A small, bittersweet step

Shortly after my last post ("The" wedding dress), things started outgrowing me. I've been reading and talking about it, and I feel I couldn't keep it in any longer: the presence of the wedding dress had become too much to take.

So I brought it up to him.

I tried the practical approach, saying that within a few years of the dress being there, it will be damaged beyond repair, and he needed to conserve it if it means that much to him, and if he wanted his daughter to be able to perhaps wear it one day.

Turns out he's actually not saving it for his daughter, he said she'd probably never grow attached to it emotionally and he couldn't see her wanting to wear it for her wedding day. He's keeping it put because he doesn't want to take it down, he likes it there.

Then I said, in a honest but loving way, it was bothering me and making me feel like the past was still very much present.

I also said that to me, the dress seemed like a physical barrier reinforcing his psychological barrier of not wanting anyone to be in that top-notch spot in his heart, and that it was a kind of "in my face" with regards to him being unsure he'd ever marry again.

I was crying by then. He said there was no need to cry, and that he didn't understand how it bothered me that much. "It has nothing to do with you" he said. He has never as much as thought of taking it down, and for the moment being he wouldn't do it.

That evolved into us talking about marriage and children again. He said there was still that "extra" something missing from our relationship. He knows how far my feelings for him have grown, and says he is not quite there yet.

He said he's very aware of my desire to get married, and to have children also. And that he also knows I have come to see him as a man I would go down that road with. Because of this, he sometimes feels like he's leading me on, but at other times he feels like it could really work out.

He's always said he'd do those things again with the right person, if everything feels right. But we're missing a component here that makes him fear we might have to end it at one point because he needs to be all-in to do those things, and I won't settle for less either.

I was feeling sad, but also very strong on letting him know that I was willing to be patient and understanding, but the moment things stop moving forward and I have to put his feelings before mine, I would end it.

So I said, without sugarcoating it, that in my opinion, that "component" missing still, was the past still occupying part of his present (I could make this into a linguistic issue again, but I'm not going to!) I bluntly said he had not let go, and therefore there wasn't any room for me. And however slow that process may be, if I don't get the feeling he's willing to go through it and work on it, I am not going to be the one fighting his past. I don't want to feel like I'm "the other woman", because I've been there and done that and if there's anything I learned from my mistakes it was to never go there again.

Tereza's feelings wouldn't be hurt by removing the dress and the pictures (which I added to the discussion, while we were at it), because she's gone. But if they weren't removed even when explicitly stating it as something that hurt me more and more, I would know he isn't ready yet to move on with me, so I'd have to step away. I rephrased that to him as saying "I'd have to reevaluate our relationship".

He concurred that he may not be ready. That he probably hasn't let go yet, and wasn't ready to think of another woman occupying "that" first place. His emotions aren't ready for moving on in the whole sense of the word (i.e. starting a future all-in, not like the past was never there, but like the present is to be his future). And he also admitted marriage and children were not yet on his mind.

It definitely was tough hearing this. It's nothing new but I had expected him to be more understanding of this particular issue I had with the dress. To get into all the rest of insecurities wasn't helping either.

We sat there, at his kitchen table, opposite to one another. As I explained more why the dress bothered me, and reiterated that I'm not going to through "being second" again, he brought up the things he had changed for me, and the parts he has put a conscious effort in improving (for example, trying to anticipate more on my need for cuddling.) He also stated that he knows I'm not fully letting myself dive into this because of him holding back, and that if he would open up we could be each other's "everything". He said he wanted to but, again, wasn't there yet.

And then I heard him say something that made my tears flow even more, for various reasons. He was rather talking to himself and reflecting than directing it towards me when he said:

"However, if we were to give up on it altogether and end this, I think I would forever regret doing so, for letting you go."

He didn't know, that however different both of our perspectives are on this, I feel the exact same way. Sharing that thought made me pull up my knees to my chest on that chair in his kitchen, and I wept like a baby while I was trying to say anything to what really was a rhetoric comment.

That's when he got up, came to stand next to me, opened his arms and said "come, let me hug you". I was feeling so torn that I shook my head, and hugged my knees instead. If he wasn't willing to make this "sacrifice" for me and take down the dress, he wouldn't have to try to appease me with smaller gestures of love he knows I like.

He stood there, still open-armed, and by the look of his face he was genuinely wanting to hug me, not just because I was in desperate need of one. He gently took my elbow and pulled it towards him.

I got up, and he grabbed me tight. I let the tears flow freely in his neck, and I felt almost like it would be our last comforting hug.

He was stroking my back and kissed my hair when he said softly "If it really causes you that much pain to have the dress there, I will take it down this week"

I didn't know what to respond, so I just kept crying, for different reasons now. After a while I lifted my head from his neck and said "But I thought... Are you serious, you'll do that for me?" It may sound more enthusiastic on paper, but my tone of voice was "surprise", with a hint of disbelief.

He looked at me and said "Yes, I'll do that for you". And then he quickly dropped the romanticisms and became his uplifting self when he said "well don't ask me when or how, and don't go asking me about it every day, but I'll get it done, I promise." Added by a joking "don't you pass a dry cleaner's on your way to work?"

I sat down again, wiped my tears, and said that I wasn't going to touch that dress. Even though Tereza can't feel anymore, to me that would be disrespectful. Also, and I didn't say this out loud, I want him to do it. Follow through with his promise to me, perhaps do a little soul-searching and grieving while at it. Give the dress a place in his attic (boxed up please!), and Tereza a less prominent place in his heart.

He said he'd probably ask his mom to take it to the dry cleaner's, because he has a busy week ahead. All fine by me, but by Saturday next week, if that dress isn't gone, I will have to start to "reevaluate our relationship".

And while he was thinking his mom would be best for the job, he said he'd ask a friend of Tereza's to clean out "the picture cabinet". It's where she had kept all the photos (actually developed on paper), albums, cards, etc. I discovered it by accident, and he never goes through it but he said it would be time that gets cleaned out as well.

He did add he wanted something special to be made of it, like an album or a collage for Nala, but even though I wanted to shout "no more shrines", I let it slide. He did name a couple of people fit for the job, and actually "discarded" some of them (like her best friend ever) on the grounds of "being too emotional" or "still too attached to Tereza". Practical as he is, he wants to get the job done without too much sentimentality.

Some pictures that are on display he doesn't even want to argue about, they're staying up (one on his laptop-background, and a black and white one of Tereza and Nala as a baby, on an easel), but the wedding picture, a wedding-gift canvas with well-wishings and a big picture of them kissing in the middle, and a few more he said could go. I hope he does that himself.

For now, I'm again hopeful. But there are short-term conditions that need to be fulfilled, or the long-term conditions won't even be worth worrying about. Once the dress is gone, I can get back to worrying about those, as he reopened that box of Pandora.

But I hope that making this sacrifice for me will make him close a bit of the box of Tereza.

My dog Lola on the beach, watching the sun set. It's a routine that all of us have become used to and perhaps appreciate less than we should, because how wonderful isn't it that everytime the sun sets, we know it will rise again the very next day?