date SMARTER

my belief in big, meant-to-be love. Mr. Yes was loving with me even when we hadn’t eaten for 15 hours, he’d had one hour of sleep on the plane and our luggage was lost. He cheerfully hung out with strangers while I did my maid of honor duties. He kissed an arc from one shoulder to the other and told me I was beautiful in my strapless gown when I was lamenting my pec muffintops. He wouldn’t eat wedding cake unless I fed it to him, asked me to slowdance and held me close all night. He put up tents, checked fuses, hooked dresses, found keys, had brunch with my ex, calmly accepted three death threats on my behalf and after traveling all day and missing dinner on Tuesday, he came back for more goodbye kisses and wants to see me tomorrow night.

I could happily wake up next to this man every day of my life.

so off and on during this year, i was dating/hanging out with/casually screwing or whatever you want to call it with medical school student. smart, charming (a little too charming at times) good English… and with all intentions of doing his residency in Nagoya and then practicing in the US someday. well, i have no intentions of leaving Japan, so if we became Legitimately Boyfriend and Girlfriend, we’d just be killing time. he, being 3 years younger than me, is alright with killing time, but that bores me. i want to find one i can kill time with indefinitely. so, i was alright with only meeting up maybe once a month for a little, ahem, “fun.”

or so i thought… because i bumped into him a few nights ago at the bar, the drunken flirtation started again, he made some comment in Japanese about how hot i looked in the skirt i was wearing, and we paid our bar tab and started walking home together…

and then he tells me he has a girlfriend.

BANG ZING ZOWIE

suddenly, in my drunken state, he became a betraying scumbag who only wanted to play around with the foreign chick before finding a nice, proper japanese girl he can take home to mom and dad, and i was the foreign slut trash who no one wants as a girlfriend, even of the “killing time” variety. i kinda went off on a teary tirade and ran off, leaving him to watch me go.

i felt like an absolute worthless piece of crap. i don’t know if anyone else can relate to my particular situation, but as a foreign woman in Japan, sometimes i just feel like the girl they want to play around with before settling down. everything else here is fine; i have good friends and i’m starting a graduate school program that will help me achieve my dream of becoming a lecturer/language teacher in a Japanese university. but the love thing… everything seems to be against me. all i want is for someone to think i’m good enough to want to take me to dinner at their parents’ house, have the balls to say “well yes Grandma, she is from that country that vaporized your uncle in the war, but i love her and she makes me happy.”

that’s all i want. and every rejection i get, even from someone i KNOW isn’t really worth it, feels like further confirmation that i’m just not worth the damn trouble. sure, intellectually i know that’s not true, that i’m being both sexist and racist, but… i just can’t stop thinking this way. i want to, but i don’t know how… even in my own country, i’ve never felt like i really have anything to offer a relationship besides the superficial stuff (decent looks, brains, good musical taste, good in bed) and nothing that will keep them around. now i have an excuse to feel alienated.

it’s funny, all through high school i felt like i didn’t even have the superficial stuff to attract guys, and now that i have all that, i’m finding that, despite the 2 master’s degrees, 3 languages and 12 years, i’m still the same fucked-up neurotic head case i was at 15.

I had a busy day yesterday. Work has been rushed and then out to meet with the new trainer and work out, then change back to work clothes and rush to meet Mr. Yes and watch a climbing movie being shown at a brewery. I forgot to eat dinner (!) and made it to the brewery in just enough time to grab a beer and settle half my butt on a chair. (It was standing room only.)

The movie, instead of being an hour long, was over two hours. A lot of it was interesting, and it was good to cuddle up with Mr. Yes, but why was I spending that much time in a busy week watching a movie about something that doesn’t fascinate me when the laundry isn’t done and I have a ton of stuff I need to do at home and online? Answer: I was being a good girlfriend. Or was I being a too good girlfriend?

I think the smarter thing for me to have done is to tell Mr. Yes that I hate rushing and am having a busy week and we’d wait to see each other until the weekend. I’m going to take Friday to go to the gym and do laundry and putter around the house, instead of going to his place. Yes, it’s lovely that he wants me to be a big part of his life and the things that he loves. It’s lovely that being with me makes him happy. It is also lovely for me to take care of myself and realize that rushing is very bad for my energy and mood and I need to be smart about my time commitments. I never want to resent him for my bad choices and the way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to be clear about when I’m not interested in joining him for activities that just aren’t my thing, instead of being flattered that he wants time with me and pushing myself too hard.

sigh.

he’ll be in Tokyo until whatever project he’s doing there is finished.

sigh.

i know it’s not his fault or his choice, but god this sucks. but then again, i’m starting grad school at the end of this month and, even if he were here, i’d probably only get to hang out with him once or twice a month anyway.

also, i managed to do a Very Scary Thing. i told him, in Japanese, exactly what i had meant by “I like you,” meaning that i wanted to pursue a friendship with him and see if something can develop from that naturally; not that i necessarily expected some heavy thing from him immediately. then i asked him if hanging out would be alright when he’s back from his Tokyo project, and he said yes.

but that he doesn’t know exactly when that will be… (_‘)

and if the same damn thing happens again like all the others (i.e. he fucks off to some distant city and finds someone better/easier to be with/in essence, Japanese), this time i think i really might snap.

as I feel like I have some emotional street cleaning I want to do. It has been an interesting year where the majority of time I’ve been in some kind of dating situation with someone, and finally I am not. I really want to look at things, take a break, get some rest, deal with some old issues. And also, and I don’t know if I can blame myself for it, but want to distance myself from dating because it has been so baffling to me. I wonder why it’s so difficult. Or has been difficult up until now. And the last situation was very baffling. I’d never been deceived before, at least to this extent; literally SNOWED. So, what can you do? I am grateful that it didn’t progress beyond the realm of conversations over dinner and books shared. I am thankful that I got the information I needed to know (that he is married) long before it could’ve been a really, really bad thing to know. I regret the time I spent daydreaming about him, and am keeping his wife in my prayers. I’m amazed that it happened, happened to ME, and glad that I was able to walk away (and that I’m not married to a person like that, and not able to walk away without incurring big expenses).

