Fairies, skip hence!

It's been...  a bad month. 

I've known since the beginning exactly what the problem was. 

My ex, who lives down the hall, had been borrowing my car to get to work.  I didn't mind until I discovered he'd stopped asking.  For a while, he'd been using it when he couldn't get a ride otherwise, and then he just started not asking for rides and taking the car.  I was like, "Hey, I don't mind, because I don't go anywhere but the grocery store, but ask, so I don't wake up three or four hours after you leave, make plans and then discover fuck me?"  And then he stopped by because I needed to borrow his electric drill and while we were talking said, "So, I haven't ridden my bike all the way both ways, I'm going to put it in the car, drive up, bike home and then bike back." 

"So, you're going to take MY car and leave it in a parking lot in 30 miles away, overnight?  THINK about what you're proposing without asking me, there, OK?" 

He didn't do it, but this was right after, "Please drop everything and listen to my paranoid need for you to Google something," and, "OK, I refused to take your advice on the Googling, please drop everything and help me again."  And I did.  So I finally told him, "Listen, here are my keys, I am in danger of fucking off without telling you, which is not fair.  You can use the car however you need until your last day, whatever.  I'll get the keys and some other stuff back from you before your trip." 

Other things I do as his friend, my apartment's closer to the laundry room where people leave things, and any time I see something he might want, I let him know.  He mentioned once that he wanted to learn knitting, and when I saw a bunch of knitting stuff in there, I thought about taking it, but thought, nah, I'll let him have it and then I can teach him, we can have a thing.  ...He took it, but refuses to let me know what was in the bag or to teach him.  Presumably his girlfriend knows how, or he just took it and it's sitting there.  But now I wish I'd just taken it for myself.  Other little things like that- when it rains and I know he isn't home, I ask if he needs windows closed (because in that apartment, the rain will come in on the side where his stereo is), because I kept a key to his place (and he has a key to mine).  He hasn't needed me to do this, but I offer.  I offer, I offer, I offer. 

Yes, I recognise that pattern.  And I was beginning to recognise that it was only running one direction.  Seriously, that's been his contribution to whatever this relationship is since I moved out of his place.  I ask to borrow things and he loans them to me, and sometimes he does me the decency of talking for 45 minutes, but generally only when he wants to tell me all the food he makes now, as though he couldn't have done that shit when I lived there.  Which I keep telling him.  "If you wanted a pie, *nothing* was stopping you from making yourself a damn pie. You don't need to act like I'm missing out on the pie, because what I am actually upset about is that you clearly prefer the pie to me."  Actual thing I've said, but he thought I was kidding.  No, my dude, it hurts.  Stop it. 

I think the problem is that, as a diabetic, he can't excuse making an entire pie for himself, so making food for others is his way around it, but, I don't know.  It was A Problem.  His problem, but it became mine.  I keep doing this, winding up in relationships with people who expect all the compromise on my side.  I'm admittedly extremely stubborn, but the problem is that my inability to compromise is highlighted because I don't tend to bring make these kind of demands myself.  You have a lot of bad behaviours?  Me too.  I will agree to endure yours without mentioning it.  Oh, this is not a two way street?  Great.  OK.  I've also told him, "I agreed to endure mild substance abuse, un-medicated depression and everything that brings, but I'm just too horrible to live with.  Got it."  He was sorry.  *shrug*  Shallow dude, this is how I do, you can do the same thing.  But, nope.  So, here we are. 

Should I probably learn that this shit isn't healthy and I shouldn't tolerate it?  Maybe, but I'm also sort of living in a perception that this is the best I can do because I am *impossible* to live with due to the way I eat, my stubbornness, my introversion, and my aversion to cleaning up after someone who isn't me.  (I was going to say my tendency to be a total slob, except my place is spotless.  I've been here three months, and am remembering how my NYC roommates grossed me out.  I think possibly the answer to my difficulties with cleaning is that I am very, very easily overwhelmed by cleaning a large mess, and on my own will take care not to make a bigger mess than I am willing to clean up immediately.) 

So, the day I borrow the drill, he gets it back and asks to borrow my rolling pin.  Sure.  I take it down to his place and I'm explaining that it probably needs some hot water run over the one side, because it's got some flour in there and it's stuck, but I hadn't bothered about it because it rolls just fine otherwise and should work for his purposes because plenty of rolling pins are just solid, anyway.  And I see someone come down the hall out of the corner of my eye.  I think it must be the girl who lives across from him, and move in so she can get by. 

