I tried to throw it back at the other person. I should have known better. She didn't ask for my advice. She didn't want me to put it in her face. I tried to pull her back into the mess because she had gotten out of it, and I didn't think that was fair that she could just do it like that. Perhaps it was all in my head... Ya think? LOL

I'm doing well after an intense emotional moment, after the realization hit me, after I wrote about it, after I recognized that the struggle is my struggle, after I remembered who I am, what I'm doing, and the mission.

I told her once that I feared I would go on business mode. She definitely didn't let me do that. Correction: I didn't let me do that. I was entirely affected, and it was good for me.

Many of the lessons I have learned were because of something I messed up previously. The mistakes had me look inward and grow. The books taught me the lessons. I taught me the lessons after observation. I don't feel like I had anyone there to help me learn this, but I had many people there to help me while I struggled. I did not do this alone, but I was alone while I did it. There's the paradox that I cannot fully explain or comprehend.

I wonder how I will be moving forward from this. I am currently wondering about the protection thing.

Nik was talking about how she is an independent woman. I see something from having read this chapter. I see that the woman who is independent wants to be praised for her independence. I see how that protecting when it isn't invited can be an insult to that independence. I am thinking that my fears and unsolicited advice were taking away independence, questioning abilities, and placing one person beneath the other.

It is wild that my attempts to help were part of the problem. I see it now. I also see that I have fallen victim to myself again. I did these things, and I can change these things. I did what I thought may be correct, and that worked against me. I did not show the trust that I was saying that I had. I am tempted to defend and say it was because of.... But I am not finishing that thought or allowing myself to justify this action.

I feel it may have been like that dream where I was powerless to stop them from hurting themselves and my pleas and cries for their safety were just piled on top of the idea that I didn't see that other person as capable. I want to say this is not how I feel. I didn't know this before. No one told me. Perhaps some thought I should have known, and perhaps I would have done better to have known, and perhaps even still I could have known had I paid attention. Shoulda, woulda, coulda...

I know now. That's what I am thankful for. I am thankful for these books to teach me all the things no one told me before. I am getting the insights that will be valuable to me moving forward. No one needs my protection. Least of all her. She is such an incredible and capable woman. She can protect herself. She can make her own choices. It is not my place to say any different. It is my place to witness the life of another and encourage and help when needed. There's a lot more to my role than these things, but the idea is that she's not a child.

We should have never been married in the first place. It was too much, too fast. If we had not been married, there is a chance we could have slowly moved to mutuality. Instead it was rushed. Probably for the best. Everything happens for a reason. I don't have to know the reason to trust the universe in its infinite wisdom. I don't have to know the song to be able to dance. Hell, I don't have to know the song to sing with it. There's so much that I don't need to know, but stressed myself for not knowing, and the not knowing was the source of fear.

I am not your protector. I am nothing. I am just some guy. I am me. If that is enough for you to be with me, then we would be together. I see that I needed to change and the change was not fast enough. I also know that I would have never left the situation. I committed myself, and that was that.

I forced myself into this and to not run away from someone who loves me and checks all the boxes. I forced myself to stay because I didn't want to make the same mistakes again. Good news: I didn't make the same mistake. I didn't run away from love. That felt like a continuation of the pattern, and it would have been. I stayed with this one. I would have never done. I'm glad she did. She did me a favor. She knew it. She's awesome.

