Slovenly in Slovenia

The past four days have a been a typical roller coaster ride between Sonja and me. We've been together for nine years now, and still communication breaks down at the most basic level at least once a week. It's not likely to be any different 3 years from now, although I expect that we'll be threatening to divorce one another then, rather than threaten to break up.
It's hard for me to say how much of this long weekend was planned by her, but if I believe her it was all spontaneous. Still, it was a test or at least a tryout. The thing is, she's been torn between two countries in the past. In the west, there's Amsterdam, a nice city with friendly people and (for now) a lucrative if very boring job. And there's me, of course. In the east, there's Ljubljana, a town she may not love to death, but still considers home in many ways. Slovenia in general offers many things Amsterdam does not: natural beauty close by, a language she's fluent in, family and friends. And there's not me, of course, which is a relief at times.
This holiday has been an attempt of Sonja to bring these two worlds together, and the frustration over the difficulties surrounding this brought her to fury and tears on separate occasions. For one, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about living in this country. For two, the lack of a car (neither of us are driving at this point, and I recently spent 18 months being yelled at by a driving instructor on the verge of a nervous breakdown) is a big impediment in these parts. For three, having me over more often would mean letting go of her 'third place', the place to get away from it all, 'it all' including me.
Although she mentioned in the past that 'you should come with me to Slovenia more often', I was little prepared for this test, and displayed my typical passivity, mild enthusiasm combined with noncommittal agreement. In many situations, this posture -which Sonja often confuses with hypocrisy or lack of initiative- has served this relationship well --more than she's willing to admit to me or herself. But now, it was a large nuclear device of obstructionism, obliterating any can-do attitude in its deadly path.
Poor Romina was caught in the middle, confused as usual, but more and more confident that when we say we're breaking up, we're not breaking up. When we were sitting inside a cloud on a mountaintop and I drove Sonja to tears, Romina drew us some ladybugs (her signal that we should stop fighting), two clouds falling in love, and a calendar on which we should mark unhappy faces (for days we have fights) and happy faces (for days we don't).
In the end, I think I made Sonja realize some fundamental truths about how I see myself in this relationship. Yes, I lie to her (although we agreed that from now on, on Tuesdays I would be honest), but I'm moving toward an attitude where I grow up more so I have to lie less. I was careful to stress that this change is not martyrdom or self-pity, but an honest desire to become the man she wants me to be. As always, Sonja is the one who believes she gave up everything while I am still living the comfortable life I lived before we met. She's dead wrong: yes, her sacrifice has been huge, but so has mine. The difference is that what I lost or gave up is nothing concrete or tangible, but a certain lightness to life, a sense of humor and optimism, a Western innocence if you will.
I could write several screens more, but let's not focus on the navel-gazing. I enjoyed Bled and Bohinj, two lake areas surrounded by mountains, as well as the warm weather in Ljubljana and the encounters with Ursa and Branka. I enjoyed spending all this time with Sonja --when we weren't fighting.
But I hated the moment when I spoke my mind, commenting how beautiful Bohinj was and how I even wouldn't mind biking from Ljubljana to here, which Sonja immediately incorporated into her plan, going off about how essential driving a car was if you want to see all this. She doesn't realize that this way, she'll get less and less spontaneity from me, partly because her reaction hurt me deeply, but also partly because I'll have less spontaneity to impart.
There's a preciousness that I feel I can't share with her, not now nor ever. She minds that she seems not to be a part of it, even though she is. The reason I don't open my heart to her is not, as she thinks, because I have no heart to open, but because I'm afraid of having it ripped to shreds. She's hurt me in the past, unwittingly and through no fault of her own, but hurt me nonetheless. She wears a protective shield that attaches itself to nothing and nobody. She holds nothing dear in the deepest, suicidal sense of the word, not even me. Romina is the only exception, I would say.