Nope.  It's his girlfriend, who, still not saying a fucking WORD, moves between me and him and pushes him into the apartment.  That happened.  I leave.  She's clearly still mad at me for sleeping with him and telling him he needs to confess this to her if he honestly expects me to be her friend.  This was our problem before, I was expected to just accept this girl and be friends with her for his sake, and I was like, "You want me to keep your secrets and pretend to be her friend, as though that shit won't blow up in *both* our faces?  Sorry, no.  I told you when I was sleeping with you that your secrets were your problem, not mine.  They still aren't."  And to his credit, he did the right thing, but she hates me.  She's fucking him and living rent free with him (she still has her own place, with cats and a roommate, whatever), so she's mad at me.  Whatever.  I leave. 

And I think back over this pattern of, "I want to be your friend," but his girlfriend hates me, so my time is relegated to expressly the occasional weekday he's home and she's at work, and even then our interaction is me being a friend and him being an asshole.  I start throwing out sarcastic statements, "Hey, anything else of mine you need?  Why don't you keep the rolling pin, and the car, and hey, why not ask your girlfriend if she wants any of my stuff, you've got my spare key, just let me know and you guys can both come by and just pick out whatever you want." 

This was probably not the way to proceed, but, well, I am not a perfect human, and I definitely thought this was getting the point across. When it didn't, I just got worse and worse and started adding more shit to the list and sitting on this nasty pile of, "I am a garbage person." 

He was supposed to go to his hometown this week, as he's between jobs.  He didn't.  I think he realised that flying while immunocompromised was as stupid as I'd warned him.  He's been getting special accommodation at work, and I keep reminding him, "If people are mad at you for demanding to be protected, and you insist that these things, in fact, are necessary to keep you alive [I don't doubt they are necessary, but I think he chooses when they are necessary and when he can make exceptions], then, you have no business going to a protest/to that bar/on a motherfucking airplane."  I don't know if what I said made any difference or if it was something else; don't know, don't really care, but this was the deadline to get my car keys back, get a couple of other boxes of stuff in a closet he'd promised to clean out before he went on his trip and end this bullshit entirely. 

So when he texted to say, "I'm not going on my trip, I have your keys," it happened that I was out at the time, so was like, "Give me 20 minutes."  "It needs to be now, I'm leaving for a while." 

That was the text.  The expectation was, at 11am (when by habit I guess he'd been up for two hours), I could just drop everything and come down the hall the minute he said so he could leave.  Now, yes, I DO have a habit of doing this for everyone.  "Can you come pick me up?" means, "I will drop everything and be there in the time Google says it takes plus about 3 minutes," where for other people it seems to mean, "Yeah, let me finish watching this movie I just started and I'll get there when I get there," but he DOES NOT, so this is a little bit of a jerk move.  But he agrees to wait for me.  When I get there, he can't find my keys.  He can't remember where he put them.  So, I needed to be there right then so he could walk out the door and he wasn't even prepared?  "What about the other stuff?"  "Oh, what is it?"  "At this point, I don't even know.  Everything in the sound closet."  (I had been mad about that since he moved in.  We had a lovely big coat closet that he filled with guitars and sound equipment that definitely could have gone someplace else, or been better arranged, and while I tried to also use it for its intended purpose, he made a disaster out of it and never fixed it, so it got the place I did not open that closet.  He promised he would clean his place and take care of it and get me my stuff before his trip.  So he pulls open the closet and dumps a box on the floor. 

"Never mind.  Forget it, you have things to do, whatever, forget it.  I don't even know what's in there, keep it.  Have a nice life." And I leave.  Because, seriously? It's not like this was just shit I said and didn't mean; I meant it, he agreed to it and he's doing... whatever this is, right now. 

And now he's mad.  What's wrong with me, why am I pushing him away?  "Go on your bike ride, we can talk when you get back, I've been awake for over 24 hours and this is not the time." 

I do fall asleep, but hear nothing from him.  I wake up about 4, and ask if we can talk about this, or will his girlfriend be home in an hour so we have to talk later?  He tries to tell me I'm wrong about her opinion of me, and I relay the rolling pin story.  And say, "Listen, you broke up with me because your friends were more important to you than your partner.  Now your partner is more important to you than me, your friend.  What am I supposed to take away from a two year relationship and this information?  I am worthless unless you want something.  Can you understand why maybe I want to put some distance between myself and THAT?  I don't know what kind of friendship this is supposed to be."  And now his girlfriend is definitely home and I hear nothing back. 

