This is still chapping my ass, predictably. One thing in particular is sticking in my craw that I can't explain. Maybe someone can shed some light on this, or explain it to me, because the cognitive dissonance it is causing is like white noise to my brain, and quite frankly I have better shit to be doing than churning over this bs.
Two days, a mere 48 hours before this all went sideways for reasons I still don't (and probably will never) understand, we were in his car, after having spent the day apart. He remembered (once I was there, at his apartment) that he had his sister's birthday party to attend an hour away on Saturday, and alleged that it wasn't the right time or place to introduce "a new girl" to the family. I didn't necessarily disagree, since I wasn't trying to meet his family nor introduce him to mine, although now I see that there never was any intention - ever - to introduce me to anyone in his life. I was filler. Probably too old, tattooed, and divorced too many times to be proud of, or some shit like that. Not parent-friendly material, as he had alluded to a few times. Whatevs. If you're at the age where you still need their approval, you're not ready any damn way.
Anyway, I had asked him if he needed a little more alone time to paint or work on whatever, since his palpable awkwardness since I showed up at his place the day before was making me feel like I was intruding on his (already vast) personal space, which was never my intention. He actually looked at me kind of sheepishly and said, "I've been thinking about that, and I feel bad that you're here in town, and I'm being really selfish spending all this time focused on stuff I can do anytime. You're more important to me than anything I could accomplish in a few hours on this painting."
Wat?!! Hark, were those angels singing? I'm pretty sure I may have smiled ear-to-ear at that moment. I was honestly touched. And a little relieved that I wasn't the only one thinking he had been being really weirdly withdrawn even though he insisted that he did want me to spend the weekend at his place. Believe me, I was raised by an artist, and I know it requires a certain level of intense concentration sometimes, and occasional self-absorption when needed. I'm ok with that, I really wasn't bucking for more time with him per se...just a little more validation when we were apart. That's all.
We proceeded to have a really chill night in - I cooked up a storm while he painted. We listened to good music and had random discussions while he would pop into the kitchen to rinse out his paintbrush and pause to kiss me on the shoulder - something that, to this day, I can't figure out why he did since clearly it meant nothing (and now I want to blacken out my tattoo there so it at least looks different and that memory isn't completely visually triggered every time I look at my own damn shoulder blades and see what he was kissing). It was a great night, way better in my book than going out and tearing up the town. That's I guess my last really good memory of 'us', and it still stings to relive it just long enough to write it down.
Cut to two nights later when that discussion where I was just trying to communicate the same thing back to him (hey, you're important to me too. Apparently that was scary or wrong?), and asking for a little more acknowledgement when I wasn't around (like, when I need reassurance, lay off the shark memes and fart jokes for a minute and reassure me. That's all. Nothing major.) was enough to freak him out for some reason to the point where although I was allegedly "more important to him than..." whatever, apparently I'm dead to him now too. And I looked him in the eye that night and said, "when you told me on Saturday I was important to you, that was the first time in seven months I had any actual confirmation of that. And I really appreciated it. That's the kind of validation I was asking for." But his eyes were already vacant, whatever part of him I thought I'd spent half a year connecting with had fled the scene. My eyes had already staged a coup and started crying on their own, which is humiliating to say the least. He interpreted my tears to mean something they didn't, I think, that I was head over heels in love (in 'like', maybe. Love? No. Didn't know him well enough. Clearly.), because he kept shaking his head and saying, "I'm not there. I'm not there." Where? I wasn't "there" either! FFS. The fact that I had to prompt him to get any response out of him 5 tortured days later, and a shitty, selfish, glib response at that tells me that he completely checked out at that moment in the hotel room and shut off any feelings he may have ever had for me. He was no longer considering my feelings as a human being he had once felt was important enough to reach out to and text or talk to every single day for half of a year. WTF?
The combination of asking - not yelling, not even speaking angrily - about someone he had friended on FB, and talking about 'validation' (because, uh, he DID build a relationship with me by reaching out to me daily and agreeing to be exclusive a month or so ago...) was enough to spur a freak-out and invalidate what we had? I just don't get it. It was not that intense of a moment, it was not an 'attack', it was a fucking normal conversation between two adults who (I thought) liked each other and were trying to maintain a good long-distance relationship. Really, it wasn't anything major. And it's not like we disagreed frequently - it's been pretty smooth sailing. So what gives?!
Can anyone explain this shit to me? Because it DOES NOT COMPUTE.
One theory is that I nailed him with the chick on fb. He was uncomfortable because maybe he *was* doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing with her, even if it was only online flirting. Who knows. I'm sure I never will. Because if he wasn't creeping, there's no need to be defensive at all. And I wasn't professing undying love to him and freaked him out either. Neither one of those conversations should have caused this to end the way it did, and I'm hurt, confused, and ultimately mad as hell that it went down like that, because I really thought we were better than that.
Guess I'll need to go get my radar re-calibrated. AGAIN.
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