(Warning: this sucker is LOOOOONG! I appreciate the persistence of anyone who makes it to the end; thanks in advance.)
I told y’all it probably wouldn’t be long until there was another Eva Luna Romance Neurosis thread…
Relationship & other emotional history: December 11, 2001 pretty much sucked for me. In a single day, my grandfather died, my BF dumped me, and my sister and I took the Road Trip from Hell from Chicago to NJ for the funeral, during which my sister and stepmother were pretty much as manipulative and bitchy as was humanly possible. (My stepmother never missed an opportunity to make insulting comments about my appearance or my behavior, although I think both were pretty normal for someone who had been through what I was going through, and I told her so.) Ironically, the reason I proposed driving rather than flying to the funeral is that my sister has always been completely irresponsible about money, and although our GF was 96 and had been heading downhill for a while, had not $10 to her name on the day he died, and I wasn’t about to spot her several hundred dollars for a plane ticket, partly out of principle because I’m goddamn sick of her irresponsibility, and partly because I knew I’d never see the $$ again. During the trip, she did about 5% of the approximately 1900 miles of driving, refused to let me sleep either on the road or at my dad’s house in NY, and stole money out of my wallet, in addition to having a couple of screaming hissy fits at me in public places over nothing.
As for the ex-BF: this was something like his 3d or 4th attempt to break up with me during the 6-month course of our extremely intense relationship; all breakup attempts occurred when he decided he didn’t need his Prozac. He was nice enough to feed my cat while I was gone, but since then has refused essentially all contact with me. Before him, there was a 1-year period of self-imposed non-dating, and before that, a relationship of 4+ years which I took way too long to end, even after repeated attempts on his part at rejection and cheating. (Why the hell he couldn’t manage to break up with me if he was that unsatisfied, I’ll never understand, but then again, I guess I did the same thing, minus the emotional torture.) I have this bad habit of trying to convince myself that no matter how screwed up the relationship is, that if I can just try a little harder, I can fix everything by changing my own behavior, no matter how ridiculous or unreasonable his has been from an objective standpoint, and that somehow if it doesn’t work out, it was my fault.
The whole experience left me paralyzed with depression, unable to eat, bathe, or get up from my sofa. Basically, I came out of that experience determined not to let myself be manipulated or to let other people’s actions make me feel like crap anymore. So, after a looooong self-imposed period (since last December) of introspection, depression, self-contemplation, and non-dating, I have recently made a new foray onto the dating scene (see my recent “Why can’t I like the Nice, Stable Ones, Dammit? thread). I placed a personal ad, and was quite happy with the rather overwhelming response, both in terms of quantity and quality. I first went out a couple of times with one guy who was nice enough, but I just didn’t click with him.
But then I met a GREAT guy who shares a lot of my insanely esoteric interests (offbeat ethnic music, East European languages/politics, etc.), is super-intelligent, funny, sweet, respectful, and seems to like me as much as I like him. We have yet to have a phone conversation that lasted less than an hour or two, even ones that were meant to be a five-minute chat on logistics on where to meet the next evening or something of that nature. Even when I’ve tried to make a move to leave, or hang up, for fear of overstaying my welcome, he’s found ways to keep me conversationally engaged, sometimes for additional hours at a time. We’ve only been dating for less than a month, but I feel super-comfortable around him.
The issue arises, though, when I’m not around him. I start to feel really neurotic, like I’m 15 years old again (I’m 33, FTR), that I was imagining the wonderful times we had together, and that he’s trying to get some “space” from me, if I don’t hear from him for a day or two. My mind goes crazy with ideas that he is just too polite to tell me that he’s not interested; that he’s not interested in a halfway serious relationship; that he’d rather be fixing his motorcycles than spend time with me; that I’m trying to push things too fast; you get the picture. I am constantly consumed by self-doubt, and it’s extremely difficult for me not to call him all the time to reassure myself that he, in fact, still wants to talk to me. Of course, my fears are likely to become a self-fulfilling prophesy if I were to continue in this vein, because who would want to be around someone so needy and attention-starved? So I’ve been trying to wait until I hear from him, as so far he has always been reliable if he says he will get in touch at a certain time, etc.
Anyway, from an intellectual feminist standpoint I know this is all ridiculous; so far he’s shown nothing but interest, and God knows he’s got other stuff going on in his life too, plus he’s mentioned his own tendency that he’s been battling, which is to throw himself headfirst into serious relationships without taking his time to get to know the person first. (He made light of it at the time, but there was definitely that serious undercurrent that this is what he did the last time, with less-than-happy results, plus he did admit upon questioning that although he’s quite conversational, in his heart of hearts he’s rather shy, which is a dynamic with which I am quite familiar, being much the same myself. Sometimes it’s creepy how much we have in common, both superficially and deeply.)
However, somehow my intellect and my deeper fears and insecurities seem to have reached an impasse. Does anyone have any thoughts or practical advice on how I can make peace with myself?