so I feel slightly insecure about the relationship when really its a good sign because he’s gotten through more of his grief.

It’s hard for me to say if that theory is correct or not.  I’m probably too tired/exhausted/drained to tell.  He’d likely be horrified to know I’d analyzed it this much – at times he says I try to “social work” him (I am a social worker), but I swear it’s not the case.  I do so much of it in my day job, I’m not trying to make him a client!

I hope and pray tomorrow’s a better day.