I am not going to question or hedge these words. I am available to talk about this. I am always available for a friend in need. I help people. It's what I do. I don't force my help. I only help those who have reached out and asked. I made the mistake to force help before. I mistakenly thought it was welcome. I was wrong, sure. I don't regret a single moment. I don't second guess any of my actions because all those actions led me to this point, and I love my life. I loved in then, and I love it now. The future is bright indeed. I will forever feel the same way. That does not mean that I will forever accept that relationship as the one and only. It means that my feelings were real when they happened, and they can never be erased. I don't care how much it hurts, I am unfazed in my feelings. I don't work that way. I am in it for the long haul with myself. I forgive transgressions and move forward. There are those who have sacrificed their own lives for me, and I didn't ask for that. I don't respect that. I don't keep those folks around. People pleasing, going along to get along. Go along with your own life, and perhaps we could have been friends. Putting all the pressure on me and burdening my life is a surefire way to lose respect. If I may borrow an appropriate statement, if you didn't feel like you were enough, that's because you weren't. I thought about it for a while when that was said to me. I was fragile and searching for some certainty in the unknown, and this statement cut me to the core. I was trying to say that I was human too when I was saying how those types of statements were affecting me. I was trying to open up and show how I might be affected also. I was affected. I am human. I was emotional. I was vulnerable and weak in that moment. My vulnerability to attack was very much evident in the way I was influenced and affected by words that would not have had any effect. I used to be water off a ducks back about it, but this time it was a knife to the soul. No one person is my world. This I know. I have many people who are large parts of my world. My world is me. My world is the view I take from behind my eyes. My world is dedicated to a purpose. I have this purpose always in mind, and I was definitely in a spot where I forgot that.

Many of the lessons I learned before were lost and pushed aside. I was a hard-ass and tough. I was soft and gentle. I was happy and sad. I was stressed. I also was wounded and scared of touching that wound. I hid those parts of myself because I feared what I might find. I hid it all because I was scared that she might see me. In the ironic twist, it wasn't the thing that caused the trouble, it was the hiding. I gave this advice. It wasn't the asking that was the burden, it was the crying about having to ask and not being comfortable to ask and the fear of a reaction that never came. The asking would have been easy. I would have respected that. I did not respect what came instead. I did not like that. I do not like people who do that.

When someone tells me one thing and then acts out another, then I get confused. I don't know if this is what she was doing. I am making this general statement because it was a thought that connected to the larger idea. I stopped liking what it had become. I was too afraid to stand up and say something. I thought it would go away. I didn't think I was the problem. I couldn't believe that because it put me face to face with my own deep wounds that I wasn't ready to address, that I feared would cause the end. In the end, it was the fear of something that never happened, never had any reason to happen. And it actually kinda did happen after it all when I was yelled at, told I wasn't enough, and revealed to be a monster. I know now that I'm not. I definitely tried to play tough and say I wasn't affected, but we all knew that was a lie. I was lying to myself to try and convince myself, but it didn't work. I was just in more tears. And I wrote about this, back and forth, back and forth, again, and probably one more time too, until I came to accept what I had done. I accepted that was my doing. I accepted that my role in this was what it was. I will not talk about the role of another unless necessary to provide some context, but the choice at every moment was my own. No one else made me do anything. I chose those actions with the understanding that I possessed at that time. I did my best. I fucked it all up. I knew better, and should have guessed. But it's like I didn't know. Like I didn't care? Like I knew better? Like their way was dumb, when the whole damn thing was dumb on dumb piled with my fear and insecurity that I denied existed. That I laughed about, that I truly felt was momentary. I didn't know I was supposed to be keeping score so I could win. The person with the best evidence usually wins. I lost. I had no evidence. That is beginning to sound like I am placing blame again, and I will back off of that line of thought. It runs the real risk of running myself into ideas that take me away from my role. I am looking to be better from this.

I did have an intense doubt. I may have written about this at the top of this, but it has come back and I want to discuss it again. I fell into the trap of doubting the idea because the only other person who believed in it as much as me left. They are no longer part of it. They will probably go do their own thing and not use the thing we built that does what they wanted to do all along. That threw me off because it was not at all how I would handle something. I refused to work with people over some moral principles, but I would still patronize the business because I believe in what the business can do to help people. I was told recently that this is a guy thing. I didn't see it that way. I was thinking it would be the same for people. I didn't think of that possibility until it was shared with me. See, I don't know everything. I seek advice. I learn. And this thing is still super fucking awesome and will change the way people provide this online service. I have a marketing problem. Let's solve it.