Unanchored

The digital radio alarm clock told me it was 9:12 last night when I went to bed. 9:12! That's earlier than I go to bed on a work night. Such is the wild weekend of a divorced 38-year-old man who lives alone. (My weekend starts on Thursday nights because my college is closed on Fridays all summer long. Yes, I know I'm spoiled and unworthy. There but for the grace of Higher Ed go I...) Most of you would probably love the prospect of three full days off, but for me, this weekend, I was not looking forward to it.

I realized last night that I had absolutely no set plans whatsoever on Friday. There were a few errands or chores I wanted to get done, but nothing serious or pressing, and certainly nothing involving contact with other people. Last week I might have welcomed such a leisure schedule (and did), but I already had a mostly solitary weekend last week and I'm starting to get that panicky feeling I get when my day is not anchored down by some social activity, however small. Just knowing that I have a tennis match or therapy session or lunch date can make all the difference. I did try to arrange something for Friday, but it didn't happen (yet) and then I get all pissy that it seems like I'm always the one who has to initiate things with some people.

Part of the reason I was in a bad mood might have been fatigue: I hadn't caught up on my sleep from Monday night, when I had another 3-hour, 3-set tennis match and got to bed an hour late. The good news was that I beat Brent, knocking him out of first place in the Advanced league. I'm currently in first place and could win the whole thing if I win my last two matches-- both against people I've beat (and lost to) before. I've never been in first place in this league, for any amount of time. I usually languish in the bottom, fighting for my life to stay in the league and not get bounced back down to the Intermediate league (which I was lucky enough to win almost two years ago, which got me into the Advanced one.) But I've probably jinxed my championship by writing about it. Unless I'm trying to jinx the jinxing by writing about that.

My victory over Brent didn't come without consequences. When I got home I noticed some new blisters on my feet. I'd managed to go a year and a half without getting any, and this match didn't seem particularly blister-inducing, so it was strange I would get them now. But the consequence of them means that I need to stay off my feet til they heal, so I'm not playing any tennis til the weekend. That's one less activity to get me out of the house.

I have lots of projects and things to get done, but strangely enough, having too much free unscheduled time makes me less motivated to get stuff done. It's the same principle as giving K space. It's much easier for me to back away from her when I feel confident & secure. Likewise, it's much easier for me to concentrate on getting things done when I know that I'll be getting some social time later. When there's no social anchor to my day, I just kind of float along without any motivation. And then I feel crappy about it.

Weird

Sometimes a thought comes to you in a roundabout way. I was driving to my mixed doubles tennis match on Friday night when I thought about what I would do after the match was over. Probably just shower, have a snack and watch TV. Not an exciting Friday night. In the busy traffic I thought about all the people going out on Friday night: to restaurants, movies, concerts, on dates.

Wait a minute, I thought. I have a girlfriend. I should have a date tonight. That's one of the big advantages of being in a relationship-- you always have an automatic date on the weekends. But... she lives 700 miles away.

Is that crazy? Isn't it totally weird that I'm dating someone who lives 700 miles away? (That's 1100 kilometers for my Canadian readers.) How is that even possible? When I first brought up the idea of dating to K, back in November, I knew we had lots of obstacles. She had many legitimate objections. Weirdly, though, she never brought up the fact that we lived three states away from each other. She never once said, "A date? How can we date when you live in Snarkville and I live in K-tropolis?"

Perhaps the distance appealed to both of us. I could go slow since I was all fucked-up & shit from the divorce, and she could go slow because she, well, is the type who likes to go slow.

The distance between us reminds me of my work situation. I live 50 miles away from where I work. So every workday I drive 50 miles each way. One hundred miles a day. Isn't that insane? Why would I do that?

I have my reasons. I have a good job with great benefits-- good pay and ample time off-- but I don't want to live in the tiny town where my college is. The place where I live, Snarkville, is a college town with lots of great cultural opportunities and a ridiculous amount of tennis opportunities. Also, I have family here. So I've just incorporated the hour-long commute into my routine every day. Most days it doesn't seem weird. But every once in a while I think, "This is crazy. Why do I live so far away from where I work?"

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As I may have mentioned here before, K and I went on a few dates in grad school nine years ago. Our last "date" was a Halloween party in 2001. It was obvious to everyone there that she wasn't into me, so as we all got drunk, one of my friends said to me, "She doesn't deserve the Snarklove!" I agreed and stopped asking her out.

A few months later K and I started hanging out as friends again, but when I asked her to a movie, it felt a little too datey for her, and she said something like, "We could go as friends, but I thought you understood before that I'm not interested in dating." Okay, you got me. I was hoping it would be a date. Thanks for being direct.

It's totally weird to me that now, nine years later, that girl from grad school who was so not into me is now my girlfriend. I had completely given up on her. It's like she was dead and now she's come back to life. It feels like the K I knew back then and the K I know now are two completely different people.

