"The ball's in my court"

I just got off of a very awkward Skype call with Marie, one which ended with her saying, "So the ball's in my court," and I agreed. She's trying to figure out what she wants to do with our relationship. I am content to let her.

It so happens that this conversation relates to the Tarot reading that I did for her just two weeks ago today. Not that the Tarot reading, all by itself, caused her to question our relationship. But it helped her clarify some things in her mind, I guess. Maybe I'd better start over, and try a little harder to make this make sense.

Back when I did a Tarot reading for Marie two weeks ago, her question was about what might be causing all her recent physical ailments. I couldn't make much out of her reading, but she could. She said that a number of her ailments were stress reactions, and the reading pointed to some places in her life where she might be feeling stress. She didn't elaborate.

A couple of days ago she did a reading that suggested that I would be turned against her (or missing) in her immediate future. She did a couple of follow-up readings to ask for more details, one of which asked the question "Do I need to make changes in my relationship with Hosea?" The layout she used is one I sort of figured out or stumbled on, and that I taught to her:

• Lay down 5 cards.
• Look at the first card. Upright means Yes and reversed means No.
• Now look at the first three, interpreting them the same way. Majority wins.
• Now look at all five, interpreting them the same way. Majority wins.
• If the three answers are all Yes or all No, that's your answer.
• If the answers are mixed, then the question is more complex than a simple Yes or No. Look at the individual cards and see if you can interpret what they are trying to tell you.

Based on that, she laid out the following answer to her question:

That's an almost-unanimous Yes. There's one No right at the beginning, which might mean something like, "Not right away. Tell him the truth about what's going on, and remember that he'll tell you the truth in return." But after that? I assume these all mean something like:

• "Yes, it's time to start listening to your subconscious."
• "Yes, it's time for a new beginning to your emotional life."
• "Yes, it's time for you to be motivated by a new will, or a new determination."
• "Yes, and there's a tall, handsome stranger headed your way even as we speak."

Those are my readings, not hers. But they wouldn't be crazy.

Then she tied this back to some of the specific cards from my reading her her two weeks ago: cards which she interpreted to mean that (for example) getting involved with me back in 2016 was a great victory for her, but the relationship isn't doing enough for her today.

What's missing from the relationship, from her point of view? The same thing that's always been missing: she wants a lot more of me than I'm willing to give. She wants us to live together, or else very near each other. She wants to be part of my days, and for me to be part of hers. In one way or another, whether legally or just morally, she wants to be married to me. We've been discussing this on and off for years: see, for example, here or here from the beginning of the relationship, and here or here from just last year.

Back when we were in college and Marie would get upset over something that I had said or not said, I would fall all over myself to assure her that No, I really meant whatever it was that she wanted me to mean. I didn't do that this time. Once I did say, "You remember there are actually a lot of reasons that I have suggested we not move to be near each other; but if you are taking account of all those details when you summarize by saying that I 'just don't want to' move closer together, then I guess that's OK as a first-order approximation." She revisited the hurt she felt when I didn't consider moving in with her as an alternative to taking the job in Sticksville, a year and a half ago.

Why don't I want to move in together? There are a lot of practical reasons, but beyond those it could just never happen. I discuss this in the posts linked above (among others), at least allusively: how I have to tread softly because of her rage (though that might be simple karmic retribution for my elevated levels of anger in earlier years); how she is probably right when she frets that she loves me more than I love her; and even how I fundamentally want and need to have my own space, where I can decompress alone and not see anyone.

What I told her is that I am frightened at the prospect of becoming anyone's "whole world." You remember I had exactly the same thoughts about D, years ago. (See for example here and here.) I still want to be part of her world—we agreed that neither of us wants to give up the other—but I never want to be the whole thing. And the implication here—those with ears to hear, let them hear—is that if she finds another lover closer to home who can give her more of what she wants, I'm not going to complain. She actually floated that as a hypothetical, and I made it a point not to react: admittedly I didn't overtly tell her to go for it, but more importantly I didn't express any jealousy or outrage. We didn't say anything more explicit than that, but I think she got the idea.

There was more. We also talked about money. We talked about our respective travel schedules. I made her laugh a couple of times. But the end result was that I did not offer to change anything. So she accepted that she now has to decide what she wants to do about our relationship.

She said, "The ball's in my court."

And I agreed.