After reading Part 1 and Part 2 we’re getting a grasp that this isn’t the healthiest of situations, but I’m fully invested at this point, even if he’s not. Work is busy for both of us and he pushes me far, far away under the guise that work is so busy he doesn’t have time for anything else. We all know you make time for people you want to make time for, and at this point we’re barely communicating.
It gets so bad, I decide I’m done with Mr. Big for good this time. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t matter to him, but I’m good entertainment when he’s bored. Pushing me away, and pulling me back in. I delete all of our text messages and I relinquish it to the Universe, or to God, or whoever wants it, because I don’t. Turns out The Universe has a sense of humor.
The next morning at 5:45 a.m. I get a heartfelt apology from Mr. Big. Work was crazy last month, he’s sorry, I shouldn’t take it personally, and his schedule is about to open up. To me this means we’ll spend more time together {to him this means his schedule is about to open up.}
Regardless, things are good. We’re communicating daily and we have plans for Valentine’s Day. His choice. I wasn’t sure if I should alert him to the fact that the day he chose was Valentine’s Day, or if I should just be happy he chose to spend his Valentine’s Day with me? I should’ve gone with choice number 2.
Instead, being the overthinker I am, I have a nagging feeling the estrangement the previous month had more to do with someone else as opposed to a busy work schedule. I ask questions. I was right; if he pushed me far enough away, our rule of not dating anyone else no longer existed. He had been communicating with an “old flame.”
I’m not happy. I point out that it wasn’t that he was so busy he didn’t want to see anyone, he just didn’t want to see me. Obviously, he made time for her.
He cancels our date and this time he dumps me. On Valentine’s Day. Via Facebook.
In today’s world, would dumping someone via Facebook be the equivalent of dumping someone via a Post It Note? Mr. Big had pulled a Berger.
He apologized for hurting me, it wasn’t his intention. He didn’t feel like he was stringing me along. He still wanted to communicate, cutting the string was not what he wanted.
He didn’t want me in his life the way I wanted to be in it, but he didn’t want me out of his life, either. I was always mad at him and he didn’t want me to hate him, so he thought we would be better as friends.
I agreed, there were issues, we weren’t in the same place emotionally and we had different views of what the relationship could be. However, I thought it was salvageable as long as we got on the same page. I always thought I scared him because I’m not a predictable choice for him.
I asked for time. I needed a chance to put him in the friend space he put me in. Don’t contact me, I’ll contact you.
A week and a half later, he contacted me. I knew he missed me, but I wanted him to say it. He wouldn’t. Still emotionally unavailable. However, this would be one of the few times he was the first one to initiate contact and I had to give him credit where it was due.
It felt good. He initiated contact every day for two weeks. He wanted to see me before he left for a business trip and he wanted me back in his life.
Ok, but things have to be different, I say. You give me what I want, I will give you what you want. Yes, I will give you what you want, he says.
For two weeks, he was exactly what I wanted. He opened up, just a little, about his feelings. He did miss me and I missed him, too.
We both agreed each of us had barely put anything into this relationship. We talked about trying harder, or actually trying. In my mind, there would be more; we would reset once he was back from his trip. I asked him not to use the trip as an excuse to push me away again.
He didn’t. Mr. Big still initiated contact every day while he was gone. Progress had been made.
He had kind of a big decision to make about his future and he reached out to me for encouragement and support. I took this to imply a level of caring on his part that I hadn’t seen yet. To me, the last few weeks were definitely a breakthrough.
But wait, not so fast. There was someone else who was just as infatuated with Mr. Big as I was. Someone who had been flirting with him on social media. Someone else from his past, and he had known her longer than he had known me.
When I pointed this out to him, trying to gage his interest before fully inviting him back in my life, he didn’t seem to have noticed that she was flirting with him. “Trust me, she’s not interested.”
I believed him because throughout this process, this time felt different. He had started to open up, and I felt more secure in it than I had before. But don’t trust “trust me.”
He started flirting with her on social media, too. Ahhh, hedging his bet by keeping me on my string just in case she wasn’t interested.
She was interested. And they started communicating. And I figured it out. And I called him out on it. He asked if I was going psycho on him, then he lied about who he was talking to.
Unfortunately, I have been in this position before and it doesn’t bode well for the kind and patient ones who wear our hearts on our sleeves. In my irrational calling him out, I took a ride on the crazy train and it dove off the cliff of insecurity. I should’ve slept on it…
To be continued…
