expectations and sacrifice

I was speaking to a close friend yesterday about the theme of my last post; namely, the realization that I am the ideal partner for my children's father in that I am everything for him--but how my needs are not met nor have ever really been a priority in the history of our relationship.

Anybody who knows me well knows that I have guilt issues with receiving. I can give-give-give but have come to learn, especially in the past few years of my evolution of character, that a great part of giving is also receiving. Perhaps it is partially this realization that has stirred such discontent in my marital life; a discontent I thought, eight years ago, I would be able to overcome and learn to live with.

So I was asked yesterday a key question:

"Have you ever thought that maybe your expectations are too high?"

-Sure, they are.

"Maybe you should lower them?"

-Okay, so I lower them, like I have done in the past and I still end up sacrificing my needs. I feel like I deserve better. Why should I have to be the one to always compromise so much?

Yeah, I can be selfish like that.

"What exactly is it that you need? What is the key to your marriage falling apart?"

-Honestly, I think that, beyond the multitude of issues, the root of all of it is that I don't have someone to grow and evolve with.

"A motivator?"

-Yeah. Someone to challenge me to be a better person rather than me being the only catalyst for change in his life. It's now all about him, and it always has been. I am secondary, my needs have never been considered first. By nature, I had done this to myself, so it's my own fault.

"How?"

-By not having found my voice earlier, by just standing back and giving-giving-giving, thinking that was my job, and that in the end I would somehow find, I don't know, some kind of recompense.

"But you haven't?"

-No. I feel so stagnant and have to search outside of my marriage for other forms of motivation to grow and evolve as a person. I am not saying that, in my ideal marriage, that cannot happen.

"That? What's 'that'?"

-'That' being having a life and friends independent of the marriage. I think that it's healthy that two people who try to make a life together also make an effort to permit the other to foster outside interests...it's part of personal growth. But what I am saying is that we oughtn't be operating 100% independent of each other.

"Okay. So you need emotional compenetration. Apart, of course, from the physical needs that you have also defined as a great part of your love language.

-Yep. I need to feel challenged to grow as a mother, as a lover, as a friend, as a partner, as a wife, as a woman--and that will not happen when partnered with someone who has always been completely content with the status quo, who doesn't feel comfortable challenging himself or moving out of his comfortable existence to push himself or others in his life to grow.

What did I take from yesterday's conversation?

Perhaps that I have high standards, perhaps super-human standards. But that I also shouldn't have to settle.

Perhaps that I will end up living a life alone without a partner because I can see how my needs can be very intimidating. I can also say that I had found this relationship with another, a stormy but extremely gratifying relationship in the profound compenetration and amazing communication we enjoyed, the constant pushing of each other to be better, to do better, to learn from each other and to grow -- but that was at a point in our lives that neither of us could commit to each other.

I feel like I let The One go.

And I will forever have to live with that.