But Are We Sure?

I keep having this weird experience lately where I know I’m secure and I still don’t feel secure.

And I’ve been trying to figure out what the fuck that means because the evidence is there. I’m not being asked to blindly trust something that feels shaky. I’m loved. I know I’m loved. She tells me. She shows me. She talks about the future like I’m obviously going to be there.

Still, apparently all it takes is an “I’m busy, can I call you later?” for me to temporarily forget everything I know.

This has been happening more lately because the beginning of our relationship was kind of ridiculous in terms of how much access we had to each other. We started dating when we both had a lot of time. There were vacations. Work wasn’t as demanding. We could talk for hours and somehow still have more to say. It became normal very quickly.

And then life resumed.

Work got busy. Vacations ended. We were tired. We had less mental capacity. The amount of time we had for each other changed because of extremely normal adult circumstances that I completely understand.

I would like that entered into the record before I tell you how poorly I sometimes handled it.

Because every “I’m busy” was a tiny hit to my ego.

Every “can I call you later?” bothered me more than I wanted it to.

I am used to the people I date being very focused on me. I’m aware of how that sounds. I could make it sound nicer, but why bother. I like attention. Specifically, I like a lot of attention from the person I’m with. I like being the person they want to talk to. I like being the priority.

So when access started returning to a more normal level, I did not always respond like a secure, emotionally mature woman who understood that her partner had a job.

Sometimes I got short.
Sometimes I pulled my energy back.
Sometimes I threw out a little dig that I could absolutely defend as a joke if called on it.
Sometimes I started a tiny disagreement about something that was technically real but probably did not need to become a disagreement at all.

Just little bits of petty.

Nothing catastrophic. Just enough to make sure that if I was feeling the shift, perhaps we could both feel the shift.

This is the kind of thing I don’t particularly enjoy admitting because I know better.

I knew she was busy. I knew she was tired. I knew she loved me.

Still felt rejected.

Still got annoyed.

Still occasionally wanted to make it her problem.

And if I’m really telling the truth, there was a moment when I thought about talking to someone from my past who I knew would rattle her.

I knew exactly who.

Which is awful.

I wasn’t sitting there thinking I wanted this other person back. I didn’t. The thought was much pettier than that. It was basically, fine, at least she had all the time in the world for me.

Of course she had all the time in the world for me partly because she had nothing going on.

Important context.

Did not stop the thought.

There is apparently a version of me who, when she feels insecure, briefly becomes a middle schooler.

I didn’t do it. But I thought it, and I think the thought matters more to me than whether I acted on it because this whole time I’ve been telling myself a story about how secure I am.

I genuinely thought I was.

And I don’t mean I thought I was perfect. I know my shit. I’ve been to therapy. I’ve spent an obnoxious amount of time examining myself. I know where I can be difficult.

But insecurity? Jealousy? Needing constant attention?

I really didn’t think those were big things for me.

Now I’m wondering if I just built my life in a way that kept me from having to experience them very often.

Which, frankly, is rude.

I like compartmentalization.

I know we’re supposed to say that like it’s a bad thing, but I fucking love it.

There is something incredibly pleasant about everybody having their appropriate amount of access to me. Work goes here. Family goes here. Relationships go here. I get plenty of time alone. Nobody becomes so central to my daily life that their availability has much control over how my day feels.

I have spent years being very good at that.

Then I fell in love and apparently decided to give someone an all-access pass.

Terrible operational decision.

Because once I got used to that much access, losing some of it felt like losing something even though nothing was actually being taken away from me. Life was just returning to normal.

And that is where my brain starts doing its little investigation.

She’s quieter today.

Why?

She’s tired.

Okay, but why is she quieter with me?

Because she is tired.

Fine.

Not fine.

Then I’m replaying something she said two weeks ago that didn’t bother me when she said it.

Wait. Was that weird?

No, Deanna. It wasn’t weird two weeks ago.

Maybe I didn’t realize it was weird.