Dating her now almost feels... and I hate to use this word... unnatural.

Weird.

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When I visited K back in December, on the weekend date we now consider to be our anniversary, she kept saying how weird life is. She never expected us to get together like this. "Life is so weird," she kept saying.

Word.

Weird. Weird. Weird.

Take Advantage

When I went to bed last night, I was hoping that the rain would make the courts too wet for tennis this morning. I didn't want to have to deal with the decision of whether to play or not, so I hoped the weather would make it for me. That gave me a pretty good indication that I really wasn't in the mood to play. So I planned to just sleep in.

Then I got up this morning, forty-five minutes before practice. I felt well-rested, the air was cool and the sky partly cloudy. It was the best tennis weather I'd seen in months. So I decided I really had to take advantage of it.

I went to practice and got some good exercise. We played longer than I had planned, so it's made my day a little more hectic than I was expecting, but I'm still getting everything done. And it was worth it.

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This has been a lazy weekend. Despite playing tennis three times (over three days, since I was off Friday), I've spent a lot of time on the couch and playing on the computer.

K is camping at a hippie folk music festival all weekend-- four days off the grid, so we haven't had much contact. She texted me a few times on Friday but then had to turn off her phone to save her batteries. I was a little worried about how she planned to get to the festival. She doesn't have a car, so she was bumming a ride from some guy on the festival online message board. Spending five hours in a car with a stranger from the interwebs would not be my thing. My overactive imagination tells me he'll be a pervert or axe murderer or charming handsome Adonis. But she's been doing this for years without any of that happening, so this is a good opportunity for me to practice letting go. She's a grownup who can take care of herself. I know she's thinking about me.

I've had a good time in her absence. I'm catching up on my TiVo. With all the traveling I'd been doing lately, I was over a month behind on all my shows. I also hadn't watched any Netflix in months. So I got a lot of good couch time. I also moved a bed into my guest room (donated from my brother's wife's sister), which had been vacant since I bought the house a year ago. Went to a dinner party. From there we went to my first theater movie (Inception) since last January (Avatar.) And of course there were the usual weekend chores: lawn mowing, grocery shopping, laundry. (Why does this paragraph sound like a 4th-grade essay titled "What I Did On My Summer Weekend"?)

So that's about it. No great insights this weekend, just a lot of relaxation strategically interrupted by exercise, socialness, and chores.

Seven Months

Today is our seven-month anniversary. Considering the significance of the number seven in our relationship, this should be a milestone. But it also has me a little worried, because it would be fitting for us to only last seven months. I look forward to our eight-month anniversary, so I can get past that superstitious fear and won't have to worry about another such milestone until the seven-year mark.

Back when we had our four-month anniversary-- the first one we acknowledged-- I thought it was really cute that K was looking forward to surpassing AG's time on the Snarkbutt mechanical bull of relationships. She blew through AG's time a week later and never looked back.

Now her competitive juices are flowing again. She asked recently how long I had dated GF#3, my next-longest relationship. I said about eight months. In honor of our anniversary, I looked it up yesterday to get an exact date. It turns out I was wrong. I had actually dated GF#3 almost 10 months-- 9 months and 24 days, to be exact. So K has more of a challenge than she thought. We're still 86 days away from beating that (Oct 13).

During my investigation of how long I dated GF#3, I had to go back and read a bunch of old emails between us. And the difference between that relationship and this one was amazing and stark. GF#3 and I fought ALL THE TIME. Every email was either her yelling at me or apologizing for yelling at me, then yelling at me again. The relationship wasn't just a train wreck, it was plane crashing into a boat as it flew up onto land to hit a train. She was difficult, argumentative, arrogant, selfish, insulting, and just all-around unpleasant. On the other hand, she did have a nice rack.

Despite all the drama, I think I learned a lot (indirectly) from GF#3. I've matured a lot since then. Compared to that relationship, K and I are a model of respect and harmony. K has shown me that someone can be intelligent without arrogance, strong-willed without belligerence, insightful without condescension, nurturing without high maintenance, and hot without a huge rack. After reading those emails, I consider myself to be the luckiest guy on earth to be with her. K rocks!

Conflict

It's not easy being me. (With no due respect to Rodney Dangerfield.)

It seems I can't get over one crisis before jumping into another one.

A week ago I was freaking out about K wanting a break from me. We seem to have recovered from that. Last night she surprised me with an unscheduled call. The last time we talked, on Thursday, we had both looked at our schedules and realized we wouldn't have time to talk for the next week and a half. But after I failed to email her all weekend, she was worried, canceled her Sunday plans and called me. I hadn't intended to neglect her, I'd just had a busy weekend and had been planning to email her that night. But I guess my absence did have good consequences for me.

We talked for 2.5 hours.

