Oh. My. God. I am even loathe to write today in this space. Ya know, my online journal? Full of anonymous-ness? Even in the privacy of my own mind, I have a hard time with certain things, such as admitting to myself it’s okay to tell a woman I don’t want to see again that I don’t want to see her again. So let’s start back a few days.
The Goddess came up for our third date last Friday. I don’t want to even waste time with the details. Here’s the important part: she cried. As in sobbed, wailed, soaked the shirt I was wearing. We were back at my place, had watched a movie, and she came completely unglued on me. Fell apart entirely. This woman is clearly in a LOT of pain.
I held her, did my best to comfort her and let her do what she needed to do. I even told her at some point that if she was waiting for me to tell her to knock it off, that was never going to happen. And I didn’t say that, but I definitely decided oh yeah, this is so not gonna work. We finished off the evening, she stayed the night. The night was alright. No fireworks, but in all honesty I’m not sure how there could have been. I hate to say it like this, but I was pretty repulsed. Well, not repulsed so much as very firm in my internal decision about oh yeah, this shit is NOT happening. I made us breakfast in the morning and she took off back to the bay. She called me last night, but I didn’t pick up. I’ve sent her a text apologizing and letting her know that I’ll call her tonight after I get done with my composition lesson.
My mind keeps turning over all the different ways to say what I need to say, trying to find a way to balance my needing to tell her I won’t see her anymore with compassion and kindness, but still being honest. I hate having to do this. I really hate having to tell a woman I don’t want to see her again. And I hate seeing the pain it causes. The Stalker once tried to wield that against me—how could I possibly be a feminist or even just a plain old nice guy if I ‘hurt’ women? I told her that the possibility of getting hurt is part and parcel of relationship. It’s what we always take the risk of when we open ourselves up to letting someone in our life.
A woman who spends a considerable amount of time crying on a third date (and lets not forget how she did something similar on the second date) is not capable of being what I need in a partner. There’s no there there. Aw, maybe that’s unfair to say. There’s a lot there, a lot of pain in particular. But that’s not something I can do anything about, and in the meantime it means she’s not emotionally available.
The PhD was a crier, too. And The Stalker, in a sense. Neither of them as bad as the Goddess. The Stalker at least realized that what she was doing was inappropriate, and tried to calm herself down. When I tried to comfort her, she wasn’t interested, pushed me away. The PhD, for her it came up sometimes. She suffered from severe bouts of Depression, and I helped where I could.
There is a part of me that’s tempted to wax philosophical about how damaged we all are, and it is possible with love and kindness and hard work to heal (I consider myself an example of that) but as a wise therapist once helped me to voice: I need a partner not a project.
How do I find someone who is stable? Maybe the outward indications of stability—a job, a place to live—are even more important, are better indicators, than I realized. I don’t know. I’m frustrated. I’m a little disgusted. I just want to meet someone who I have some stuff in common with who’s mostly got it together and that I’m physically attracted to. Is that such an unreasonable combination??? But yes, this is of course what so many single people experience. There are plenty of single people out there, but finding someone who matches well is the hard part.
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