I’ve had a sudden moment of clarity tonight. So much so, it was like my own (albeit not very pleasant) Eureka moment. The boy is currently asleep upstairs and I had to at least make a start on this because in the morning, the feeling is bound to have faded and I’m sure to be feeling more like I want to stick up for him. I usually do.
The boy came round , a week after we’ve broken up, and up until about half an hour ago, we conducted the evening pretty much exactly as we would have done if nothing had happened last week. Boy turns up late, I get annoyed, eat food, watch some tv, have sex, go to bed. Much as I’d love to deny him the sex and be all distant and wounded/Cool Ice Queen type that’s not me. I am far more the crying, begging to be loved type. You might have noticed if you read my blog regularly.
But of course because I like to run emotional knives across my skin just to make sure that yes, it bleeds, and yes, it hurts like fuck, sooner or later I had to bring up the emotional stuff. Even I’m not determined enough to deny reality that I could have gone all evening without mentioning that.
So before long, I started asking the standard questions I’ve been asking all week…
- Does he love me? (I know, I thought I’d start with the most pathetic & get it over with).
- How is he feeling since our ‘break up’?
- Why when we have so much fun together and he is clearly happy now, does he think at some point this won’t make him happy any more?
- What am I dong wrong?
- Would he feel like this with anyone? (i.e, Is it me or him that’s causing the problem?)
I think it was Question Three that gave me the Eureka moment. He answered it slightly differently tonight. Maybe not saying anything he hasn’t said before- one thing I will say for the boy is that he is honest to a fault. He is not a man who you would EVER ask “Does this look ok?” if you weren’t already 100% certain that you look the business. So when I ask these questions I do have to be prepared at times for answers that I might not like much. He won’t bullshit to save anyone’s feelings, he just doesn’t have it in him.
His answer tonight was along the lines of “Because I’m not sure that I will still be happy if things get a lot more serious”.
Now I’ve known that how ‘serious’ we are has always been the sore point. I know that to be will me, he’ll need to do a lot of growing up. But he’d never put it quite like that and that one sentence lit a fire in me.
So basically, he is happy to come round to my house a couple of nights a week, relax, watch tv, switch off from work for a while, eat a good meal (which he buys and/or cooks by the way, I’m only a 99% mug), have sex then return to his own life in the morning. He is happy with this as long as I am kept safely at arms length.
I thought this over for a while and after he fell asleep I thought about it some more.
The Eureka moment sounded like this. “Hang On… I’m having the piss taken out of me here!”. I suddenly realised that although he’s a good bloke and I know with absolute faith that he isn’t doing it purposefully (hello commenters, I know you’re bound to disagree but please bear with me!), he isn’t the sort to cause hurt deliberately, he is taking advantage.
He has made it clear that he loves me, but “Does not think I am the one” and fears he’ll end up unhappy if being with me turns out to be the wrong choice. But he knows what I want, he knows I have no intention of continuing a relationship that has no future, it’s no good for me and it’s no good for Chops.
So what does he think he’s doing? The decent thing for him to do surely is, having made this decision, to end the relationship and keep his distance. Surely wanting to speak to me every day and continuing to make plans to see me, to still tell me he loves me several times a day is taking the piss a bit? Factor in the fact that we’re still sleeping together and will continue to until I grow a pair and put a stop to it and it doesn’t look good does it.
If all I’m getting out of this is someone to have dinner and sex with twice a week I could do that without all the emotional wreckage ta very much. I could just find a willing volunteer that I’m not in love with and do just that without wanting to burst into tears and start wailing “Why doesn’t he luuurve me?!?”.
And suddenly, with the realisation (obvious though it is) that I’m being taken advantage of, I feel strong again. When I shut my laptop with this post half finished last night and when I lay down beside him I was looking at him differently. I like this feeling. I hope it continues. If I can grasp it tightly it may just carry me through this.