Then I go out to the car to go to the grocery store for the first time in two weeks and I decide to check the trunk.  Yeah, I could've left it, but I needed to check it, because opening the trunk would either make me feel like I was being too hard on him, or it would prove that I'm pretty spot on about the whole situation. 

Sure enough.  He had a bunch of dog stuff he'd borrowed from work when he and I tried fostering a dog (I was supposed to foster him, but the dog was... a mess, basically.  He needed to be a farm dog who runs around and barks when the cars drive up and not a pet.), and I'd asked him to remember to please get that stuff out of my trunk and return it to work before he quit.  He agreed, and I said no more about it because that's how I do.  I dislike gentle reminders and nagging reminders because I have plenty of reminders in my own head, and more contributes to heavy guilt.  I don't need that, so I don't do it to other people all that often.  I text him, "Hey, so, all this dog stuff is still in the trunk.  I don't want to be a bitch about it, because I know I only mentioned it the once and I'm sure you genuinely did just forget, but it's things like this that really contribute to, 'you are not important.'  If I'm being a crazy person about this, it's absolutely fair of you to say I am.  Am I being a crazy person?"  "No."  And nothing more. 

So this morning, "Do you have anything else to say, or can we not have a conversation until your girlfriend goes back to work?"  He says there's a lot to discuss and we should do that when it's convenient for both of us.  "I've asked you now several times to identify when that is."  (When he came back from his ride and refused to talk to me for two hours, when I reached out to him and he refused to talk to me, and then now.)  "Monday works best for me."  "So, yes, when your girlfriend goes back to work.  OK.  I will let you know when I am awake on Monday and we can negotiate from there." 

Now, I didn't want him to say, "Go home, girlfriend, I have to deal with my pissed off ex-girlfriend because I'm a selfish asshole," but I don't think it's unreasonable, since she practically lives there anyway, for him to say, "Hey, entertain yourself for a couple hours, my ex is having a bad time and I'm going to go talk with her."  And he won't do that. 

I'm aware that, like this, the relationship won't work.  It can't.  But I think I'm justified in mostly not being in the wrong.  I'm willing to hear how it's unfair of me to have expectations that I be first in his life, I don't actually want that, I just want to point out how badly I've been treated in this situation.  Figure out what you want, my dude, and do that.  If you want to be my friend, please actually be my friend.  When he started the friend song and dance, before I moved out and before he went back to sleeping with me (which started because I was like, "Hey, I don't think I can have communal experiences of any kind with you," initially, and then he explained that he wasn't trying to excise me from his life), I had said, "I don't know how that works, since friendship involves sharing social experiences -going out and eating together- and you've made it clear that's the one thing we can't do."  The part of our relationship that was actually very good was our ability to be there emotionally and physically for each other.  We had a very good sexual relationship, and when he wasn't needing me to eat stuff and hang out with his awful friends, we had a really good relationship, he was intelligent, reliable, liked a lot of the things I liked, shared a lot of my opinions, and was supportive of me in a lot of ways.  And this is still what he wants, he wants me to solve his problems and support him and in exchange, I get to.... do those things for him?  I've had to say to him pretty frequently, "Have you talked about this with your girlfriend?  You should talk about this with your girlfriend.  That's not my role now."  I learned this from my best friend, who once did a very, very stupid thing when he and his wife were living in different countries, and he didn't talk to me for weeks because he also wasn't telling HER about the stupid thing he'd done.  Always tell your partner first, I learned. 

Way back, very early on, his best friend told me that she needed to set boundaries for him, because he had no ability to respect them unless she enforced them steadfastly.  I didn't understand this, at the time.  I do now.  This is what she means:  he only takes in a relationship.  Meaning, yep, he only calls her when he needs something.  I can see it, now, because the things he's willing to give in a partnership have been removed, and this is what's left.  And he thinks this is equal because he believes he would do the same, so, that's fair, right?  It's exactly what I told him when he said he'd do anything to for me, "No, with you, there are limits."  I don't have those limits.  I probably should. 

