I hope this means progress
Well, I haven't cried since 1/6. That's progress I guess. I feel the need to share some things about myself, the man I am grieving over, and the relationship we had.
He is younger than I am about 6.5 years. He has never been married. He has a toddler that he keeps half the time. He smokes pot for recreational purposes when the price isn't too high. I've seen marijuana plants at his place. He told me he doesn't use it around his kid. He drinks beer pretty much daily, but not to the point of being drunk. He has HSV2 for which he takes a suppressant. He has a record that is "no longer a record": a possession charge when he was 19/20 and a dui when he was about 28. He's almost 36 now.
I am divorced. I have no kids. I don't drink much at all because it's a social activity for me, and I don't socialize much in groups where drinking is going on. In fact, I've only been tipsy once. I have never tried a drug and am not really interested in doing so. I know enough about my family history to know that if I drank very often or tried pot or pills of some kind, I'd probably become an addict. I have never had an STD, or even an STD scare. I've never had a one night stand. I'm a fairly straight-laced person I suppose. Most would think I am naive. I have close family relative that is a judge, and most of my family (including the judge) are very conservative folks.
I met this man online. He's the first man I'd dated since my divorce in 2008. We really clicked in a lot of ways, just not in our history of substance use/abuse and past sexual experiences if I had to guess. He told me about the pot use, the record, and his hsv status within the first day and half of our first chats/texts. I was very bothered by the pot use. I don't know how, but I have managed to go my whole life without knowingly being around too many people that use it. There was one occasion in college where it was going on in another room. I just stayed away from it. Anyway, I let him know that I didn't know if I could handle being in a relationship with someone who used it regularly. He said he used it a few times a week as long as it wasn't too expensive and that he loved the stuff. I almost turned him away entirely because of it. He said he'd never experienced that before - someone turning him away because of his habit. We talked about how I don't really drink much. He admitted that he had a hard time seeing himself with someone that he couldn't sit around and have a beer with. We kept talking though. He decided to go ahead and tell me about his HSV status because he saw how bothered I was about the other things - the record, the pot, oh and he smokes cigarettes. I'm not really wanting to be with a smoker. It's just ick. Anyway, he said he usually didn't bring up the HSV with a woman until he felt it was going that direction. I found the rest of his personality very fun and kind, and I found his pictures fairly appealing. I thought maybe I was just judging the pot use too harshly and thought we could be careful to prevent my getting HSV should it get that far. We became facebook friends.
Well, we decided to go ahead and meet for dinner: separate checks and only a handshake at the end in case one of us wasn't into the other. Dinner went well. Conversation, separate checks, and handshake. We texted after we got home to say we each had a good time. He asked me over for dinner at his place a few days later. I went (after checking him out pretty good - it's a small community sort of). It was a good date. When he kissed me that night, it was great. I found myself VERY attracted to him. I don't know if I have ever been that physically attracted to someone. We texted a little bit that night after I went home and confirmed it was a good date for both of us. Well, the next day we were texting and he tells me that someone from his past came back into his life and he wanted to see where it went and since he doesn't like to date more than one person at a time, we probably wouldn't be going out again. I told him I was cool with it, hope we could stay friendly, and to check in on me if it didn't work out with her. About 3 weeks later he texted me and asked me out for a drink, saying that he and the other lady weren't exclusive. At some point he had told me it was "complicated" with her. Since I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that kiss, I said yes. He was very blunt on this date. It was a late date because he works evenings sometimes. We were sitting there finishing up, and he says, "we can go make out after this, if you want". I had never had a man be so blunt with me. I laughed at him, but I was game. It had been 5 years for Pete's sake since I had kissed or had sex with a man. We didn't have sex that night. All hands above the clothes. It was very nice and very comfortable for me. We texted after he left that night, and I expressed that if I saw him again that I might not want to stop since it had been so long for me. Naturally, he said he was ok with that and didn't think I'd be using him.
The next night on my facebook newsfeed pictures of this man and his other lady friend started showing up. Needless to say it bothered me even though I knew he was seeing her. I think even then I knew I was different for him. I was that girl that a guy sees, but is never seen with. :( Well, a couple days later, I noticed that he was still logging in to the online dating site where I'd met him. I tried joking around with him and asked why he was still logging into that site and messing around with me since it looked like that other chick was pretty into him and that didn't seem to complicated . He proceeded to tell me that he didn't think we should talk anymore, that he had fun with me, but now it was uncomfortable, and that it wasn't any of my business what made his life complicated. I was mortified. I immediately thought that he must think I'm stalking him and that I'd really pissed him off by calling him out on his dating practices. I apologized and said I didn't mean to make him feel uncomfortable and that I would leave him alone and block him so he didn't think I was trying to pry into his life.
