So That Smoking Thing?

I want to be able to have a stick now and again. When I say now and again, I kinda mean once a month. And recently we had a bit of a breakthrough cos I said this is possibly the only thing that I know he really doesn't care for and therefore it's my one way of holding on to something that states very clearly that I am not 100% his, just as he cannot be 100% mine. 

I know it's kind of contradictory to the whole TTWD thing, but it's what works for us. Now if we were together 100% things would be different. But as it stands, we're not. He can't be. And I won't allow myself to be either. Can a relationship be calculated? To some degree. Is this a childish tit for tat thing? Perhaps, to some.

I talked about trade-offs previously in a reply to Mr Woods' comment in this post. And I believe the ability to make my own decision on smoking is just my way of holding on to some part of myself. Sure there are other things that he's got me submitting to him in, which I could hold back instead, but those things are either a result of us being together now (and therefore automatically taken care of - my wild child self-damaging lifestyle is long gone!) or stuff that don't matter too much to BIKSS anyway (like sleeping before 3am). 

notice the heart shape in the wall?  

When I read Ward's post today about shutting down and distancing, and how both parties were responsible for keeping themselves and their partners from distancing, it reminded me of a conversation I had with BIKSS when we finally got to the bottom of this smoking matter.

In regards to Kitty's own smoking habit, Mr Woods says he will "wall those emotions off in myself so that she doesn't have to build any walls herself. I'll wall off the pain in my chest that I feel every time I know she's had one, so that she can keep herself totally and completely open to me, as she should." 

BIKSS wanted me to continue to tell him if I had a smoke and he was prepared to do the same. But I wouldn't have it that way. It wasn't a solution I was comfortable with. I didn't want to be responsible for causing him that stab of pain, and knowing that he has to wall that away just so that I would continue to be honest with him. 

In fact, it got to a point where I said there are many things he doesn't get jurisdiction over - family, household affairs, money matters etc. - and when situations arise in these areas of my life I deal with them myself. I don't bring them to him. I don't seek his advice all the time, or rely on him to think and work it through with me, to make the best decision for me/us because in these areas there IS no us. It's just ME. And if my smoking occasionally isn't something that he can accept without building a wall, then we'll just take it off the table entirely, the way some of the other things are completely out of his purview. 

I know it's a little unfair that I want to make him FEEL ok with it. But in the end we got back to the old rule of talking about it (and boy, this one sure took months of talking) and even tho the matter itself evolved over the larger part of a year, in the end I think he recognised that it was because I needed to hold on to it to protect myself from totally giving myself to a relationship that I might later be resentful towards, and I realised that he was just afraid that I'd go back to being a regular all-the-time smoker. 

So eventually he understood why I felt the need to hold on to it - the CHOICE to smoke, not the actual smoking - and I understood his absolute dislike for my wanting to smoke. And as long as I know that I have that liberty, and he knows that I will not go back to full-time smoking, we can now be ok with it. He's said that I don't have to tell him. That he trusts that I will not make it an all-the-time thing, and I will be careful about doing so only occasionally. On my part, I've assured him that it's not that I want to smoke all the time or anything, I just want to know that if I choose to have the occasional stick it won't be the cause of some major heart-breaking catastrophic episode for him. 

I said I'd like to still tell him, if that's ok with him, and he said yes. Remember when I talked about how he said to trust him? Even tho I thought he was just "giving up" or giving in, that in fact he had a change of heart and was now ok with it? This is what we were talking about. And I was so afraid that he was lying - that he would just be saying he's ok with it when really he'd actually still be dying inside and walling up the hurt and ... oh, yeah, did I ever tell you I could be overly-dramatic? So the bottom line is he says he's ok with it, and I trust that it's the truth.

So, yeah. This whole post is really just me realising and sharing what I've learnt - he isn't immune to building walls, and I'm well within my rights and even obliged, in fact, to make sure that he doesn't go putting them up, whether or not he thinks it's for anyone's good. Walls aren't allowed - for either of us. Talking is. And I think I'm slowly believing that no matter what the issue is, we'll always be able to sort it out together. It might take longer than one or two conversations, as evidenced by THIS saga... but I'm convinced we'll ALWAYS get there in the end.

(P.S. He's being SO communicative these days I'm over the moon!! Yeah BIKSS!!)