Optics

So.  Here I am again.
Michael has said that this has been the worst week.  Surely it has.  It has been worse for him than for me.  He said "put yourself in my shoes: what would you do?" and so I tried to work through it and it was terrible.
I don't know if it is right or wrong that we have been spending so much time together trying to resolve this.  I was the one that - ultimately - created this mess.  And I have a rather significantly vested interest in this relationship. I want it to work.  So is it fair to be with someone who is hurting so badly while at the same time having an agenda?
And yet we are talking.  And talking and talking and talking.  We have been out for dinner twice now and we have paid the bill and we just sit there and talk and talk.  We didn't do that when we were together.  It can't be a bad thing.  I just wish - we both wish - that the impetus for this gushing dialogue had been something other than what it was.
I'm exhausted.  We're both exhausted.  What a fucking clusterfuck.  What a shit storm of epic proportions.  And Michael is emailing some of his friends that are his age and they have kids that are getting married. And here we are, at 34 years old and 46 years old and we're just figuring out that honesty and open communication are key.
It's funny because I thought I was smart.  And I see people in other relationships and I can see where they might go wrong, or what looming problems they might have on the horizon.  But in my own life?  No.  Nada.  I'm an independent girl in an independent relationship and everything is set up just the way I had always imagined it.
Except no.  It wasn't.  And instead of dealing with it, and working on my relationship to try and get it to where I wanted it to be, I supplemented it and I didn't talk about things like sadness or loneliness or romance or connectedness.
And to make things more confusing, Michael kept on talking about the "optics" of it.  And I was thinking, "What?  Is this a computer peripheral thing?" and then he would bring it up again and I would be like "yeah... the... optics" and I'm going "is this his way of telling me that he has glaucoma?".
Yeah.  I just Wiki'd "optics" and I'm just kind of concerned that he has picked up on some new, hip lingo before I have.
Don't get me wrong: I'm concerned about  the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it as much as the next guy, but I'm a bit puzzled. Like, am I supposed to wear sunglasses the next time we have a conversation?
Optics aside, maybe we both weren't seeing things clearly.  Maybe we saw what we wanted to see.  Or maybe we deliberately didn't see what was glaringly obvious.