Continued from Part 1
I recall somewhere before the next time I see him…I’m driving past a Chick-fil-A restaurant in my town and I have this epiphany come to me…”There is no victory in emotional unavailability.” My guard is up to my eyeballs up to this point. I reflect on my prior relationships and I think that as much as I try to protect myself and I never really go all-in on a person that I get hurt anyways. That I’m just holding myself back from all the good parts of a relationship by being so worried about protecting myself…and in the end…either you bet the house on the relationship and you get hurt or you bet the house on the relationship and you get happily ever after but in both those scenarios you get the really good parts of love OR you decide to be emotionally unavailable and you prevent those really good parts from occurring and you end up hurt anyways…”There is no victory in emotional unavailability. You just miss out on the good parts.”
Very profound right…to think of when you drive by a Chick-fil-A…still not sure where this thought came from…but it’s when I decide I’m going to lower my guard.
Shortly after something happens putting his life in a lot of limbo that may include him moving back across the country. So during this time for weeks I try to wait this limbo out but you can’t really date someone if it isn’t moving forward. He also has family in town for an extended time so weeks go by without us hanging out.
It seems pretty certain he’s moving so I guess I give up on the storyline that he stays and a relationship progresses. Somewhere around here I fall even harder for Boston. I get so far as to receive a sublease to sign for the summer. This guy is aware of this…so let’s talk again about mixed signals. I like you but I’m planning to move to Boston. In the weeks between us spending time together, I go on another trip and it’s to another place he used to live and he texts me the whole time and he tells me all the places I should visit and where to eat. He even calls me at a point to give me a virtual tour because he doesn’t think the tour guide gave me a quality enough tour (it’s cute…I know).
There is no victory in emotional unavailability. You just miss out on the good parts.
I’m operating out of insecurity and anxiety and fear a lot during this time period. I’m secretly hoping he’s going to choose me but if he doesn’t I’m going to choose Boston. I try to always appear calm and like I don’t really care that much. Some would call it “hard to get” but whatever you call it…the fact is it’s not a good place to be.
His family leaves and I’m back in town and I invite him to drive up for a fun event. He comes to my city and he meets everyone I know. We hang out late into the night and I finally directly ask him how he feels about me. He tells me he may be moving across the country and he’s done this before…gotten into a relationship right before moving and how it really, really sucks and he doesn’t want to repeat this. I say that’s not what I asked you…I asked you how you feel about me separately from this ambiguousness in your life…he tells me he can’t separate the two. When he leaves we agree we will just continue like we have been until he figures out the rest of his life. There’s a major miscommunication right after and I think we’re over and I don’t hear from him for weeks. I think I’ve been ghosted.
Weeks later we have a text message exchange. I’m angry and I send a four paragraph essay telling him that the inconsistency is not acceptable and that I want him to have the time and space to figure out whether he’s moving or not and that I think it’s best in the meantime for us to just be friends. He agrees and I proceed assuming we are friends. I just can’t handle the limbo and feel like friends is a more comfortable place for me to sit in.
Dating feels too complicated and brings up a lot of anxiety for me. I really like this guy but I don’t like how I show up in this relationship. He is someone I want to date just not now…like after I get my life together and I’m in a better place…that’s when I wish I met him.
Love is patient. Love is kind. But most importantly Love is consistent. No that’s not in the Bible verse but I’d like to propose that we should consider adding it.
I go on a run one day before a wedding and this is where my wedding toast stems from…I start thinking about the difference between this situation and the people getting married…in brief it starts out something like this “Love is patient. Love is kind. But most importantly Love is consistent. No that’s not in the Bible verse but I’d like to propose that we should consider adding it.” Love is consistent and my relationship is a roller coaster but at this point in time I find roller coaster relationships fun. I like the high highs that come after the inconsistency…I realize that’s what’s wrong with this relationship. He’s a great person but this situation isn’t working. It just isn’t stable and consistent and I’m part of the problem.
I was worried for a long time that I would never develop feelings for someone again after what happened to me. This guy showed me that I was still capable of falling in love (I wasn’t in love by any means but this is the first time I have feelings for someone after my life exploded)…reassurance that the feeling of numbness will subside…that you can come back from things that tried to break you. He showed me that there were still men out there that were good catches. He was a good bit older than me so he showed me that there were still good people out there far past the age of 30.
Late in the Summer I go on the most epic road trip with one of my friends and we stay in an Airbnb so I can test out what it would be like to “really” live in Boston. Boston makes me feel SEEN which is something I never feel where I live. It’s a feeling I really desire but one I’ve never actually encountered. A man comes up to me and asks if I’m single because his friend is looking for a wife while I’m waiting for the train, another man gives me a $30 discount on parking for no reason, I try to order something on the wall of a restaurant and they say that’s from an old establishment I can’t….and then the bartender changes his mind and says…actually I’ll make it just for you. We are in an Uber pool and two guys invite my friend and I to meet them out later that night. We go to a Red Sox game and a man at the concession stand gives us his second row behind the dugout $200 face value per ticket seats when he leaves early. I don’t do anything at all to attract this…it just like happens to me. Good things just happen to me in Boston. It feels like magic…this has never happened to me and it’s fun and it’s nice and it makes me love Boston even more.