Because It’s Shark Week?
So, last night (Saturday), I decided to go ahead and see Someone New. Following on from How Many Times Can You Blow Someone You Before They Dump You?, I figured I’d best stop being a total hypocrite. I couldn’t keep blowing him out. Four weeks is too long when we live as close as we do to each other, plus he’s also starting to get really annoyed with me. I was an hour late to meet him, but I made it. That’s the important thing.
The plan was to go for a drink or two. Maybe cocktails. Then, we’d head back to his for a movie and some mindless sex. Fifty Shades of Grey was his choice. I didn’t complain. Maybe it’d give him a good idea or two.
That didn’t happen. Just as predicted in my last post, I got my fucking period, 56 days after my last one.
YEAH, THANKS FOR THAT.
I was in agony. It was so heavy. I’m fairly positive that my LLETZ procedure has ruined my life, but everyone keeps telling me that’s not the case. But I was in absolutely no mood to fuck around. Unfortunately, that was all he wanted to do.
“How long will you be?”
“Where are you?”
“Are you on your way?”
“Let me know when you’re on your way.”
In the end, I snapped:
“If you quit bugging me, I’d be ready and on my way a lot sooner. I’ll be leaving soon. I will message you when I’ve left. Now, be quiet and let me finish what I need to do.”
I didn’t mean to be so sharp and bitchy about it, but he was really – and I mean REALLY – pissing me off by that point.
Sometime later, we met up.
“Let’s go to that bar we know,” I suggested.
“No, let’s spice things up,” was his response.
And he decided to head to a completely different pub. One I’d never been to before, didn’t know, and was miles away. Like, right on the other side of town. Don’t worry about me, I’m not in agony or anything …
I protested all the way as he made me WALK to some pub I’d never heard of. My anxiety was starting to go through the roof, I had crippling backache, and my insides were now cramping up so badly that I could barely stand up.
“Almost there,” he said, 15 minutes after the last time he said exactly the same thing.
We got to the pub and it was jam-packed. There was no space around the bar itself, no tables free, no stools available for me to sit on.
“Let’s go back to mine. I’ll make us some food,” was his next genius idea.
By this point, I was in dire need of some kind of pain relief, I’d walked for hours around town to find a bar that we couldn’t even get into, and I really just wanted to go home. I knew I should’ve just cancelled on him.
The rest of the date was just as disastrous. He made dinner that I couldn’t eat because I started to feel really unwell halfway through it, and then I passed out for 11 hours because of the painkillers I’d taken. We spent 14 hours together and for 11 of those, I had my eyes closed. Why am I like this?
The thing is, I’m starting to see him in a slightly different light now. I’m not sure what made that happen, whether it was the period from hell, the most painful date I’ve ever been on, or because I’m just starting to get to know him a bit more … but I’m not that into him.
He pisses me off a lot. The constant texting and wanting to know where I am is a real problem for me now, and I think that might be one of the reasons for me blowing him out for four weeks straight. It’s too much. I’m not organised or ‘together’ enough to remind someone where I am all of the time. I barely remember to grab my keys when I leave the house, let alone text someone to let them know where I’m going. And it always feels like I’m a bit in trouble – like he’s disappointed in me – when I don’t tell him where I am or what I’m doing, or if I don’t respond to his text messages quite as quickly as he’d like.
I’m always late. I’m late for everything. Dates, work, deadlines … I’m a perpetually late person. Yes, I know it’s bad and I should try and sort it out – AND I HAVE TRIED. Oh my gosh, have I tried?! It never works. There’s a vortex of time around me somewhere, sucking away minutes of my life and making me permanently 15 or 20 minutes behind schedule. (At best.) He gets annoyed with the lateness. That’s fair enough, I understand it. It’s super annoying and I hate it when people do it to me, but that’s just me. That’s the way I am. If you don’t like the way I am, don’t date me. I don’t mind that. I won’t date you if I don’t like the way you are. I’m certainly not going to try and change you to make you what *I* think is better.