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One of the things that K and I fought about during our tense weekend was fighting itself. K feels that I trivialize fights in my family. I have a large, diverse family with lots of different interpersonal styles and priorities. Someone is always mad at someone else. It's not so much that I trivialize the fights, but that I see them as inevitable. Like thunderstorms or the flu, they are an unavoidable fact of life. So you might as well get used to them.

As if on cue, my family is at it again. I escaped my crisis with K to walk right into another family feud. It took us all of five days after returning from Snarkfest last week before we started bickering about plans for next year's reunion. I won't go into the details, since half my family reads this blog. But things have escalated and I spent an angry weekend stewing about an issue that is disproportionately bothering me. I mean, I lost sleep over it.

Much of it is my fault. I have a bad temper and often feel slighted among my four older siblings. I'm the pit bull of the family. I have a reputation for saying stuff that other people don't want to say (but are thinking.) In all fairness, I'm not always at the center of it. Many times I can stay out of the fray, and in some cases I've even played the role of the mediator or peacemaker. Other times I'm the instigator.

In this case, I'm the one who's angry and on the attack. If there was one thing I could change about myself, it would be my temper. I hate hate hate that I get angry so much. And I hate that when I'm angry about something, I can't stop obsessing about it.

I don't understand why I get tangled up in conflict so much. I very much identify with Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. People who know me probably don't believe this, but I really do hate conflict. Or I think I hate it. Maybe it's really something I crave, because I seem to be a magnet for it. Whether it's personal slights or politics or religion or judging others or family disputes, I can't seem to help myself from jumping right into a big pile of conflict.

Maybe I need to join Conflicters Anonymous. "Uh, hi, everyone, I'm Snark, and I'm a pain in the ass."

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K has a black male cat who is... spirited. She has bite and claw marks all over her ankles to prove it. When I visited her in January, he took a chunk out of my face. My next visit, in April, he clawed up my wrist so bad it looked like I'd tried to kill myself. I still have the scars from it. And he likes me. Whenever K has someone doing work (construction or painting) on her house while she's out, she has to lock up her cat, lest he tear them a new one.

But K loves and is totally committed to her feline darling. I consider her loyalty to her cat a good sign-- she's not the type to just dump her furry, cuddly little man when things get difficult.

I'm hoping that she feels the same way about me. Although I can't help myself from biting people's ankles (metaphorically), I hope she'll be loyal to me, because I'm her other cuddly little man.

Make It Hard

Just got back from my therapist's. I hadn't seen him since May 1. I had been thinking that maybe it was time for a little mental health tune-up, and then when this whole crisis with K started this week, I definitely needed my fix. So I made an appointment. When I called him, he said, "I was just thinking about you the other day and wondering how you were doing." That was nice to hear.

The first 35 minutes of the session was a monologue of me updating him on all that's happened between me and K in the past 2.5 months. Vermont, super date weekend #6, my first angry. But that was all background info until we could get to the real issues: Our almost break, K's doubts, and my insecurities.

He was very helpful and made me feel a lot better. He's good at taming my fears and putting them into context. He said that our tense tent weekend didn't sound like a bad thing, and that it's good that we're "fighting" now. Learning how to deal with conflict is an important part of any relationship. He sees it as a sign that we're entering a new phase. He also said it doesn't sound like K really wants to break up with me, but that our new intimacy is giving her cold feet. (He thinks, from what I've told him, that she's fundamentally more loyal than SnarkEx was. I agree with him.) This theory was supported by the fact that all the troubles started on a weekend when she was at a wedding. K told me that the bride & groom's story was much like ours: dated in college briefly, went their separate ways, reconnected from halfway across the country, had a long-distance courtship, and now were getting married. In retrospect, I could see that freaking her out.

I appreciate that my therapist was able to see a pattern that I hadn't seen.

When I woke up this morning I thought about the parallels between our almost breakup and my marriage. When SnarkEx threatened to leave, I didn't fight too hard to keep her. I was angry and hurt, but maybe some part of me knew that we weren't right for each other. So I let her go without a fight. But with K I decided that I'm not going to let her go so easily. If she tries to dump me, I'm going to make it very hard for her.

I told this to my therapist, and then wondered if that would be too manipulative or cynical of me. But that's not where this is coming from, it's from a sincere belief that she'll be making a mistake. If she were truly unhappy, and this relationship were unhealthy for her or me, I would not stand in her way. But I'm not going to let her leave because she's scared. My therapist brought up a great phrase. He said she has to "earn herself out of the relationship." (He sheepishly admitted he got that from Dr. Phil.) We've been together long enough that she at least owes that to me. I really like that idea, and it fits well with my plan to make it really hard for her to leave me. I'm going to fight for her.

Back to Normal?

The subject heading of my email to K on Tuesday: Break
The subject heading of her (very quick) response: Not a Break

That was reassuring, and at the time it felt like we had once again escaped a crisis. My next subject heading was: Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Relationship. (While I'm sharing, my subject heading after we returned from our camping trip was Tense Moments and Tent Moments. She liked that one.) But I'm not sure we have returned to "normal," whatever that is. My message contained seven follow-up paragraphs about our tenuous relationship. We still have some work to do.

