The Clock is Ticking Down

In less than a week, I will be back in Texas. The countdown has started, and I am getting even less sleep. I have been running the scenarios through my head, and doing the 9 steps ahead chess game. My friends, this will not be pretty. The worst part, is I have many things in mind to bring up that signifies the reasons why I am leaving, but apparently the closing of the joint account and the time away has been a minor wake up call. For instance, one of the reasons that I gave her concerning the closing of the account was that she never did anything for me. I have detailed this in another entry, another is the forgotten birthday. In phone conversations this week, she has managed to let me know that my birthday present has arrived in the mail, and that she saw something that made her think of me and bought it for me. Well, shit. I know her, and if I try to bring these things up, she will only remember that she recently did these things, and not recognize that she spent 4 years NOT doing these things. I know some people are going to think that this is a sign that she can change her ways, and that I should give her another chance.

I can only go back in history to speculate as to what would happen in these circumstances. There would be a moderate improvement for about 3 months, then things would regress back to where they were. This is the problem. Were I to give her another chance, that would mean I have to bring her along with the 1300 miles to the new job. Then, if there is no change, I would have to ship her back. And, I don’t have the strength to go through all of this again. The roads have converged, the timing is right, and it has to be now.

I have worked at trying to salvage this relationship. I went to a counselor with her a couple of years ago. I don’t really believe in counselors, I had a bad experience with one during my first marriage. Apparently, the only good grades this guy got in mail order counseling school was Freud, since he said that all of my problems stemmed my penis. I explained to him that my problems were related to the other mans penis that kept finding its way into my wife, but he continued to believe my penis was the one at fault. But, in an attempt to NOT have yet another failed marriage, I tried again. I went, I opened up, I cooperated, I answered the tough questions. The counselor felt, and said as much to both of us, that I had some legitimate issues with X2B, and she needed to be working at improving that situation. There was no follow up visit with us as a couple, because she felt I needed to go alone to the counselor to work out my “anger management issues.” She seemed to think that was where all the problems were coming from. I went to the counselor alone, and discussed my anger issues. Essentially, I told him that while I do have a temper that can get out of control, I have been working over a decade on that since it was a major factor in the failure of my first marriage. I summed it up to him in this way: “She thinks that if I get angry, I have anger management issues. She cant seem to understand that she is the one making me angry.”

And that is the root cause of the failure of this marriage. Her inability to recognize any fault on her part. If I have a problem with something she does, that is just the way it is and I have to learn to deal with it. She accepts no accountability for anything, only that I have a problem because I cant deal with it. If she says that we need to work on our marriage, she really means that I have to work on our marriage because isnt doing anything wrong.

So, anyway. This may be the last chance I have to get any blogging done until after I actually move. If October rolls around and I haven’t posted anything else, please notify the authorities. I would really like the guys from NCIS, you know Mark Harmon and Micheal Weatherly. Those guys can solve anything.

My parents are discussing the possibility of flying to Texas to make the drive to VA with me. I hope they come. My Dad has not been anywhere that he couldn’t be back from in the evening for so long. I think the last time he was on a plane was in the early seventies. I think he needs to get out more, and I really hope he decides to make the trip. Mom wants to go, but she wont go without him because she has done too many things where he didn’t go, and she wants to share these experiences with him. I think they both could use the time away. Mom has only visited me twice since I moved away in my early twenties, Dad never has. He needs to see more. Speaking of Dad, he recently started doing stuff with the Veterans in the local community, and he was a part of the color guard for the Memorial Day services. He carried the American Flag, and I was so proud.