So, today is one of those days for me. It's the anniversary of the first time I "got together" with a particular person. I"ll try not to go into too much detail about the relationship, because it's a mess of on-again/off-again that lasted 3+ years; but I'll give some bullet points:
-We first "got together" while she was still dating/living with someone else, and that continued for 6-ish months. Note that I'm not proud of that fact, but I was so starved for love that I didn't care.
-I eventually broke it off. Ironically, that 6-ish months of actually being loved by another person for the first time built up my self-esteem enough to the point where I wasn't willing to settle for being something she had to keep secret, so I told her she needed to make a choice. She didn't really choose, and I couldn't keep doing it anymore, so we broke up. Though we did stay friends and still saw each other on occasion.
-A month?-ish afterward, she announces (in general, not just to me) that she and her boyfriend are broken up--still living together, but not "together."
-10 minutes later (It was probably longer, but that's how it felt) she starts dating a different guy.
-She eventually moves in with the new guy. She and I are still friends. She occasionally comes over to my place to do her laundry. Another 6 months-ish go by, and it's not like other women have been lining up to date me, so I'm feeling pretty lonely. I don't remember exactly what happened, but at some point, I made a move on her (whatever that means), and she said no. But she kept coming over to do laundry, and I made more moves, and eventually we "got together" again. This time it only lasted for a week or two, and she broke off contact with me. I think she was feeling guilty, confused, etc. We don't talk for a few months. I'm pretty sure when we do start talking again, neither of us mentions what happened.
-At some point, we're talking and being friends again. She's still living with the same guy. It's been a year-ish since the last time we "got together." We have a friend who's in a show a couple hours away, and we're planning to drive to go see it together. She comes to my house early and is going to get ready there. It's all good; we're friends; I honestly had nothing untoward planned. At some point, we end up on the bed together, sort of cuddling in a friend kind of way. Of course, we somehow ended up "getting together," and barely made it to the show on time. Again, it's been a long time, and my memory is fuzzy; but I do remember that this particular "getting together" was different than it had been before. I was very guarded and emotionally withholding--I didn't try to kiss her on the lips, never said "I love you." (I think I was waiting for her to say it first; I might have said it back if she did.) I mostly was just going through the motions physically. Kinda like my head and my heart were really confused and told my body, "Just do whatever you want; we're going to be over in the corner curled up into a little ball."
And that started something that went on 4-6? months. And she was still living with / ostensibly dating the other guy. I don't remember much about that stretch of our relationship, except that I treated her absolutely horribly. (More on that in a bit.) I was kinda torn between not wanting to be lonely and not wanting to get back into being something she had going on while she was still with someone else. I think at some point toward the end of this, she might have broken up with the guy, but I can't remember for sure. I also don't remember exactly how I ended it, but it definitely wasn't smoothly.
-For the next 6 months, I tried not to have much contact with her. Eventually, there was some kind of small gathering at her house that I was at. She had apparently just broken up with a guy that she had known from high school who lived in another state, and they had had some sort of fling, or something. Anyway, she had been hurt by that, and I felt bad for her. So, we were in the kitchen, and I was giving her a friendly back rub, which somehow migrated into into a bit of a front rub, which led to the gathering ending rather soon and us being alone on her couch. After some initial groping, there was a long time where we just sat together on the couch, and she talked about what had happened with the guy and the fling, and I held her and listened; and it was nice to connect like that. And then we "got together." Not something I had planned when I came over. But she was sad, and I wanted to make her feel better, and I still had a LOT of guilt about how badly I had treated her the last time. So, this "getting together" involved a lot more kissing and affection and whatnot.
