Going Along to Get Along

I've been thinking about what it takes to get along in a relationship, to make it work (allow it to work?).

I tend to tuck my needs and wants away in order to have a relationship. I want to be accepted and loved — the Little Adoptee cries out, "please keep me".

With this cold weather, I've been remembering my third marriage where I moved into his home on 27 acres on the side of the Short Hill Mountain in western Loudoun County. I had the most wonderful cat I've had in all my life. Wolfie is the cat by whom all subsequent cats have been measured. But the Mountain Man said animals belonged outside, people belonged inside. (Hmmm, he liked to urinate outside in the woods, so does that make him animal or people?) When I was preparing to move out of my apartment, he informed me that Wolfie would live outside. I should have put my foot down, but I went along to get along.

The image I have in this cold weather is Wolfie sitting on the porch, scratching on the door, crying to come into the house. I would bundle up and go sit out on the porch with him to pet him and cuddle him. But I wouldn't bring him into the house. God forbid that I do something to cause someone to reject me again.

(Yes, I'm in therapy!)
(BTW, to level set you, this is the marriage where the son threatened to shoot me, and the Mountain Man said I took things too seriously.)
(BTW again, after we divorced and his daughter graduated from BYU and moved back home, they got two cats — who lived inside.)
(And yes, Wolfie's full name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.)