2025 - Thirteenth Session

Tess had read The Third Way prior to session and had questions - mostly to Jenn as the blog was admittedly written from my own perspective. Those out of the way she focused on drax0r who was able to articulate aloud some thoughts which needed the power of spoken word to solidify.

I failed to mention in last session's notes lamenting my bewilderment at the sheer amount of unhinged entitlement which seemingly comes from two professionals choosing to cohabitate for a short period of time simply because one partner legally reports more earnings than the other partner. Coupled with the self-imposed change in status in regards to my newly imposed relationship with Jennifer, Tess (surprisingly) asked me, “If the opportunity opened up again, would you marry Cassie?”

I will admit I was slightly taken aback.

Cass and I discussed marriage from time to time; how it would look, what our expectations were for ourselves and one another, and how we'd mitigate the same issues which arose in our previous marriages - specifically in how they ceaselessly promised something on which they never had any intention of following through; how their actions, attitude, and behavior were so far removed from their words it couldn't be taken as anything less than intentionally misleading. The reason I am so very fascinated by this behavior is because we talked for a decade about intention, and outcome, and worth, and character, and everything else surrounding action/reaction to things such as: trust, anger, hurt, betrayal. That we wanted to never to be driven to reprehensible behavior due to an inability to manage what is effectively expectation - how strongly we felt in always, always, always eschew blame or fault as a primitive coping mechanism. Yet the first thing out of her mouth was, "I blame you." Like, how does that even happen? Is there a switch that gets flipped from, "Pretend to be something you're not," to "Stop pretending?" When there is a such an immediate and stark difference in not just behavior, but *everything* which runs deeply antithetical to everything you were ever told, one begins to wonder if *anything* was ever true; that perhaps this is who they were the entire time which is why they kept it hidden. I guess props for maintaining the falsehood for so long? Must've been exhausting. No wonder the cracks finally started showing.

So yeah, Cass and I discussed getting married from time to time.

I replied to Tess, “I don’t know. I wrote 13 Reasons Why, which was everything she’s ever told me about why she doesn’t want to marry me. And so I would want to - one by one - go through that checklist, and see where we are in each of those.”

But you should've seen Tess' face when I told her Cass had recently asked me, "If it were back on the table would you still consider marrying me?" (I knew I'd forgotten to blog that so was also surprised when she asked). "I knew it!" Tess exclaimed (though I don't remember her mentioning that part), "What did you say to her?"

"I told her I would want to - one by one - go through that checklist and see where we are in each of those."

"What did she say?"

"That the majority were perfunctory and didn't hold any real weight, but the last four may or may not still be applicable."