I'm trying to determine if I blew things out of proportion on Sunday, or if she really did think we were on the verge of a breakup. I said some things in my latest message that I worry how she'll take. I worry that I'm putting too much pressure on her; that I'm being too demanding; that I'm making the wrong assumptions; that I'm being too insecure and whiny. One thing I said, for example, is that when she uses language like "I don't want to break up right now," it hurts me and makes me think of nothing but breaking up. But one thing she said to me in her last letter was, "I don't think I should get to make all the rules," so I guess I'm entitled to make some requests. I like this about her-- that she believes in an equal partnership as much as I do.

So despite my relief that we appear to have weathered the latest storm, I'm still feeling insecure and anxious. Where have I seen this story before? Girl and boy have a fight. Smooth it over. Everything seems fine. Girl suddenly says she's unhappy and wants to leave. Cries a lot. Boy and girl work it out. Girl reassures boy that he has nothing to worry about. Then girl leaves. Oh, yeah, that's what happened in my marriage. That doesn't mean it will happen again, but I guess this is what is meant by baggage. You carry all your shit from one relationship to the next.

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I lost another long tennis match last night. I came home from it depressed and lonely. I always come home from tennis depressed. I think it's because I want to tell someone about it, but there's no one. And last night was a really weird match. So I'll tell my blog about it. Warning: This section may contain TMI.

Although it was at 6:00 pm, when the blazing summer sun is on its way out, it was over 90 degrees, humid, and the sun was still too high in the sky. I have absolutely no energy with the sun beating down on me like that. I just tried to stall-- make the points last as long as they could-- until the sun went below the trees and I could get some relief from it. Despite falling behind 3-0 in the first set, I figured out a strategy and battled back to 4-4. Then a really weird thing happened.

I had to pee. Really bad. This never happens to me in the middle of a match. I had drunk a bunch of Gatorade a few hours earlier because I knew I'd need to stay hydrated, and I'd already peed three times before the match. But late in the first set, the pressure on my bladder got so bad that I couldn't stand it. I pretty much let my opponent win the set, 6-4, so I could run to the bathroom (and yes, I literally ran) during the break between sets.

I peed, but it didn't help. That pressure on my bladder was still there! Now I'm thinking that something is seriously wrong with me, like I have a urinary tract infection or something. The first few games of the second set were torture as I tried to ignore my seemingly bursting bladder. After I lost the first two games, I apologized to my opponent and said I needed to run to the bathroom again, even though it wasn't a changeover or a break or anything. The bathroom was no relief. I couldn't even pee, despite the feeling that I had to.

I came back to the court trying to ignore the pain in my bladder. A few times I considered just stopping and defaulting the match. But as the sun slowly crept below the tree line, providing wonderful shade, the pain subsided. By then I was down 4-1. Once again, I battled back, winning the next five games and taking the set, 6-4. I'm on a roll now! For the third set in my league, we just play a 10-point tiebreak. I was only 10 points away from winning, and on a hot streak. The match was mine.

Only it wasn't. For some reason, my racket suddenly felt like it weighed 20 pounds, and I just couldn't swing it. I lost, 10-4. The good news was that the bladder thing was completely gone. I don't know if it was some combination of the sun and Gatorade or what.

At home in the shower, I wondered if I could draw some parallel between my tennis and my relationships. I always seem to start out in a hole, have to claw my way back, make it exciting, and then lose in the end. No, there's probably not a parallel, except for the losing in the end part. Maybe tennis matches are not a good model for relationships, anyway.

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I'm a little nervous as I wait for K's response to my latest letter, although every time I've had such worries, they didn't turn into anything. In fact, I'm superstitious that any danger you can foresee ahead of time will not happen. That's why my blog is filled with so much doom and gloom. I'm warding off evil events.

Here's one: K's been talking about her friend X again. For the past month I hadn't felt threatened by X at all, but on the phone Sunday night, the way she was talking about X gave me pause. They were going to a movie together that night and K was excited. Then this morning K sent me a short note about her weekend plans, and there was another reference to X and getting to know people better. Our crisis of last weekend probably has me feeling more insecure.

I have a new attitude to deal with these jealous insecurities, though. A few weeks ago I wrote about how I cannot turn off my lookout for cute girls, even when I'm in a happy relationship. I also know that I would never act on that attraction. I'm just looking, and maybe fantasizing. I have a very clear line between fantasy and reality. So why don't I give K the same benefit of the doubt? I suspect she is not constantly on the lookout like I am. She probably doesn't put every person she sees into a category of whether she'd do them or not. She's not a horndog. And even if she were, she might like someone else, she might be attracted to someone else, but she's dating me. And like me, I suspect that she's not the type of person to have an affair. (I really hope those are not famous last words.)