This means that I actually do need to be careful if I do want to be friends with him.  Because I can't say, "We need to establish the boundaries of this friendship," except that we do.  And I think I'm probably equally guilty of not really knowing how to navigate this.  I don't even have a history of being dumped, because I was the one who finally had to extricate myself from my marriage.  I don't know how this is supposed to work, and I already know he's not the one to teach me because he went from, "I don't want to hurt you," to, "Well, I'm fucking this girl, but it's not serious, because I'm sleeping with you," to, "I mean, this might be serious, but I'm still fucking you, but I'm going to live alone for a year" to, "Well, I guess this is serious, she practically lives here now and she should probably start paying rent, why can't you be friends with her!?  Why aren't you over this yet?!" to, "OK, I told her about how I was sleeping with you, and she hates you," to, "She doesn't hate you!  What is your problem?" 

Hey, maybe because you told me for two years that you wanted to be with me, and were perfectly happy to keep fucking me, and in less than 6 months you're basically married to this chick, and you kept so much distance between you and me right up until you needed to move to Denver and realised you couldn't afford it on your own.  So, yeah, the inequality of our relationship, and the trust I put into you when I clearly shouldn't have believed a WORD of long-term commitment that came out of your mouth, that's a little hard to deal with, and you do NOT get to tell me how quickly I'm supposed to process this, because it feels like you were basically done with me in 24 hours, except when you had the opportunity to get your dick wet, and how much did I let you take advantage of me, and how the fuck does one build a friendship around that? 

Some of that I've said to him.  And the fact of the matter is, this isn't the first time we've had the, "Hey, if you're going to be my friend, maybe actually BE my friend?"  conversation. 

I dunno what Monday brings.  I want to be in the wrong about some of this, namely because in my previous relationship, I wasn't wrong at all and a therapist echoed that, and when I went to the therapist this time for myself, she basically said the same thing, that I was on the correct track and had the right impulses.  This is hard for me to believe because I get the impression from my partners that I am asking too much, that I am too stubborn, that I am too demanding, and I have no right to be upset about anything. 

I am willing to believe that I'm expecting too much from a friendship, because of my relationship with my best friend.  That guy is unwaveringly there for me when I need somebody, and he needs it less these days but I'd do the same, and I know I need to actively be a better, more present, friend to him (though that's currently limited by a closed international border, and a global pandemic), but if I'm going to have a "friend" that's my expectation of the relationship.  For the most part, the folks I play D&D with are people I'm friends with, but in the sense of, "Hey, we hang out together and I would totally help you move, and I'll detail you on my life on a need-to-know-basis, and you'll be supportive, but, that's where it ends."  And that's fine, that's an OK level to have a friend at.  But I don't know if it's possible for me to have that kind of relationship with someone I have had a much deeper relationship with.  Like, if I have to passively convince you that sinking the boat is not sinking the play and we have an entire cast whose morale we cannot also sink right now and feel free to lose your shit later, but now is not the time because you're the leadership and I'm just disaster management, we're not going back to, "Oh, hi, gee, I was wondering if you could help me move?"  Like, there's no question there, that's, "So, I'm moving on Friday and would you be willing to help me do the ten hour drive?" friendship.  Yes.  I will take off work and offer to pick up the truck for you.  Same thing for, I was there for you when you wanted to kill yourself when you got fired from your stupid job, and I have stood by you through every single disaster in the last two years, encouraged you, loved you, and supported you regardless of the situation and your reaction to it, we're not going to the occasional phone call and trip to the movies.  You're either in my life, or you get the fuck out.  Which is why I have basically no contact with my ex-husband.  He was a dick, and had many, many chances to deserve a place in my life and decided he couldn't do that.  So.  No.  G'bye. 

And I think this is going down the same path.  And I think that specifically because of his relationship with his ex-wife.  He thinks she hates him, and maybe she does, but I think possibly she was asking for the same thing, if you're going to say you want to be my friend, be my friend.  Don't just show up when you want to see the dog. 

...That totally is the pattern.  He doesn't recognise that this isn't friendship because his friends are all terrible and aren't in his life unless they want something from him. He only hears from one of his friends when he wants someone to record something.  His friends who moved here in January only wanted him to DJ his wedding and they were all going to go to Jazz Fest together, and he got entirely burned by agreeing to pay for most of it and letting them pay him back.  To my knowledge, they haven't, but I moved out before the tail end of that problem.  And because he's fundamentally the same as me in that respect, "You need something, absolutely I will be there and do that thing," he thinks that's being a friend.  Dude.  I don't need to use you.  I want to have a relationship with you.  I want you to come over and hang out for a couple hours because you want to see me.  I can't do that with you right now because your girlfriend takes precedence.  If she hates me, fine.  But we can still have a relationship... if you're willing to have one, and I don't see that on your end. 

