The endless loop

"What are you thinking?" He asked me from the other side of the pillow. We'd argued earlier about indecision and lack of our own place and its affects on my mood — going from fine to frustrated/angry/annoyed — and how he over compensates to bring me back, in those situations.
"Um...I don't think anything really. Why?" I lied back.
"Just want to know what's going through there. I'm a lot to handle, I know. I just don't want you to think everything through and then hear what's really going on tomorrow." I won't, I promised myself. I won't tell him what I'm really thinking, because it won't get us anywhere. It will just push me further into this place of solitude and push him to being upset, which will inevitably upset me for doing that to him. No, I won't text him tomorrow with my real concerns. I'll let someone else talk me off the ledge.
::For the rest of my life when he's texting someone at 9:30 or so, it's most likely going to be Steph and I'm going to have to just sit and wait to find out if it's something worth sharing. I'm just not ok with that. And not to the point of, Oh I want to see his phone, but more like Oh I don't want my boyfriend to have a part of life that is shared with someone else.:: She's sensible, and has parents who went through a divorce, so she gives me the tough love at times like these. ::Unfortuntately, that won't change — the shared part. The 9:30 texts, however, will.:: And this is where I start the loop.

Yes, maybe, hopefully, the texts will stop as the baby gets older. She, however, will never completely go away. She will always be there, a reminder that he's done this, all of it before. "But I've never done it with you before and I'm so excited for that!" He tells me. Often. But what he doesn't understand is that although we haven't done this together, he's done it. He's done the looking for their first apartment, the deciding to buy a ring, the going to the jeweler and finding that perfect ring, the nervous excitement waking up proposal morning, the smiles/tears/laughter/joy of having that moment with her, the calling of their friends and family and grabbing drinks to toast to their life together. He's done the wedding planning — the listening to dj's, the looking at venues, the food and cake selection, the decisions on color, the engraving of wedding bands, the finding the perfect photographer. Then he did the marriage — the house, the puppy, the parties, the decision to make love to her in order to bring another person into this world. The doctor's appointments, the cravings, the labor scares, the real labor, the delivery of the baby, the life decisions about his name and where he'll go to daycare and who will be on drop off duty, and who will pick up. No, he hasn't done any of that with me, but he did it. He did it with someone else. He looked at her the way he looks at me, he loved her the way he loves me, he cherished her the way he cherishes me, he fell asleep in her arms and woke up to her smile. He kissed her good morning at 5am when he left for work and told her to "sleep well." He texted her when he got there and reminded her that he loved her. I'm supposed to just overlook that when he's talking to her everyday? The thought of it is all is enough to make my stomach start to churn. I didn't pick her to be part of my life, but he did. He brought her here, to this place with us and sometimes that simple fact is almost too much to handle. How could he ever have ended up with her? She's such a...a...monster. Then I think about everything I just mentioned and realize that is how she ended up here with us.

He tells me that I need to let go of that part of his life. Or accept that it happened and move forward from it, which is a convenient thing to say when I'm in tears over the mentioning of their post wedding Sunday morning brunch at his family's deli. But what about the songs that I can't listen to because their part of his life? Or the places that I can't want to visit because they were part of his other life. How am I supposed to just "let go" when he has to turn the radio off because Paradise by the Dashboard Light was a song she deemed "theirs?" I want to turn and scream "Who the fuck cares?!" when we're at a wedding and everyone in the place is dancing on the floor, but he can't because she deemed it "their" song. Or when I mention wanting to visit New York and do touristy things, including the Empire State Building and I get "Steph and I did that once, the New York touristy things." Oh cool. Now I'm dying to do that. and "I'm in no rush to see the Empire State Building" oh right, because you proposed there. Well I'll just check that off of places that we will never visit. I don't want to be in a relationship with boundaries based on convenience. When he wants me to get over it, I should get over it. But when he's the one thinking back, then I need to be understanding of his past.

As we move forward, I'm finding that I can talk to him less and less about these things, because the response is always the same "What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?" Well the answer is simple. Nothing. Because there's nothing he can do, and then I get scared. Is this how I'm going to feel forever? Am I always going to dwell on the fact that we don't get to share firsts? Maybe. It stings. Sure it'll be the first time we get married and the first time we have a baby and our first anniversary, but it's not his first. So in a way, I'll be experiencing all of our firsts alone and that thought puts me in a very bad place. If I'm going to be going through them alone anyway, should I not even bother him? I find myself thinking things like When I get pregnant I won't make him go to the appointments. Why would he want to? He already knows what's going to happen on every visit, so why should he sit there through it? I'm the one who doesn't know. I'm the one who needs the infant care classes and the developmental emails, he already knows all of that. I'll just do that alone. Maybe one of my girlfriends will want to go with me. Therein lies the biggest problem of all, I'll just as soon inconvenience one of my friends to do all of those things with me, before I'd dream of expecting him to or thinking that he'd even want to. He's supposed to be my best friend, so why is it that I don't expect him to do all of the traditional best friend things that I'd just expect of anyone else? Maybe it has to do with feeling like a guest in his life. Feeling like we're not building this life together, rather I'm just fitting in to the life that he already created. That's probably why I have a hard time just making plans for us, and why I'm afraid to suggest we do things with his son, because that's his life and his time. I'll just go along and do whatever he thinks that we should do because it's not my place to make decisions. He decides bed time, diaper changes, nap time, play time, whether we stay inside or go out, do an art project or bake, what's eaten for dinner. He puts him to bed, and changes the diapers. He wakes him up and feeds him. Decides on milk or juice in the morning. All of these things he should be deciding. He's the dad and I'm not the mom. She makes those decisions along side of him. Maybe not with him anymore, but if she read some ridiculous article saying that broccoli made some children sprout growths from their ears, and she didn't want the baby eating it anymore she has that say. Or if she doesn't want him in pools because of the chlorine, she has the authority to voice those concerns too. But then, doesn't that make me a guest? Someone without authority who just goes with the flow? At which point does it become our life with his son and not their life with me? Maybe it doesn't.

Needless to say at 9:35 last night when he turned to me and said "Little man's running a fever" the loop began and is still going as he sends me texts of assurance that we're ok, we just get easily frustrated sometimes. Yeah. That's it. We're just easily frustrated.