nadanadanada

Was not the right person for me. We had some serious differences in values, and he wasn’t able to take responsibility for himself – essentially he got bored, and started online dating while we were still together. So, a cheater.

I’ve never been involved with a cheater before, and it has been a learning experience, for sure. He isn’t able to deal with anything challenging, and he is 100% “in” the relationship as long as it’s easy and in the obsession phase at the beginning. (That’s what he thinks “true love” is. If the obsession starts to fade, it’s the other person’s fault for being boring.)

Basically he’s a talker, and can’t deliver, so he is totally in love as long as he can just talk. Delivering on his “talk” is not a consideration, because he meant it when he said it, but he might not be feeling it 10 minutes later. If the future is more than 10 minutes away, he’ll have forgotten about his intentions by then.

Also – lack of responsibility. He can justify any behaviour to himself, and when challenged or questioned on it, he sulks and gets passive aggressive. Oh great, a man-child!

Aaand, the final observation – he plays victim. He can’t admit to himself that he’s not interested in a relationship anymore, so he’s one of those guys who starts acting like a jerk more and more, then starts cheating (or trying to), and if none of that works (passive-aggressively to get the woman to ‘be the man’ and dump him). He lies when the behaviour is addressed, and acts like everything is fine. Then he just exhibits progressively worse behaviour and gets really outrageous so he can force the other person’s hand.

The payoff is that he gets to tell himself he’s “the good guy” who got dumped by the mean bitch.

Very damaging.

So now “passive-aggressive” gets added to my list of red flags…

are um, good. I guess.

Not really sure what I wanted out of this to start with.

I spent a week with him to see how things would go, wasn’t sure if I would get together with him or not, he’s not really my type, if I have a type. He’s a major flirt, very romantic, lonely, charming, has a kid, serial monogamist, makes dumb jokes about vulgar stuff (I have a particularly hard time with that one) can’t spell, has mediocre grammar, doesn’t have any post-secondary education, but is respected at his job, a great people-person, promoted to a position of considerable responsibility, makes ridiculous amounts of money and isn’t sure how he spends it all… Argh.

But he is a good communicator, very talkative, initiates, accepting, helpful and I feel safe around him, as in, safe to be “me” (not feeling like a guy expects me to fit into some stereotype).

He knows I’m going overseas soon. He’s paying for me to fly out to see him again before I go. He also says he will come and visit me in December, but we’ll see what happens with that. He talks about waiting 2 years til my contract is finished, but then again he talks a LOT.

It’s kind of fun, kind of comforting, but also kind of a pain because I know I won’t have much time to spend on a long distance thing in the next year. I’m going to be really busy with my new job. And here I am, daydreaming about some guy when I REALLY need to be getting some work done! Argh.

between wanting to be/live/work overseas, and wanting to be in a committed relationship.

So the ideal solution, dear Universe, might be if I were in a relationship with someone who wanted to/ was able to live overseas too?

I mean, I can think of other things I could do here “at home”, but I’m not sure if they wouldn’t just be temporarily satisfying, and eventually leave me yearning to be away again…

Still, some of the things I could do at home would be worthwhile.

So what I am asking for is this: I want to find a way to integrate these 3 or 4 ‘life directions’ so that I can live a full and valued life without feeling I have to ‘give up’ on one or two in order to have the other.

Knowing what I want is a huge first step. But yeah, now what I need is to integrate it all.