I felt horrible for about a month. I obsessed over how that all went down. I obsessed over that night of making out. I obsessed over the other lady friend and creeped on her facebook stuff. I obsessed over him, wondering what he was doing since we had stopped talking. The week before Valentine's day I got a message from the online dating site that he had "liked" one of my pictures. I was irritated by that because I was pretty sure he had blocked me on there, so why would it tell me that he liked a photo of mine? Since I was obsessing already, I couldn't help but wonder what he meant by doing that. I was ticked at the website because I was pretty sure he had blocked me on there, so why on earth would they send me a notification that he was possibly interested in me? On Valentines Day I texted him to let him know I got the notification even though I was pretty sure he blocked me and that I would be complaining to the website about it. He responded to me and confirmed that he did block me and thought it was weird that the website would send me a notification. He signed off with Happy V-Day.
I continued to obsess about him and the possibility of having a physical relationship with him. He flipped some kind of switch in me. I couldn't think about him without feeling some kind of physical reaction - my head would feel weird. I swear, sometimes it also felt like my uterus was contracting when I thought of him. I sent him a happy birthday text about a week later. Creepy, maybe, but I have a good head for remember that kind of thing about people when I want to. And I remembered A LOT about him. It did no good to remove his contact from my phone because I knew his phone number. Anyway, he accepted the wishes in a kind manner. By this time, I had figured out that the other lady was out of the picture. A couple of days later I made a suggestion that he and I should have a sex only relationship. I've never done that kind of thing, and I never will again. I knew I wanted more from him, but my hormones decided to override logic. It took us a couple of weeks to work out a time, but in March we started our sexual relationship. It was always just sex with maybe a little tv or part of a movie. We never went out and only saw each other once or twice a week. He usually came over to my place, but eventually he invited me back to his place. By mid summer we started sleeping over occasionally. Sometime in this summer, I figured out that I was codependent. By the end of July I couldn't take it as just sex anymore and asked for more. He couldn't/didn't want to give it, so I told him I needed to stop. He said he understood. And there I was, heartbroken for a second time.
I made it about 2.5 weeks before I called him back and said I had made a mistake. I told him I should have talked to him and told him I needed to back things off a little with the sleepovers. He quickly came back and said it was cool, he just didn't want to hurt me. He may not have WANTED to, but it was unavoidable. I knew it, but didn't say anything to that effect. By then I had figured out that if I didn't have him in my life, my codependency would probably just attract someone a lot like him - emotionally unavailable, and I didn't want to go another 5 years before finding someone to be interested in again. I really wanted him to love me, so I thought I'd keep hanging in there just in case until HE decided he was done. By mid-October I could tell that he was either losing interest in me or had met someone he wanted to pursue. He barely responded to my texts anymore. The last time I saw him was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He had put me off the week before saying that he was having a HSV outbreak. He put me off the week after Thanksgiving again saying he was having an outbreak. The following week he didn't put me off, but he didn't make any effort to see me. I asked him, "I'm not going to get to see you anymore, am I?" The next morning he sent a text back saying, "No. I'm sorry I should have told you earlier. I've been seeing a girl this last week and it's staring to get serious." My first thought was - A WEEK? I think that was a lie or he meant to say that it had started getting serious in the last week. I replied saying that it was just as well. I said that I really wanted him to be able to love me, but I knew he couldn't. The last text I got from him was, "I had fun and appreciate our time together. You'll find someone." Tell me he hadn't used those lines before. Ugh.
So here I am. It's been almost a month since that happened. I have to admit that I definitely teared up reliving all of that. I've done a LOT of thinking and reflection since August. I could see back then, every step and situation where I compromised what I really want for myself. I know now that something about him triggered my "wounded inner child" to take over the emotions in this relationship. It was probably my fear of abandonment because of his come here/go away behavior. His habits also probably triggered them, as they are similar habits to my abandoner. I knew all along that I didn't really want to be with a person that used marijuana 2-3 times a week and couldn't reconcile in my mind how a person like that is an effective parent as far as trying to keep your kids off drugs at some point. I knew if he did end up loving me and we had a REAL relationship, that parenting would be an obstacle. He wants more kids, so I would have at least faced helping to parent his current toddler if it had worked out between us. The more I try to figure out how marijuana fits into the lives of people with children, the more I realize it's not something I want to have to try to figure out. I know he's not the kind of person I need to be with, so his new girlfriend can have fun figuring that out. She's got a couple of kids, maybe she's already figured it out.
He is younger than I am about 6.5 years. He has never been married. He has a toddler that he keeps half the time. He smokes pot for recreational purposes when the price isn't too high. I've seen marijuana plants at his place. He told me he doesn't use it around his kid. He drinks beer pretty much daily, but not to the point of being drunk. He has HSV2 for which he takes a suppressant. He has a record that is "no longer a record": a possession charge when he was 19/20 and a dui when he was about 28. He's almost 36 now.