This is exhausting because I can watch myself doing it.

I know the evidence. I just suddenly don’t find the evidence particularly persuasive.

And I was going to say this is where love makes me irrational, except that isn’t really true either because I do versions of this everywhere.

A client recently asked me to run one of my ideas by someone else.

Fine. Normal request.

Except the person she wanted me to run it by was, in my opinion, very clearly not the expert in this situation.

I am.

And I was offended.

Not devastated. Not questioning my career choices. Just immediately, internally, excuse me?

I’ve been doing this for fourteen years. I’ve run businesses. I’ve managed millions of dollars in launches. I have enough experience at this point that I should be able to hear “can you run this by so-and-so?” without my ego immediately pulling up her résumé against mine.

Apparently not.

I knew my idea was good. I knew I knew what I was talking about.

Still bothered me.

Money is probably the stupidest version because I can literally look at the numbers.

I check my checking account constantly.

Not investments. Not some sophisticated financial dashboard.

Checking.

Then I calculate my current client billables.

Again.

Bills are paid. There is food in the house. Work is booked. Money is coming in.

Is that enough cash though?

Yes.

But is it enough enough?

I don’t even know what number would make me stop asking.

Actually, that’s probably not true. Whatever number I decided would make me feel secure would eventually become the new number I was afraid of dropping below.

I know myself.

This is where I start wondering whether I’ve misunderstood something about myself for a very long time.

Because historically, I get what I want.

That sounds obnoxious. It is also mostly true.

I am persistent. I’m resourceful. If I want something badly enough, I can usually figure out some route to it. I have built a lot of confidence around knowing that about myself.

If something goes wrong, I’ll fix it.

If I need more money, I’ll make more money.

If work changes, I’ll find more work.

If something isn’t working for me, I can leave.

And relationships were easier when I knew I could leave without it completely fucking me up.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Maybe I was secure.

I probably was.

But I was also very well protected by the fact that I didn’t let very many things get all the way in.

I kept things compartmentalized because I genuinely like my life better that way.

I still kind of do.

There. That’s probably the part I’m not supposed to say.

There are days when I think I liked myself better when I cared less.

I was calmer.

I was less petty.

Nobody taking three hours to call me back had the ability to irritate me because I had other shit to do and, more importantly, I hadn’t gotten used to having them whenever I wanted them.

I didn’t have to find out what I looked like when someone mattered enough that I couldn’t just shrug and move on.

Turns out she is not always my favorite version of myself.

She’s needy sometimes. She’s jealous. She keeps score when she shouldn’t. She can turn “I’m tired” into something personal and then punish you a little for the crime of having a job.

She also apparently has thoughts like, maybe I should go talk to the person who would bother her the most.

Ma’am.

We are forty-four.

Get a grip.

This is also why all my self-awareness occasionally feels like a scam.

I can explain exactly what I’m doing while doing something incredibly immature.

I can know I’m pulling my energy back because I feel rejected and continue pulling it back.

I can identify the little dig before it has fully left my mouth and still let that bitch fly.

I don’t know what level of personal development I thought I had achieved where pettiness would simply stop occurring to me, but I have not reached it.

And weirdly, I think that has been more unsettling than the insecurity itself.

I thought the evidence would make me secure.

Then I thought self-awareness would at least make me behave securely.

Neither has proven particularly reliable.

The evidence is still there.

She loves me.

My clients trust me.

I know what I’m doing.

My bills are paid.

There is food in my refrigerator.

I have built a life that, if you had shown it to me years ago, I would have been very happy to know was coming.

And I still check.

The text.

The tone.

The checking account.

The invoice total.

Her attention.

Whether anything has changed since the last time I checked, which was sometimes embarrassingly recent.

I don’t have a good ending for this because I haven’t figured it out.

Part of me still thinks I would be happier if I put everything back into its little compartments and stopped giving anything enough access to fuck with me this much.

And part of me knows exactly what I would lose if I did.

So.

That’s annoying.