Another superstitious fear: I've already mention the significance of seven in our relationship. Well, next week is our 7-month anniversary, and that has me freaked that we might break up in the next month. I don't want this to be a 7-month relationship. To paraphrase the Bible, I'd prefer 70 times 7 months.

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Okay, enough sharing for today.

Bad Idea

So the more I thought about the insomnia-inspired two-week break I devised in bed Sunday morning at 3:00 am, the less I liked it.

The two-week break would be stupid for many reasons. First of all, K said she doesn't want to break up right now. So then I suggest a temporary breakup? Huh? The break would be much harder on me than on her, so it would be like martyring myself merely for the sake of martyrdom. Why torture myself if I don't have to? It seems that what we need now is good communication, not a two-week period for us both to stew in our own juices. Ostensibly, a break would be for her to figure things out, but she doesn't see this relationship as permanent, so what's to figure out?

But you know what turned me off the most about this plan? It felt way too much like the "trial separation" SnarkEx wanted when she left me. Why would I want to repeat that farce? A lot of this situation is kicking up muck from my divorce. Like SnarkEx, I feel like K is too quick to whip out the breakup talk. Also, I was caught completely off-guard by her need for a "break," even though I shouldn't have been. Now I'm starting to let my ego get in the way and that worries me. I know that K is worth fighting for, so I don't want to fuck it up this time. I wonder if the Universe is giving me another chance to get it right this time.

This bad idea was borne out of listening to too much advice from people who have their own theories about how I should back off. When I incorporate that advice into my plans, it comes out as some Frankenstein's monster of unnatural parts. So much of this strategy has felt forced and wrong, because it's not me. There's a reason K fell for me (and not for my advisers), and it's because I am attentive and genuine and I don't withhold my affection. I can back off when necessary, but I have to do it in my own way.

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I am slightly, very slightly, in better spirits today than yesterday. I played a satisfying tennis match last night, finally got an easy win after six straight losses, and as I was leaving the courts I got a text from K. As I suspected, she was trying to give me space to think things through, but wanted to let me know she missed hearing from me and was thinking about me. It was very sweet.

This morning I sent her my latest missive: some ideas from my blog post yesterday with new thoughts thrown in. I am trying to get clarification on what she means when she says she doesn't view us as permanent. If she's just trying to avoid the pressure that goes along with presuming a commitment, I'm fine with that. I'm not ready to commit yet, either, but I do like to think it's a possibility. I'm well aware that we probably never would have come this far if I hadn't given her the space and freedom to figure things out without the pressure of a commitment. I get that. But if there's something specific about me, or us, that she thinks is a real dealbreaker, then that's just devastating.

Yesterday I went back and read some of the emails we exchanged last November, when I first revealed my crush to her. Some of these same issues, of her feeling crowded, existed even back then, but what is amazing to me is to see how far we've come on other things. Some of her biggest fears she had back then are non-issues today. (For those of you who followed the saga from the very beginning, let me just say none of the issues we're having right now are things that people objected to back then. Ahem, my schniedel is not the problem.) Not only have we got over those obstacles, they're so far behind us now we can't even see them.

So maybe this crisis is just the normal growing pains of our relationship. We fear. We argue. We talk. We make adjustments. We evolve.

Or we break up. What do I know?

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UPDATE: Just heard from K. Her subject line was "Not a Break." Perhaps things were not as dire as I made them out to be. We're still together, and still talking, and still working things out. Crisis averted. For now.

Break

It was right after K explained to me a new three-point strategy for contact between us-- what to me felt like a mild tweaking of our system-- when I noticed she was using the word "break" a little bit too often. As in, this would give her more of a break.

Wait a minute, I thought. Is she asking for a "break" from the relationship? A la Ross and Rachel? Um, sorta. Where did this come from? I thought we were doing great. Suddenly she's using cliches like needing space and me being a good person. I haven't been this gobsmacked since my wife told me she was thinking of leaving me.

There's way too much to process right now and I'm feeling scared, deflated, and overwhelmed. I truly have no idea how to proceed and I really don't want to screw this up. If there are any right or wrong moves to make at this time, I need to sort them out.

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I was holed up in the Midwestern woods all weekend with my family, celebrating our annual family reunion, Snarkfest, at a gorgeous state park and lodge. It was a good time and I was happy to tell everyone about K. There was no cell coverage, so I was out of contact with the outside world for three days. Right before I had left for Snarkfest, K and I chatted on FB for an hour-- at her suggestion, so it wasn't like I had pushed for it-- and things seemed to be fine between us.

When I got back into cell range, I texted her to ask if she wanted to talk later that day. I had a lot of new stories from Snarkfest to tell her about. Late afternoon she called me and we talked for about an hour before the conversation turned to the "break." I don't think she intended for it to turn so ugly.