I am divorced. I have no kids. I don't drink much at all because it's a social activity for me, and I don't socialize much in groups where drinking is going on. In fact, I've only been tipsy once. I have never tried a drug and am not really interested in doing so. I know enough about my family history to know that if I drank very often or tried pot or pills of some kind, I'd probably become an addict. I have never had an STD, or even an STD scare. I've never had a one night stand. I'm a fairly straight-laced person I suppose. Most would think I am naive. I have close family relative that is a judge, and most of my family (including the judge) are very conservative folks.
I met this man online. He's the first man I'd dated since my divorce in 2008. We really clicked in a lot of ways, just not in our history of substance use/abuse and past sexual experiences if I had to guess. He told me about the pot use, the record, and his hsv status within the first day and half of our first chats/texts. I was very bothered by the pot use. I don't know how, but I have managed to go my whole life without knowingly being around too many people that use it. There was one occasion in college where it was going on in another room. I just stayed away from it. Anyway, I let him know that I didn't know if I could handle being in a relationship with someone who used it regularly. He said he used it a few times a week as long as it wasn't too expensive and that he loved the stuff. I almost turned him away entirely because of it. He said he'd never experienced that before - someone turning him away because of his habit. We talked about how I don't really drink much. He admitted that he had a hard time seeing himself with someone that he couldn't sit around and have a beer with. We kept talking though. He decided to go ahead and tell me about his HSV status because he saw how bothered I was about the other things - the record, the pot, oh and he smokes cigarettes. I'm not really wanting to be with a smoker. It's just ick. Anyway, he said he usually didn't bring up the HSV with a woman until he felt it was going that direction. I found the rest of his personality very fun and kind, and I found his pictures fairly appealing. I thought maybe I was just judging the pot use too harshly and thought we could be careful to prevent my getting HSV should it get that far. We became facebook friends.
Well, we decided to go ahead and meet for dinner: separate checks and only a handshake at the end in case one of us wasn't into the other. Dinner went well. Conversation, separate checks, and handshake. We texted after we got home to say we each had a good time. He asked me over for dinner at his place a few days later. I went (after checking him out pretty good - it's a small community sort of). It was a good date. When he kissed me that night, it was great. I found myself VERY attracted to him. I don't know if I have ever been that physically attracted to someone. We texted a little bit that night after I went home and confirmed it was a good date for both of us. Well, the next day we were texting and he tells me that someone from his past came back into his life and he wanted to see where it went and since he doesn't like to date more than one person at a time, we probably wouldn't be going out again. I told him I was cool with it, hope we could stay friendly, and to check in on me if it didn't work out with her. About 3 weeks later he texted me and asked me out for a drink, saying that he and the other lady weren't exclusive. At some point he had told me it was "complicated" with her. Since I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that kiss, I said yes. He was very blunt on this date. It was a late date because he works evenings sometimes. We were sitting there finishing up, and he says, "we can go make out after this, if you want". I had never had a man be so blunt with me. I laughed at him, but I was game. It had been 5 years for Pete's sake since I had kissed or had sex with a man. We didn't have sex that night. All hands above the clothes. It was very nice and very comfortable for me. We texted after he left that night, and I expressed that if I saw him again that I might not want to stop since it had been so long for me. Naturally, he said he was ok with that and didn't think I'd be using him.
The next night on my facebook newsfeed pictures of this man and his other lady friend started showing up. Needless to say it bothered me even though I knew he was seeing her. I think even then I knew I was different for him. I was that girl that a guy sees, but is never seen with. :( Well, a couple days later, I noticed that he was still logging in to the online dating site where I'd met him. I tried joking around with him and asked why he was still logging into that site and messing around with me since it looked like that other chick was pretty into him and that didn't seem to complicated . He proceeded to tell me that he didn't think we should talk anymore, that he had fun with me, but now it was uncomfortable, and that it wasn't any of my business what made his life complicated. I was mortified. I immediately thought that he must think I'm stalking him and that I'd really pissed him off by calling him out on his dating practices. I apologized and said I didn't mean to make him feel uncomfortable and that I would leave him alone and block him so he didn't think I was trying to pry into his life.
I felt horrible for about a month. I obsessed over how that all went down. I obsessed over that night of making out. I obsessed over the other lady friend and creeped on her facebook stuff. I obsessed over him, wondering what he was doing since we had stopped talking. The week before Valentine's day I got a message from the online dating site that he had "liked" one of my pictures. I was irritated by that because I was pretty sure he had blocked me on there, so why would it tell me that he liked a photo of mine? Since I was obsessing already, I couldn't help but wonder what he meant by doing that. I was ticked at the website because I was pretty sure he had blocked me on there, so why on earth would they send me a notification that he was possibly interested in me? On Valentines Day I texted him to let him know I got the notification even though I was pretty sure he blocked me and that I would be complaining to the website about it. He responded to me and confirmed that he did block me and thought it was weird that the website would send me a notification. He signed off with Happy V-Day.
