Happy Birthday…(I’m Jealous of Your Texts)
Addition: There’s a good chunk of voice notes and video diaries that are relevant to my birthday and relationships. Thinking I’ll try to comb through them and add some stuff here.
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https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17K44i3Yeq/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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I don’t know why this memory stuck with me but it did….and it happened exactly one year ago today, on September 22nd. It was a Sunday late afternoon/evening. Cris and I were about to head back to her place in North York. We were in the entrance area of the boat. I was furiously texting three different groups (my dad, brother, and sister) about travel details for the Blue Jays game two days away. I had organized the outing, so everyone was coming to me for info.
Out of nowhere, Cris said: “I’m jealous. I wish you texted me that much.”
I froze. My jaw dropped. I felt confused, frustrated, and a mix of other emotions. I told her: “Cris, I’m organizing everything. Everyone is asking about Tuesday. And honestly, I text you more than all of them combined, every single day.”
We carried on and let it go, but looking back, it was a sign of something deeper in her. Whenever I tried to ask where her insecurities came from, she’d shut down. I wouldn’t push.
This small, seemlingly innocuous moment is exactly what my therapist has been trying to show me:
- Cris didn’t want to share a mirror. She only wanted to hold it up to me and rarely (if ever) her personal issues
- that resulted in me accepting way too much blame for our relationship’s problems, creating a pattern of ignoring Cris’s contribution to conflict
It’s likely Cris doesn’t remember what we did for my 40th birthday (which is understandable considering my “quiet birthday” plan). I never told anyone that the baseball game was for my birthday. I didn’t want people rearranging their lives for me. I also didn’t tell anyone I was going to pay for all the tickets….until I had the opportunity to refuse their money after I already bought them. I wanted to treat the people that are important to me and simply spend time with them. I’m not sure it would have changed Cris’s feelings of jealousy if she knew I was organizing my own birthday.
Why bring this up in my journal project? Because it connects to those “random little texts” I’d send her throughout the day. They were my way of showing “I’m thinking of you.” John Gottman, the famous social scientist and relationship expert, calls these “bids for connection.”
The problem? My bids often went unanswered. The last 4-5 months of our relationship, they were always unanswered. I didn’t expect deep responses, just a simple acknowledgement. Instead, I felt ignored. The ironic part is, I held back from texting as much as I wanted to….because I knew it would overwhelm her.
Here’s the point I keep circling around: Cris had issues she wasn’t addressing, and I wasn’t allowed to question them. If someone feels jealous that their partner is texting family to coordinate a trip, that’s a sign of deeper insecurities.
I believe those same insecurities played into why she felt “neglected” when I was asking for help/schedule adjustments. I needed temporary change to work on my mental health and try to simplify my life/remove stressors and responsibilities. Those things needed to happen to give me the mental space to service our relationship in the way Cris needed and the way that I CAN.
But Cris had personal roadblocks she refused to face. And it was always easier for her to leave me carrying all the blame.
Thankfully, because of therapy, my internal narrative has been shifting lately. The story I was forced to accept towards the end of the relationship….Owen is the problem. Owen is a narcissist. Owen is loud, and explosive. Owen needs to fix himself and everything else…was very one-sided. It ignored Cris’s actions, and it let her escape the accountability she was asking me to accept.
And that’s not even taking in to account my mental decline that started near the end of August/early September 2025. When your superstar skater is injured, the rest of the team has to step up. You don’t expect the injured player to win games for you. You give them the time and support to heal. Relationships should work the same way. When one is not well (especially mentally), expectations have to change and the way the team operates needs to change to accommodate.