Ego Te Absolvo – I forgive you

I have been in the relationship where I was expected to be perfect. The perfect girlfriend. The perfect cook. The perfect housekeeper. The perfect slut. Within 18 months, I was a physical, emotional and psychological wreck. I was afraid every single nanosecond of the day. I was exhausted. I was discouraged and demoralized and eventually dumped because...wait for it… I wasn't perfect.

In the meanwhile, I had fallen out with my parents over this man and had irreparably damaged relationships with friends who are not near so forgiving as parents. My parents completely despised this man and I'm sure it was the happiest day of their life when he kicked my scrawny, weeping, shaking self to the curb. My parents did whatever was needed to get me out of his clutches for good, including moving me to another city. I'm sure my father longed for the days when you could ship defiant daughters off to the nunnery until they came to their senses.

I nearly killed myself trying to be perfect for a man. It wasn't a lack of trying on my part. But here's the truth of the matter – you cannot please someone who doesn't desire to be pleased. There will always be something wrong. There will always be a fleck of dirt, an incorrect seasoning, a misplaced object. A girl will be either too fast getting to her knees or not fast enough. If a man wants to be displeased, he will be displeased. And it was always my fault. I took on the burdens of the world. If only I was more…this…or less that… he would be pleased. It never crossed my mind that the fault did not lay within me but rather in his expectations and his increasingly ridiculous demands. For him, it was a power trip. The more he could make me feel worthless and filled with self-loathing, the more powerful he felt. Unfortunately, I was so in awe of him that I tossed my commonsense out the window along with my self-respect. He never beat me. He didn't have to. His withdrawal of affection and constant disapproval was enough to cow me. In fact, it nearly destroyed me.

Today I'm perfectly happy being perfectly imperfect. I'm in love with a man who loves me not in spite of my personality quirks but because of them. My little idiosyncrasies are part of his delight in me. And for the first time in my adult life, I'm not afraid. I haven't been truly afraid in months. For sure, I've had moments when some event has frightened me or I've become anxious over a specific issue. What I don't do anymore is quake and feel nauseous for two hours every afternoon wondering which rule I've broken this time. I don't wonder if I'll be spoken to tonight or will I be exiled again.

It's not that the man I'm with now and I don't fight. We're a real couple and we have real disagreements: Differences of opinion – about daily; Full fledged disagreements – about monthly. An out and out fight – well, we've had one. Only once in the little better than a year we've been together have I had to knock on his door to say I was sorry. We weren't living together at the time and I don't even remember what the issue was about now. I do remember I was in the wrong. And after having agonized over the problem, going from enraged to truly contrite in the space of about four hours, I drove over to his apartment to ask for his forgiveness.

Obviously, I was absolved. The fight's content has never come up again. In fact, I asked him last night if he remembered what it was about and the details have escaped him as well. It's either that, or he's just a very remarkable gentleman and true to his word that he had forgiven me.

Something changed in our relationship that evening as I stood weeping my shame and contrition against his chest, his strong arms around me. His words "Yes, I forgive you" cracked something in my psyche. It was the beginning of me letting him into my heart and my life. I lost my need to protect myself around him, from him. I was learning to trust him enough to let him see my flaws and my errors, my weaknesses. I could let go of protecting me long enough to start building an "us".

I'm not in awe of my boyfriend. He's not some remote God-like figure in my life. He's much more than that. Fundamentally, he's a good, decent and caring man. He's funny and loving and even when I disagree with him, I respect him enormously. I can count on his good character to protect me and nourish me and help me grow. Am I stupid in love with him? You betcha. Do I trust him? Absolutely. And it's all because he was big enough to truly forgive me instead of using my very humanness as a weapon against me.

Note to reader: This is a part of a writing assignment given to me by my boyfriend when I was struggling with writer's block. He gave me a list of Latin phrases and expressions to use as inspirational fodder. This is one from that series.