I continued to obsess about him and the possibility of having a physical relationship with him. He flipped some kind of switch in me. I couldn't think about him without feeling some kind of physical reaction - my head would feel weird. I swear, sometimes it also felt like my uterus was contracting when I thought of him. I sent him a happy birthday text about a week later. Creepy, maybe, but I have a good head for remember that kind of thing about people when I want to. And I remembered A LOT about him. It did no good to remove his contact from my phone because I knew his phone number. Anyway, he accepted the wishes in a kind manner. By this time, I had figured out that the other lady was out of the picture. A couple of days later I made a suggestion that he and I should have a sex only relationship. I've never done that kind of thing, and I never will again. I knew I wanted more from him, but my hormones decided to override logic. It took us a couple of weeks to work out a time, but in March we started our sexual relationship. It was always just sex with maybe a little tv or part of a movie. We never went out and only saw each other once or twice a week. He usually came over to my place, but eventually he invited me back to his place. By mid summer we started sleeping over occasionally. Sometime in this summer, I figured out that I was codependent. By the end of July I couldn't take it as just sex anymore and asked for more. He couldn't/didn't want to give it, so I told him I needed to stop. He said he understood. And there I was, heartbroken for a second time.
I made it about 2.5 weeks before I called him back and said I had made a mistake. I told him I should have talked to him and told him I needed to back things off a little with the sleepovers. He quickly came back and said it was cool, he just didn't want to hurt me. He may not have WANTED to, but it was unavoidable. I knew it, but didn't say anything to that effect. By then I had figured out that if I didn't have him in my life, my codependency would probably just attract someone a lot like him - emotionally unavailable, and I didn't want to go another 5 years before finding someone to be interested in again. I really wanted him to love me, so I thought I'd keep hanging in there just in case until HE decided he was done. By mid-October I could tell that he was either losing interest in me or had met someone he wanted to pursue. He barely responded to my texts anymore. The last time I saw him was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. He had put me off the week before saying that he was having a HSV outbreak. He put me off the week after Thanksgiving again saying he was having an outbreak. The following week he didn't put me off, but he didn't make any effort to see me. I asked him, "I'm not going to get to see you anymore, am I?" The next morning he sent a text back saying, "No. I'm sorry I should have told you earlier. I've been seeing a girl this last week and it's staring to get serious." My first thought was - A WEEK? I think that was a lie or he meant to say that it had started getting serious in the last week. I replied saying that it was just as well. I said that I really wanted him to be able to love me, but I knew he couldn't. The last text I got from him was, "I had fun and appreciate our time together. You'll find someone." Tell me he hadn't used those lines before. Ugh.
So here I am. It's been almost a month since that happened. I have to admit that I definitely teared up reliving all of that. I've done a LOT of thinking and reflection since August. I could see back then, every step and situation where I compromised what I really want for myself. I know now that something about him triggered my "wounded inner child" to take over the emotions in this relationship. It was probably my fear of abandonment because of his come here/go away behavior. His habits also probably triggered them, as they are similar habits to my abandoner. I knew all along that I didn't really want to be with a person that used marijuana 2-3 times a week and couldn't reconcile in my mind how a person like that is an effective parent as far as trying to keep your kids off drugs at some point. I knew if he did end up loving me and we had a REAL relationship, that parenting would be an obstacle. He wants more kids, so I would have at least faced helping to parent his current toddler if it had worked out between us. The more I try to figure out how marijuana fits into the lives of people with children, the more I realize it's not something I want to have to try to figure out. I know he's not the kind of person I need to be with, so his new girlfriend can have fun figuring that out. She's got a couple of kids, maybe she's already figured it out.
Replies
I cried while typing that because I was reminded of how badly I wanted someone that I loved and to whom I was terribly attracted to love me back. That\'s the loss I\'ve been mourning, more than the actual man. Men with his habits and willingness to have a long term sexual relationship with someone they don\'t love are a dime a dozen. That love and attraction I felt is what is difficult for me to find and let go of.
I don\'t know what TO say.
Please see a doctor and tell about your ex . Protect YOURSELF. Better to make sure..in your mind and body , then to wonder. Please don\'t believe him..has already lied . Do this for YOU !
ssnyder, i appreciate your support and concern. i don\'t wonder about my physical health in regards to my relationship with him. i HAVE seen my doctor about those particular concerns. please do not worry about my physical health in that department. i\'d much rather have support for my mental health. thanks! :)