Second Opinion

After the panic of last week, I was relieved to go to my doctor and discover that I am definitley not pregnant. The reason for my extremely late cycle is a side effect of my birth control, he explained, and one of the tests I took must have yielded a false positive. "How does this happen?" I asked my reliably over-explanatory doctor.
Every time I have an appointment with him, he explains to me what it means to have "moveable ovaries", and what it means when someone has a tilted uterus. "Sometimes, a test will show a positive result when it is defective, or sometimes a test can look positive when it actually isn't. You should always come in and see us when you think you have a positive result, and we'll give you a real test and tell you what's what."
So that's that. I panicked and roped Mike into my sphere of terror over nothing, and now, I think, he hates me. Or worse, he doesn't anything me, he just thinks I'm the kind of person who would fake a pregnancy scare just to get him to talk to me again. I didn't bother texting him about my visit with the doctor, because I knew he wasn't waiting on tenterhooks over it, and unsurprisingly, he didn't ask. Liam asked, Gino asked, and of course, Najwa and Gabriel asked (as well as pointed out that you can still get someone pregnant even if you don't "finish"), but not Mike. My actual friends care about what is going on with my uterus, and I appreciated that more than they even know.
I spent more time with Gino this week, watching American Horror Story at his house since I don't have cable or internet right now and taking him to Writer's Room and, of course, having sex that can only be described as therapeutic. After Mike's comments the other day about my failures as a sex partner, I did console myself with one man I knew wouldn't make me feel like I was defective. I have no idea if this is healthy or not, but I really kind of don't care for the moment. Sometimes, a girl just needs validation, and sleeping with your ex can be a good source of that. One thing I keep having to remind Gino of, however, are my hard rules. He asked if he could sleep over some night, to get a break from his living situation, and I told him no. I can't wake up next to him, feel him spooning me in that way that always felt right, and stay true to my convictions. He is starting to have second thoughts about our separation, I can tell, and it's becoming clearer that this arrangement we've made with each other, to stay best friends and fuck each other if we really need it might have to change. I've locked on to the decision to see what it is like to be by myself, and if I let him poison me with his doubts, I won't ever see if there is something better for me out there. I will slide back into being his wife, even if we are divorced, even if we don't live together anymore. I will inevitably end up taking care of him, just from a different location.
One thing that Gino said to me the other day, that really stung, was how annoyed he is at people posting baby and wedding pictures on Facebook, how seeing people happily paired off and starting families makes him depressed. I looked over at him and saw that the ultimate difference between Gino and myself is that I feel too much shame, and he must be missing the part of his brain that feels shame. There is no other explanation for how he could say something like that to me. The audacity of it just blows me away. He is jealous of other people's babies and marriages, but he doesn't even recognize the fact that he threw away his chance at having those very things he is jealous of. I didn't say what was on my mind, which was, "Are you fucking kidding me," because, I see now, Gino will never understand that anything is harder for anyone than it is for him.
In Gino's eyes, this divorce is harder for him than it is for me. He sees the fact that his marriage failed, that we never had children, as the fault of the world at large, not a failing within himself to just get his shit together and figure out a way to achieve the goals we had with each other. I could do nothing other than shake my head at him and reflect back on how obvious it really was, all along, that I was never going to get the things I wanted from my relationship with him. The onus was always on me to figure it out, to find a way to make ends meet and remember everything and keep us afloat. He didn't meet me halfway, and in fact, he didn't even give 25% effort. The few things that he did stay on top of were the things I was just not great with, like remembering to pay off the excise tax or getting the car inspected, and he used the fact that I was irresponsible with those things against me in just about every big argument we had. He used my embarrassment over my own failings as a way to keep me from pointing out any of his, and I fell for that trick every time.
Another problem I am having with spending more time with Gino is knowing how to react to him hinting around this self-doubt, awkwardly shoe-horned into every other conversation. I know he is only having doubts because he is lonely, and that loneliness can lead him to do crazy things. I have spent five months preparing myself for the day this marriage I have devoted so much energy to becomes a thing of the past, and I can't deal with his second-guessing it, nor can I understand it. He asked for me to leave, after all, and even though I didn't want to, I did as he asked. He can't expect me to just forget all of that and move him into the life I have scraped together for myself now that he has discovered that being single isn't easy. I don't know what, exactly, he imagined. He probably thought that all of the girls who flirted with him when he was married would jump right on his dick once he was free of me. I keep telling him, in that way that I tell him really obvious things, that girls flirt with married guys because there is no risk there. It's safe, like taunting a tiger in a cage- no one is going to get hurt, so a girl can bat her eyelashes all she wants. Now that he is actually available again, those same girls aren't bringing it the way they were. Gino is looking around for all of these girls who showed something resembling interest in him, and they are nowhere to be found.
He told me the other day, "I keep trying to put a good spin on being single, but, I really just don't like it."
I did everything I could to not smack him upside the head. "Whoopie. Flipping. Ding," I said, "No one likes being single. That's why we all spend so much time trying to find someone. Duh!"
No one enjoys being single. What are we all doing, when we go out and talk to people, see whose pheromones set off a chemical reaction with our own, if we are not trying to just find somebody who makes us feel safe and a little less empty? It's not such a strange thing to want. Even my friends who say that they like being single have only arrived at that place of acceptance after struggling with it and then finding something to do with all of their free time. Being single is only fun until you run out of ways to entertain yourself. The only people who like being single are people who have no feelings.
For the time being, I know I should stay away from my ex-husband because it is so abundantly clear that this will only end up confusing both of us. I know it will more than likely need to change, once one of us starts seeing someone, or once one of us can't handle it for some other reason. It would be better for Gino, in the long run, actually, if I just told him that we can't see each other at all, because then he could learn the consequences of letting go of someone who loves you more than you love yourself. I don't think I can do it, though, because I know I would miss him. I still love him as my dear friend, and I want to keep it that way, even if it's stupid and unrealistic. I expected that this, him realizing he misses me, would feel more gratifying, but in truth, I find it disappointing. If he actually does want me back, it will let me down a little because that will mean he has elected to take the easy way, to just fall back into something that didn't really work, rather than be brave and go find something new, or just deal with being alone. That would also mean that I win, that I've grown more during this separation, but I've gone from wanting to win to not wanting it to be a contest at all. I want for him what I wanted all along: I want him to grow up, and I want him to be as happy as he can be. If I can help him do that as his best friend, I am happy to, but I know I cannot help him get there as his wife, his absentee wife, or his former-wife, current girlfriend.