I had hoped that after three days without any contact from me she would miss me. And in some ways, she did. But she also enjoyed having her own time. If all she needs is the occasional time off from me, I could deal with that, but the most damaging thing to come out of the conversation was her admitting that she wasn't thinking of us as permanent. She kept saying (through intermittent tears) that she doesn't want to break up "right now." But she definitely views our relationship as temporary. I had suspected that might be the case, but hearing her confirm it hurt me. It hurt a lot.

I don't want to get into too many details, because, as I've said many times before, this blog is about my issues and not hers. We talked about an hour longer than we were supposed to, while she was traveling to meet some friends. There were lots of long pauses because I couldn't think clearly and didn't know what to say. There was just too much rotten, shitty news to process all at once. When we got off the phone, it seemed like she left the ball in my court. She said what she was thinking and now it's up to me to decide what I want. She made two things clear: she doesn't want to break up "right now," and she does want to see me again.

What do I want? I want to go back to feeling like I did a month ago. I want to be confident and secure in our relationship, disgustingly in love and so happy with where we're at that I could do it for another four and a half years. (Per the five-year plan.) In the space of one short phone call all that has been torn away from me. Was I oblivious in la-la land? Again? How do I continue to not see these things coming? More importantly, why am I never good enough?

It's not clear to me what the right move is right now. Do I back off? That feels too calculating, like I'm actively trying to make her miss me. My instinct is to reassure her, because that's what I would want. I suspect she is going to back off and give me my space, because that's what she would want.

Ironically, she was really worried that I would break up with her, and she's not ready for that right now. She's also afraid of hurting me. We certainly agree on those things. One thing that appealed to me about the five-year plan was that if we really could go five years, that would be an awesome feat. Even my relationship with SnarkEx didn't last that long. But six months? That doesn't even rate in the top four of my relationships. K was supposed to be special: the seventh one. I feel like I connect with her better than any girl I've ever met. How can it end like this, so soon?

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So last night at 3:00 am, as I rolled around in bed and obsessed about my next move, I thought of a plan. I have no idea if it's a good plan or not. First of all, even though she's probably hoping for an email from me today, I'm not going to respond until tomorrow. It's my little token act of giving her space. I can't decide if it's passive aggressive ("you wanted space, here's your space"), a smart strategic decision, or a huge mistake. I'm totally in the dark here.

When I do respond, I'm going to suggest that we take a two-week break. No contact whatsoever. No calls, no texts, no emails. I won't even log on to Facebook. That last part will be hard, but since FB reminds me so much of her, I'm probably better off avoiding it. My hope is that after two weeks she will realize how much she misses me and how awesome I am. Despite my low self-esteem, I genuinely believe she will not find anyone more suited to her than me. But if after those two weeks she's even more ambivalent toward me, then maybe we should end it.

In the meantime, I'd like to give her three questions to think about:

What does she want?
Why does she see this as temporary? (It's not like I expect her to plan our future together, and I've never pressured her to make any kind of commitment, but what made her decide it's not going to work?)
Does she love me? (The most terrifying question of all.)

I'm not sure I want the answer to those questions, but I'd like her to know I'm thinking about them.

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That plan doesn't sound very good now that I've written it out. Two weeks sorta seems like overkill, and what would be the objective? To get her to miss me? To overwhelm her with space? To give her a preview of what life post-Snark would look like? And wouldn't this break be harder on me than on her? I don't know if I can go two weeks with this knot in my stomach, these anxious, trembling limbs, the dizzy and lightheaded fear that comes to me every time I think of losing my best friend.

I really have no idea how to proceed. If all she wants is more space, I can give that to her. Unfortunately, I'm much better at giving space when I'm feeling confident and secure. Right now I'm clingy and have no one to cling to. I'm broken.

Little Purposes

Last night I realized what my purpose is. After another two-and-a-half-hour marathon tennis match, filled with twists and turns and pushing ourselves to the limit, I lost. Again. The fourth such match over the past two weeks. That must be my purpose in life: to push my opponents to the limit, make it exciting and dramatic, and then lose to them. It's how I contribute.

Then I realized I have three other purposes. So here they are, in decreasing order of importance:

1. Take care of my cats.
2. Make K feel special.
3. Give my tennis opponents a great workout, and then a victory.
4. Help people move.

I could insert "Take care of myself" as the top purpose, but it doesn't quite work. If my reason to exist is to facilitate my own existence, then that's pretty circular logic. No, taking care of myself only serves to help me with the other purposes.

It's good to have a purpose, even if it's a bunch of small ones.

Dangerous Mundane Things

K [while I'm doing something nice for her]: that makes me feel special.
Me: Good. You should feel special. You are special.
K: Even though I'm mean to you?
Me: You're only mean as often as I'm annoying. You're only mean when I'm annoying.
K: [Laughs] OK. That makes sense.

