When You Get What You Want, and Forget How Much You Wanted It

Releasing a toxic person once and for all is NOT an easy process. We’d decided in November that we were done, we just had to get money situations to where we could go our separate ways. And it wasn’t working, because his presence is VERY disruptive to my money flow. Seriously. We went November 2015 to January 2016 barely speaking to each other, and I made a fuck-ton of money, and then he started being nicer, and I started letting my guard down a bit. Still determined we weren’t going to save the marriage, but we could be friends, right? Ha… fucked my money mojo all to fuck. OMG.

So he’s gone now, as a direct result of both my severe coldness to him the last few weeks where at several points I told him the only use I’d ever had for him was his penis (not true, but I needed to push him away), and the magical work I’d done with the specific intention of him meeting and moving in with someone else.

I get what I want, but what I want is hurting really, really bad right now.

The nature of toxic relationships is that once they’re gone, they’ve consumed SO much of you, that it leaves what feels like emptiness behind. But it’s not that you’re really empty, it’s that the weight that was crushing you is gone, and you’re finally living again, but that doesn’t feel normal, because you’re normal has been awful for so long.

And another problem is that no relationship is 100% toxic. There ARE good times, there ARE good memories, and when you’re hurting because that toxic person is gone, you’re more inclined to visit those good memories. It’s a tricky cycle. You hurt because they’re gone, you remember the good times because you want something happy to hold onto, and it hurts more because they’re gone. The human mind has a remarkable capacity for forgetting the bad and holding onto the good. It’s a survival mechanism. If you’re steeped in bad memories, you’re in pain, so the brain likes to forget the bad and remember the good.

He was my best friend. He knew more about me than I’ve ever let anyone know. My deepest, darkest fears and hopes and dreams were laid bare for him. We spent 24/7 together for two years, until I got a regular job after my online freelance work tanked. Because of him wanting to spend 24/7 together with little time for me to work to support us. Because he didn’t work until three years into the marriage. And when he got a job in 2014, I quit mine to focus on my business again, because I thought him having a job would give me the space to do that.

It’s easy to remember the good things. It’s easy to remember the laughter. The closeness. The ability to wrap our bodies around each other until we felt like we were truly one flesh, merged together. The fun times.

But it was ONLY in the fun times that we were good. And I MUST remember that. I can’t let the natural tendency of the mind to forget the bad shit to hold sway this time. I can’t think, “It’ll be better this time around. He can come back, and we’ll make it work, because this time, I’ve learned enough to make it work,” because it won’t. It never works. We’ve tried again and again and again. He’s a controlling narcissist with an inability to stay faithful. He’s only nice when he thinks it’ll get him something, and when he realizes he won’t get what he wants, he turns cruel, vicious, even violent.

This isn’t the first time he’s left and moved in with another woman. It’s not even the first time that I did magic to make that happen. He can’t be alone. He doesn’t know how, and has no intention of learning how. He wasn’t going to leave unless he had someone else to go to. Everyone in his family is already done with him. So I did some magic to help him meet someone. Daily magic even.

And it worked.

It always does.

And it hurts like fuck.

It always does.

This is a repeat of last year. When I just couldn’t take anymore of him, so I sat down, and I went into trance space, and I weaved my magic, of him meeting someone, and moving in with her, and he did the very next day.

And it hurt so bad that I pulled him back. I weaved my magic so he’d miss me, so that he’d have a hard time with her, so that he’d want to come back, and he did.

And I weaved the magic because I had allowed myself to forget just how bad it is being with him. I weaved the magic because I allowed myself to think that the pain I felt with him being gone was worse than what he was doing to me being there. I convinced myself that the agony of healing was worse than being called a cunt and a whore. Being told that I was useless and lazy. Being told that no one would ever love me like he did. Being told that I should just drop dead and rot in hell. Regularly. Weekly even. Daily at times.

I convinced myself that him living with someone else for three weeks would show him how good our life really could be. We have a simple life, but we want for nothing. We have roommates, but everything works. Except his temper. Except the fact that everyone has to walk on eggshells around him, because one wrong word could trigger a rage.

