In any case, through these proceedings, there's a necessary amount of communication with each other and footwork involved in getting all the paperwork taken care of.

I'd been living a month on my own, when I received my first poignant reminder how easily I allow myself to feel influenced by his behaviors. We had to get together one day for me to give him his copies of the initial filing for complaint of divorce. He had to sign a paper stating he was in receipt of his copies. We also had to get the matter of our deposit check taken care of from our previous rental. He had suggested to me on the phone the day before to get together to go over everything and suggested lunch.

I think I shared this already. Long story short, the paperwork and money got transferred with ease, but the lunch plan was gone with the wind. I felt angry that he'd broken the plans without even acknowledging they had existed. I got past it and moved on.

So again, God provides me with another learning opportunity to see if I'd learned a lesson from the previous one.

More paperwork needs to be taken care of, and at the time of the transference of the first batch of paperwork, AH tells me he'll come with me to court to drop off the paperwork.

He calls me last night, telling me he's got his paperwork done and asks if he can drop it off with me. No mention, of course, about his previous offer to accompany me to the courthouse to drop off the paperwork. In fact, he sounds like he plans on being in a big hurry to just drop the stuff and run back up to his new neighborhood.

I'm on the phone with him, knowing he's "doing it again", and getting increasingly irritated and ticked off. I'm brusque with him and get off the phone as quickly as possible.

So, I had some time last night to sit and think about what's going on here... What's the deal? Why did I get upset again? What am I getting out of this?

In the long run, I think I'm FINALLY seeing what God is trying to show me here: Stop taking AH's word. He possibly has the right intentions when he first mentions making those sort of plans, but he has a track record for breaking them. In fact, he's done so throughout our entire relationship. Even when we were first dating. It was near impossible to depend on him to follow through with some plans. He'd make mention of doing something together... I'd get ready for it, or plan my day around it, and then he'd back out. It really irritated me. I guess from several years of living together that it all somehow turned invisible to me. Or I learned to turn a blind eye to it. I guess the fact that we were indeed living together really made it a lot less likely for him to break those sort of plans.

This is just classic AH. This is who he is. And I say that with, what I hope, is little judgement. It's not how I would behave. I keep expecting him to do things as I would. I grew up learning that if you make plans with someone, you follow through, or if you're not going to for whatever reason, you at least contact the person and acknowledge that there were plans but you were going to have to cancel.

AH just makes plans and then cancels them in a way that leaves me believing he pretends he never made mention of making plans. Either that or is brain really is getting more and more mushy from all the booze.

In any case... I was finally reminded that AH just simply breaks plans. And I'm hoping the NEXT time he gets on the phone with me and makes some sort of a suggestion that he's going to either do lunch with me or, I guess really spend any sort of time with me beyond what's needed to exchange paperwork that I should take it with a grain of salt. He's just talking to try and sound nice or whatever, but there's a 98% chance that whatever it is he's suggesting that it's not gonna happen.

I'm grateful. I'm glad I came to that realization, because even today, he was supposed to at least drop off the paperwork while I was at work, but he ended up trying to catch me while I was in a meeting. So, he calls me from his home later on and tells me he'll just "do it later". Glad I had come to know that he's going to change his plans at the last minute and I didn't feel ticked off that he "did it again".

If anything, perhaps he learned something about not expecting me to be available on his timeline. If he'd called me earlier today and let me know when he was planning to be in town, I could have warned him I was going to be in the middle of a meeting.

Ah well.

Back to my subject line. I think what was interesting in all of this is that although he seems on the surface to be very inconsistent... he is indeed NOT. He's very predictable when I stop trying to look at him and his behaviors through rose-colored glasses. If anything, his predictably unpredictable behaviors are only going to get worse as the disease progresses.

The kicker in it all is that I just continue surprising MYSELF with how often I've kept buying his story and taking his word... when the past has shown me over and over and over again and again that he will not follow through.

So... I think I see it now, God.

Just like I've done with other people I know who talk a lot of big talk and plans but never follow through, that's the exact same thing to expect from the soon ex-AH. The next time he suggests lunch... or offers to participate in my life in some way that I think sounds nice like something a normal friend would do, I need to just gently remind myself that it's likely not going to happen, because this is exAH I'm talking to. No judgement. It's just him, and he always does this and likely always will. And most important, do NOT think for just one minute that he may surprise me. It sets up expectations which are just breeding grounds for resentments.