That conversation is a pretty good summary of our camping weekend.

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As I was lying in the tent on our first night, I thought of all the gruesome things that could happen to us out in the dark, remote woods. We could be mauled by a bear. Chopped up by an axe-wielding madman with a hook for a hand. Struck by lightning. Gang raped by a band of escaped felons. As you can imagine, I had some trouble getting to sleep.

But those terrible, rare and dramatic fates are not the things I should have been fearing. Real life is usually more subtle than that. It's the more mundane, everyday things that we should worry about. Way more couples are torn apart by simple human conflict than by crazed electrified axe rapist convict bears. It's the mundane everyday disasters you have to watch for.

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This weekend was no Vermont. It started with complications on Friday. K called me as I was taking the train from the airport to her house. One by one, people in the camping party bailed on us. What was potentially a group of nine was whittled down to three: me, K, and her friend who organized the whole trip. The friend said she'd feel "weird" going camping with just the three of us, so she offered us the use of her car (K doesn't have one and I had flown 700 miles) so we could go on her trip without her. It was a very generous offer, but it left us with a very different type of weekend than what we'd planned. We tried to talk her friend into coming with us, and promised we wouldn't be all coupley, but no dice.

K was hoping to see how I could integrate in with her friends, but instead we found ourselves taking our own little road trip vacation. We weren't mentally prepared for it so soon after Vermont. Neither of us was sure we knew how to camp on our own. We had planned to be part of a group, going along with everyone else. Suddenly all the details like directions, picking out a campsite, and deciding what to do when fell to us.

We made what we could out of the weekend, but there was some tension. After our last visit I wrote on this blog: "At some point I keep expecting things to slow down and get boring. Instead, we just keep getting more and more into each other." Well, after six straight visits of forward steps, we might have taken a step back this time. If I wasn't sure yet whether we'd had any real fights, I definitely know now. We had at least two this weekend, and a lot of other times when we got on each other's nerves.

We got over them, I think. Ordinarily I would think that was a good thing. What doesn't kill us... yadda yadda yadda. It feels good to know that we can fight and make up and get past it. But have we got past it? Because of the circumstances of our relationship, and my own neurotic fear of abandonment, I worry that if this relationship stresses her out, she will dump me. I know that conflict is unavoidable in any relationship, but ironically one of the things we fought about was how often people should fight with their loved ones. (It's a long story that I don't want to get into here.) Or maybe it was more about me not letting things go.

The main source of conflict in our relationship so far has been about directions. Both in Vermont and this weekend, we got testy with each other while trying to navigate unfamiliar roads. I love maps. I love to navigate. To study all the different options, weigh the pros and cons of different routes, and calculate mileage and arrival times. She just wants to get there. All that other stuff is stressful and boring to her. She'd rather let the GPS tell us what to do. I don't trust the GPS, plus it's taking my hobby away from me. As we were talking later about our fight, I said, "We really need to figure this out, because I really like directions." She laughed. But I'm not sure we've figured out a solution yet.

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We survived the national forest without any moose attacks or dysentery. We were so proud of ourselves for starting a fire! I've credited K with a new culinary invention: Hot dogs & brie. Specifically, turkey hot dogs cooked over a fire, then spread with brie and wrapped in whole wheat sourdough bread. I called them Kdogs. Yummy.

We had some great moments and the physical chemistry between us is as strong as ever. Part of the problem was that I started the weekend with a sleep deficit and never caught up. Sleeping in a tent is not ideal. I was exhausted most of the weekend. When we came out of the cool mountains into K-tropolis, it was 95 degrees. We had to run errands in the oppressive heat and then had dinner with her friends who had bailed on camping. There was never any time to just relax. K was stressed and needed alone time, but is super busy this month. We did what we could, but I think by the time I left this morning, we were both ready for the break. I need to catch up on my sleep, and she needs to catch her breath.

I got as far as getting off the airplane before I started to miss her again.

We have tentative plans for the next two months: In August I'm going to visit her for her birthday, and she's coming here for mine in September. Time will tell whether this weekend was the beginning of the end, or just a slight blip in an otherwise happy relationship.

You Lost-- Accept It

Between 4:00 and 5:30 this morning, I tossed and turned in bed and thought about every way in which things should have been different. I replayed scenes over and over in my mind. I tried every angle to convince myself that I was wronged. That I should have won. That victory was snatched unfairly from me.

But I have to face the simple truth: I lost. Whether it was mental or physical, I was outplayed. Even though I keep trying, there's no way to spin this.

I lost.

It was one of the strangest matches I've had all year. Like all my matches, it lasted forever. My opponent jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead in the first set, but then I found my groove, figured out a good strategy, and came back to take the first set, 7-5.