He’s super organised and tidy, too. I’m a mess. Like, just in general. I’m not a grubby person, but I am a messy one. I live in continual, persistent chaos. My desk is always covered in little scraps of paper that I can’t make head nor tail out of it. I leave the dishes for days sometimes, to the point where I’m having to literally scrape away hardened food with a knife because that’s the only damn way it’s ever going to come off. I don’t do laundry quite as regularly as I need to, and I definitely don’t hoover enough. I’m domesticated … but I could be a bit more domesticated.
Someone New, on the other hand, has OCD, I’m sure of it. Everything has a place. A really rigid, no-room-for-movement place. He’s doing dishes as soon as the last mouthful of food has been scooped into his mouth, and it feels like he’s constantly looking for something else to put right, tidy up, or clean away. I can’t live like that. It’s exhausting. I want to veg out after dinner, not rush to the sink.
We’re just not as compatible as I thought we were. That’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t make me bad or him bad, it just makes us not good for each other. I was actually bored with him last night. It felt like the entire date had been a complete waste of my time, my effort, a good outfit, and money. I could’ve sat at home and worked on one of the projects in my to-do list, earning some much-needed cash. But instead, I wasted a bunch traveling to his. That’s how it feels: it feels like I wasted my time and money. It wasn’t quality time. We spent no more than three awake hours together. We could’ve done that via Skype.
I still think he’s just as into me as he always was, though. He wants me to meet some friends of his now, plus their kid. What? Sorry, WHAT? I’m still trying to figure out if I even like this guy and he’s setting up mate-dates … with CHILDREN. And there’s the L-bomb thing … What have I done?
What the fuck am I meant to do here? I can’t blow his friends out because I’ve already done that once before, and I think he’s going to start expecting the L-word back soon. I just don’t think I’ve got what he wants and now I don’t know how to tell him that. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, I just don’t know if I can avoid it. This is going to get worse, right? This feeling of not being right? It’s for the best that I put things to bed now, before he falls any deeper.
And that aside, what happened to taking your sweet-ass time getting to know someone and fall in love with them? Why is everyone doing it at the drop of a hat these days? I’m not over Jock enough to get into another relationship. Not really. I say that I am, but I don’t think I really am. I want to casually date. Not casually date as in fuck a bunch of people; casually date as in date one person casually. I’m okay with exclusivity if that’s what he wants, but I just want it to be cool, casual, and calm. If we keep going at the pace he’s trying to take it at, he’ll have a rock on my finger within a year. And that’s not what I want. Definitely not now. Perhaps never from him. And I’ve told him that I want to take things slowly. Slower than we’ve been taking things, anyway. He agreed. So, why he’s making me do all of this stuff now? The close friends and the L-word and all of the too-much texting?
I need to put an end to this, I think.
Someone New, I don’t think I’m into you.
Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash
I wanted to comment last time, but didn’t cos I felt like you needed to get there of your own accord. If you were really into him, you wouldn’t have left it a month without seeing him. People make time for the things/people who are important to them. This is going nowhere, and you know it, don’t you? It’s now just all about how/when you end it. This will sound like a slap in the face, but he doesn’t love you either. It’s a manipulation tactic. In exactly the same way as I said to you previously that you don’t know him yet, so how can you know how you feel – he doesn’t know you either. He can be in lust, he can like what he knows so far, but love? You can’t love what you don’t know. Now there can be people who have been together theoretically the same amount of time as you two, but who have spent almost every waking moment together. They may well genuinely be in love. But being in love with a bunch of texts, some phone calls and the odd facetime? His texting when you are late is another sign of his controlling nature, and probably so is the obsessive cleanliness. He wants you to meet friends etc to weave you more firmly into his web. Your gut is speaking (literally!), so listen to it. Get out. Get out now. Feel the joy of being single and not having to fret about this stuff! You know this already – trust yourself.