It’s so easy to think that this time could be the time that he really gets it. That he really realizes how much I’ve done for him, and that he comes to his senses, and comes home, and somehow, everything works out and we live happily ever after. It’s so easy to think that, because deep down in the depths of my heart, that’s what I want more than anything in the world.

But I cannot let myself go there this time. Because this pain is NOTHING compared to what he does to me. I know that. All I have to do is look through old messages to know that. All I have to do is remember the bruises. All I have to do is remember the people I’ve lost. The parts of myself I lost touch with. The hopes and dreams that I let go because they just weren’t possible with him.

All I have to do is remember the many, many times he accused me of fucking around, even though I wasn’t. He accused because he was deflecting from his own behavior. He was always fucking around, and if he wasn’t fucking around, he was looking for someone to fuck around with.

He’s slick. He’s a charmer. He met a woman online and she let him move in the next day last year. That lasted three weeks before he came back here, sweet-talking me, and I fell for it, because it did hurt to have him gone. I did miss him. I did want my marriage to work. Who wants their marriage to fail?

This year, he met a woman online, and now he’s living with her and her parents. And I have to remind myself that no healthy, mature, adult person does that. That’s not the kind of person I need in my life or attached to me.

But it still hurts like fuck. I miss my best friend. I miss his, “Good morning, beautiful,” messages. Every morning. Even if we’d had a horrible, vicious, nasty fight the next night, I could count on a, “Good morning, beautiful,” text message, even if he was just across the hall. Even after we’d decided the marriage was over.

And there’s also a sense in there that this is just the pattern. He gets restless in spring. Every spring since we’ve been together. And he gets bored, and he wants more excitement than his 13-years-older-than-him and seriously-introverted wife can provide him. He’s 25, I’m nearly 38. He’s still a kid. He’s never grown up, because he didn’t have to. He wants to be independent.

And then reality crashes. They can’t deal with his bipolar and his borderline personality disorder. He snaps on them. They want nothing to do with them after that. And he comes back.

That pattern has repeated every year since we’ve been married. It wasn’t always him leaving for another woman. A couple times, he went and stayed with his aunt, another couple times, he went and stayed with his parents. But he always came back when they wanted him to actually work on himself and to start fixing his own life. He came back to me because he knew I’d just let him be.

Until the last couple years, when I started saying no more. I made him get a job. I made him starting paying half the rent.

And so then he started looking for someone that would take care of him like I used to. Last year, he thought he’d have that moving in with someone, and he quickly found out that she wasn’t nearly as patient as I am, and also, that he couldn’t really afford to be independent on a minimum wage job. No one can.

This year, he thinks he’s found someone that will take him in. He’s got a job, and he’s going to help her pay the bills, but I know him, he hates his job, and will quit the first chance he gets and expect her to take care of him, because she hasn’t had the years with him I have, the years where I learned how to stand up to him. And reality is, she probably won’t take care of him. He was taken care of here because we know how he is, and we know why he’s that way. The others don’t know him, they only see the mask he puts on. They get the show. I know the behind-the-scenes.

And so now, as well as having to fight against the pain while still remembering how bad it was being with him, I have to fight against the fear that this is going to be just like the other times, where he’s gone for two or three or even six weeks, but then reality comes crashing around him, or he can’t keep up the facade and he snaps, and he comes back.

Because I can’t have that. I can’t have him come back. Because if he comes back, I might as well just give up. I might as well just give myself and my life and my dreams up.

Because that’s what being with him meant.

It meant losing everything.

It meant losing myself. It meant losing my life. It meant losing my dreams.

Because he sucks up so much energy that I couldn’t even breathe most days. I was barely keeping my head above water when he was around, but when he’s gone, I SOAR.

I have to remember that. I have to remind myself when my heart starts to ache, when I remember his laugh, and his smile, and his blue, blue eyes… I have to remember that he’s toxic. He’s poison. And even though that poison tastes oh so sweet, it’s still poison, and it will still kill me.

Because I wanted him gone, and I got it, and I want to be happy with it.

Even though it hurts like hell right now.