Then the stalling started. At changeovers my opponent kept talking about how tired he was, and would take forever to get his ass off the chair. The break after the first set he took even longer, then decided he had to go to the bathroom. In the second set he jumped out to another 4-1 lead. Because of our long points (and his stalling), all the other matches were already over. So my teammates sat outside the fence and watched us play. I felt bad because one of my teammates couldn't go home until I was done. I was his ride. I also wanted to have a quick match because I had stuff I wanted to do afterward. And I'd played a three-hour match the night before. And I was sleep deprived. And I'm so fucking goddam tired of my matches lasting forever. I didn't have time for this.

I lost another game. Down 1-5, it was my opponent's turn to serve out the set. On the second point, he hit a ball wide. I waited for him to serve, but instead he walked up to the net holding his right hand. He needed a timeout because his hand was cramping. This was weird because it's the second time in as many weeks that I'd had someone cramp up against me. Last week, I was up 4-0 in the third set against a guy who had to retire due to cramping. But this guy wasn't willing to give up, he just wanted time to uncramp his hand. I gave it to him.

After an interminable break, we resumed, but he could hardly hit the ball. I thought, "This is over. He can't hit the ball." In fact, I even said that out loud to the guys behind the fence. During a few more interminable breaks, all within that game, I spoke to my teammates behind the fence. "What's the rule here?" I asked. One of them looked up in the rulebook. My opponent was not allowed to take as much time as he was taking. They suggested I penalize him a point if he keeps stalling. But I didn't want to be a dick about it. I could see the guy was having problems with his hand. This was an official USTA match, but I'd rather earn my points than win on a technicality.

I won the next three games. Now I was down 4-5, with lots of momentum, and only three games from victory. My opponent would occasionally have problems hitting the ball, but was also getting a lot of good shots in. He still kept pausing between points to rub his hand. His teammates were behind the fence, and one of them gave him something through the fence to rub on his hand.

I allowed this, because I didn't want to be a dick about it. I don't think he was stalling intentionally, but the end result was still that he was stalling. At the changeover, I did tell him that he didn't have time to sit down-- he'd already used up his time putting stuff on his hand. "I'd like to finish tonight," I said, snarkily. I was ready to play. He finally beat me in the next game to win the set, 6-4.

In our league matches we play a 10-point tiebreaker in lieu of a third set. In the tiebreak he didn't seem to have any problems hitting the ball. And I was tired, too. I'd played for three hours the night before, and we'd already been playing for two hours. Yet again, he jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead. On the next point I served and he hit the return long. I was about to walk over to the other side (we switch sides every six points) when he pointed out a ball from the other court had rolled into my side of the court. When this happens, you're allowed a "let," or a do-over, but you have to call it immediately. You can't hit the ball and then wait to see if goes in before calling a let. But he wanted a let. If I had been a hard-ass, I would have said, "No, you didn't call it in time. You can't wait until after the ball lands out and then call a let." He tried to explain why he hadn't called it in time.

So I asked him, "Did that ball affect your shot?" He started explaining again why he wasn't able to call the let in time, and I said again, "Did that ball affect your shot?" He said yes. So I replayed the point. And I lost it. Now, that point my not have affected the outcome of the match, but it was just one in a series of moments where I might have been too nice to him. Where he might have been taking advantage of me.

I fell apart after that, going down 7-1 in a tiebreaker to 10. I won three straight points to pull within 7-4, but never got any closer. He won, 10-6.

It was maddening. I felt like I had him beat. The match was mine! But then it wasn't. One of his teammates said I was "gracious," which I wonder was code for "a sucker." But I wasn't very gracious when I walked off the court. I said to my captain, "Don't tell me it was 3-2." (The team score, meaning that my loss lost it for the whole team.) He said, "It was 3-2." That's when I shouted a Very Bad Word that rhymes with "Udderplucker." My captain then reminded me that this was the second week in a row that we'd lost 3-2 because of me. (Last week I lost to Brent.) Thanks for the reminder!

The loss was painful and soul-crushing. I was loathe to go home to an empty house, but then I thought, maybe it's best that I live alone right now. I shouldn't unleash my fury and disappointment on anyone else. For the second night in a row, I got to bed late because a match lasted too fucking long. I'm running on a serious sleep deficit. Then this morning I saw our captain sent an email to the team saying, "We lost 2-3 tonight -- it came down to Snark Butt's singles match and a tiebreak in the third set." Was he rubbing it in? I wasn't the only one to lose, I was just the last one to lose.

So this morning I'm exhausted and trying to put two painful defeats behind me. I wish I could shrug it off. I'm sure I'll be fine the next time I play, but right now I'm obsessing about it. I promise you one thing. The next time I play this guy, I'm gonna be an asshole about following the rules. No more stalling techniques, legitimate or not.

I have to stop making excuses. Whether or not I had my chances, I lost.

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Blogkeeping:

Tomorrow I start my two-weekend extended extravaganza. I won't be online much during the next ten days, so there probably won't be any new posts. Have a good holiday, everyone.