While I had never planned for this to turn into anything, it just sort of happened. I was still feeling guilty about the previous part of our relationship where I had been such a jerk to her, and I think I really wanted to make that up to her. Plus, the regularly scheduled loneliness had kicked in, so we became a thing again. It lasted a few months, but eventually I started being a jerk to her again, and eventually I broke it off again. After some time had passed, I looked back and analyzed my behavior, and decided I had been acting so badly because I wanted to break up with her, but I didn't have the guts to just do it; so I treated her badly, hoping that she would get tired of it and break up with me. It made sense and fit with what happened, so I figured that was it. But now, with a lot more time gone by and having learned a lot more about myself, I realize I totally got that wrong...
I treated her like crap because I was incredibly ANGRY at her, and I didn't even know it. I was very passive-aggressive back then, and I was SO PISSED at this woman, so of course I treated her badly. I couldn't say, "I am very angry with you for the following reasons..." because I wasn't even aware of my anger. It was all stuffed down inside of me and only came out when it built up some pressure and erupted with me behaving like a complete douche. I remember quite a few times during Era 3 and 4 of our relationship when we would "get together" and everything would start out fine, and at some point my subconscious would say, "Dude, what are you doing? We're mad at this woman." And, well, let's just allude to the "Deflate-gate" scandal and leave it at that.
Once I realized I had been so angry, I started to think about why. For awhile, I figured it was because in the first part of our relationship, I had told her to make a choice between me and the other guy. And while she technically didn't make the choice at all, that was essentially the same as not choosing me. Obviously, that hurt, and it makes sense that it would make me angry. But now I don't think that was it. After thinking about it more, I came up with a different answer.
This woman was dating a guy when she got together with me. When we broke up, she told me I had broken her heart; then she started dating a third guy a few weeks later. The third time we got together, it was toward the end of her relationship with that guy. When we broke up that time, she got together with that guy from high school. When that ended, she got back with me. There was never any point where she wasn't in a relationship with someone. Which makes me think that maybe I wasn't really all that special--maybe I was just the best option she had at the time. And that REALLY makes me angry, because it feels like everything we had together was sort of a lie. I'm not saying her feelings for me weren't genuine; but it seems like she had those those genuine feelings for quite a few other men, and I was just another one along the way. Part of that, I understand now, is the whole introvert/extrovert dynamic. I'm an extreme introvert--I don't get truly romantically interested in someone unless I already know them very, very well. I honestly cannot fathom people who have sex on the first date. Or people who kiss on the first date. Or people who even go out on dates with someone they barely know. I know most people are not like me (if they were, our species would have died out long ago due to lack of sufficient breeding.) But I didn't know all this back then. (Really? I broke your heart and a week later you're dating someone? Really? When you said I broke your heart, is there any chance that might actually have been a GIANT FUCKING LIE????? Hmmm. Turns out there's still a bit of that anger left in there. Who knew?)
[I do want to say that none of this is meant to bash this woman or make her look like a bad person. Both of us were pretty messed up emotionally back then, and I'm not trying to blame her for anything.]
Part of what makes it fester is that she's long since moved on with her life and had lots of other relationships, while I haven't had any. She is still to this day the only woman I've ever been in a serious relationship with. Which is not to say I'm not over her, just that I haven't found anyone else. A lot of that is the introversion thing making it very hard to meet potential dates in the real world. ("Hi, do you want to go out for coffee?" tends to work much better in practical terms than, "Hi, do you want to be really good totally platonic friends for 6 months and maybe at some point after that I might just sort of decide I'm in love with you?")
Okay, I've gotten a lot more into the backstory than I had planned; but that's sort of okay, because I've never really talked it out like this before, and it's probably good for me to do. But the original point I was trying to make is this: October 11 can be a hard day for me because it's a reminder of something that was a good thing once, but now it's gone. And the harder part is that there were two people for whom that was a good day, but I'm the only one who still remembers it. She's been in a long-term relationship for a few years now, and I'm sure she's completely forgotten any significance that October 11th ever had in her life. Which kinda makes it doubly lonely for me...
Just as I finished that last paragraph, the clock turned over to midnight, so it's now October 12th. Time to move on, I suppose....
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