*shrug*  Well.  What have we learned?  We've learned that I need to address my shit with the person I am having the shit with.  This is why therapy is never gonna work with me, because I have the ability to rationalise whatever to someone else so that it doesn't effect me, but if I'm not doing that with the person I'm having the problem with, nothing actually changes.  Especially in this particular case where my inadequacy immediately appears to be the problem, and it magnifies all my private fears on that score. 

Huh. 

I don't know how to be friends with his girlfriend.  I've told him before I don't want to be invited over to his place to meet her, and I also don't want to invite her over here.  I don't want to have to go back to the place I used to live to meet this girl who hates me, and I don't want to have to invite somebody who hates me to my place.  If restaurants were open, we could do that, but, nope, pandemic.  And I just think of the one time we ran into his ex-wife.  I'd literally spent the night at his place the first time the night before, and we're standing in line, me in front, him behind, and his ex comes in and stands behind him in line and after a few seconds it becomes clear that he's pretending I don't exist, and so I don't.  Frankly, I didn't want to meet her right then, either, but I wouldn't have cared if he wanted to introduce me later.  I don't know if she would've, either.  No idea.  But I think that his only other friend who is an ex is now a lesbian and half the time he's mad at her because she sets boundaries because she won't drop everything and take care of his problems. 

So.  There.  If I want to be this guy's friend.  Do I want to be this guy's friend?  Maybe?  I mean, yes, I would like to.  I would also accept friends with benefits or girlfriend, though, let's not be wholly opaque about how I still feel about the dude.  Don't care.  Not over him.  But if I want to be his friend, I've gotta somehow figure out how to explain exactly what kind of friendship I want and what that entails, without saying, "Hey, your ex-wife, your best friend?  I think they have been pissed off about EXACTLY the same thing I'm experiencing now.  I already had to point out this serial cheating and ignoring the fact that happened that you're real good at, have you recognised this one, too, and what are you going to DO about it?" 

Because I want somebody I can call up and say, "Hey, I want to do whatever, and I would like to not do that alone."  I want to send him videos of pandas, and see stuff he likes at the store on sale and drop them by his place because he wants them.  I want him to drop by and play Trivial Pursuit and tell me stuff happening in his life.  I want him to remember I exist beyond the ways I can fulfill specific desires for HIM.  He once told me that he thought it wasn't fair that anything I proposed they do, he always enjoyed, and the same wasn't true for him, and that wasn't fair.  I immediately said, "You didn't know that every single thing I proposed was curated specifically for your enjoyment?" 

And that's still the difference.  His role has always been to look out for him, and to have people who support him, which I get, because he hasn't always had that.  But I do the opposite, in every single case.  I asked him once if he wanted to play D&D with my friends, he said no.  I invited him once to meet my friends, and he said no, so I made it my goal to make sure that my D&D wouldn't interfere with him. I refused to play on his days off, and still, he acted like the one thing I was doing with my friends was a problem for him, but if he decided just not to come home from work and go hang out at the bar, I didn't need to be told and asking whether we were having dinner, or what, was a problem. 

Let me reiterate that I have had two romantic relationships.  This one, with the above imbalance that I can see is an imbalance when I read it, is the better of the two because the sexual infidelity was confessed to me after a few weeks and then stopped.  Yes, he also cheated on me, told lies of omission and gave me a LOT of shit for the things I chose to do, and the things I refused to do, but he was eventually honest with me and occasionally made active strides to change his behaviour when it hurt me enough. 

Sigh.  All of this has left me with a conviction that this is the best I can do.  Maybe it isn't, but it still feels like I could have kept my marriage if I had chosen to be OK with deception, and this relationship would have been OK if I had chosen to pretend much harder to be someone I'm not.  That if I'd made a fundamental change in who I am, I could have continued in these relationships, and since I couldn't do that, I'm the problem. 

This feels wrong, but it's how they ended.  "I'm sorry, ex-husband, I cannot adjust to your requirements," and "I'm sorry, girlfriend, you can't be with me because you can't adjust to my requirements."  If I can't manage this, how could I possibly be with someone with fewer problems?  They won't just accept all the things wrong with me as easily, because they'll be better people. 

I have a feeling this is not a good or healthy way of thinking.  But hey, I've spent the last three weeks wishing I was dead, so, maybe a step up?