Stop Bugging Me

I thought Bob would kill the cockroaches. That was really the only expectation I had when I finally married at 42 years of age.  I was not sure why I was getting married. Bob had a plan and I seemed very willing to be swept along. A friend asked at the time WHY!!!??? My answer was, “I can’t imagine not.”

So evidently expectations were low and, in my head, I just wanted to give up pest control.

Bob did not kill cockroaches. These are not the tiny ones you see all over New York City, but rather the big sewer roaches that love the warmer weather.  I had killed them here, in Florida and in Singapore. I was over it, but as I would come to find out, Bob was a lover not a fighter. Many times, I asked, “Well what’s the point of being married if I still have to kill the bugs?”

These thoughts have come up because I speak to a number of people experiencing relationship issues. Their lists of issues are long and involved and intertwined. They appear to be seeking themselves from the outside in. Looking for validation of worth from others. Believing that another can make you whole or happy or satisfied or safe.

There is much to be said for having a companion with which you can travel through life. Sharing decisions and moments and your version of love with someone.  The feeling of someone beside you that has your best interests at heart. Many of us have this through friendship as well as marriage or partnership. It is not as easy and worry free as movies and books purport. We humans seem to have lots of potholes into which we fall or into which we attempt to drag others.

What I learned from Bob was the greatest gift you can give the people you love is to love them just as they are and to hold up a mirror of that love so that they too can have a chance to see themselves in that light.  I gave Bob many opportunities to give up holding the mirror, but he persevered, and I finally adopted his vision of me without all the distortions I had come to believe existed.

So, in the end, Bob was the perfect exterminator. He killed my mental cockroaches or at least sent them scurrying.