So, I’m baffled at myself that I was lied to by someone, and that, for the most part, I had no CLUE! So, the moral of this is that there is no moral, or rather, if you meet someone who lies to you and you believe them, it’s not your fault. You might feel like a fool, but you’re not, and it’s really unfortunate for the person who told the lie as they sabotage every relationship they have by being dishonest. And this was someone who I met in a public place (my work) and he and I even knew some people in common, so it wasn’t an online person that I met out of nowhere where it would be easy to create a different identity.

On the up side, I also learned that I liked making a slow go of it, and doing things like reading a book together with someone. So, it would be nice to do this in the future with a completely single, entirely unmarried guy sometime.

before i told the other members of my class, that i’m going to grad school. his reaction was strange, crossing his arms in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and saying a noncommittal “oh…” kind of like my reaction when he told me he’d be working in Tokyo for 3 months god i hope it’s actually 3 months and not time indefinite, like a “well that’s cool for you, so i’m going to be a supportive friend, but i can see how this may affect me negatively.

it’s just… his words say literally “i’m not ready,” but the actions say “i want you.” oh well. he’s still in Tokyo for the time being, and should be back in another month or 2. it’s alright, i have grad school preparations to make, and being moony crazy in love when school starts might actually fuck me up. i tend to throw myself into work when i get broken, so getting dicked over again like usual could actually benefit me.

this whole distance-derailment situation is scarily like the one with Dr Dude and I’m trying really hard to remind myself that… well, it’s totally different. worst that could happen here:
1.) his company tells him to stay in Tokyo for time indefinite
2.) he gets a new chick while he’s there, or there was one to begin with.
3.) he’s not a shy Japanese computer programmer at all, but actually in a recruitment program for spies sent to North Korea to disable nuclear weapons and therefore is placing his life in mortal peril every day.

if any of the above scenarios are true, i guess i would do the following, as usual:
1.) drink a bottle of red wine and watch Bruce Lee fuck some people up on DVD
2.) listen to Queen’s greatest hits albums as many times as it takes to cheer up
3.) drown myself in schoolwork and teaching
4.)imagine Freddy Mercury dancing around to “Another One Bites the Dust” draped in a Union Jack whenever i feel too broken to work
5.) do cool stupid shit with friends
6.) find some hobby or cause that’s bigger than me and my dumb crap

why not just do 3, 5 and 6 now…?

oh yeah, and realise that a lot of this infatuation i feel could be infatuation for Mogwai’s song Fear Satan, which we saw live together. fucking ethereal. _{and i’m probably the only chick he knows who would have sex with him with that song playing in the background and appreciate it like he would!! ha!!}

I told Mr. Yes about the returning PTSD symptoms and EMDR treatment (eye movement desensitization and reprogramming). I was nervous telling him because he’s so calm that I thought he might not understand and I tend to dismiss what happened to me as not “real” trauma.

He held my hand, listened, nodded and said it seemed like a good idea. Nothing dramatic, but I felt absolutely supported. When I said I wanted to be done with all this, he said, gently, “I don’t know that you really get done with something like this.” He’s better able to accept that than I am! He wants me to be happy, whatever it takes. The way he looks at me, with such obvious love and desire, is the best anti-anxiety medicine I have. No matter how much my stress tells me that I’m going to drive him away or something bad is going to happen, being with him, even talking by text, soothes me at a soul-deep level. He keeps showing me how much he loves me. It’s powerful. Very powerful and very steadying.

As some of you have read, I dated someone briefly for a little bit over a month, and it seems to have completely dissolved. He went away to a yoga retreat and communication really broke down, and when he got back things didn’t go well, and now it seems like he’s not speaking to me. Anyway, I’m curious to write about it using the ‘list’ and see what comes up.

1. Single and available to spend a lot of time with me, lives close by.
No. He lives in another state. I realized that long distance relationships can be possible though, if people have some kind of ‘infrastructure’ to make it work. I talked with a friend who is moving to Japan to be with his girlfriend who he’s been in a ldr with, and he said early on they set ground rules so that they could help the relationship work as well as possible. That’s why I didn’t rule things out when he said he was going back, and one of the reasons why I. and I lasted so long even though he was in China was because we communicated by phone or Skype several times a week.

2. Artistic, creative, imaginative.
Yes. He seemed to be. He is very literary. One of the things we did together was reading ‘the Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ and a Murakami memoir together.

3. Curious, self-educated, knowledgeable.
Yes. We had great conversations, and he was also very complimentary of my knowledge and insights. I enjoyed the flattery!

4. Handsome, strong, healthy.
Yes. He is a good looking yoga instructor. Looks a little like a surfer dude, actually. Not really my type typically, but it suited him.

5. Sexually compatible with me.
I don’t know. We only kissed, and nothing hot and heavy.

6. Humorous, respectful towards me, gentle, accepts me, comfortable to be with, honest.
Humorous, respectful, gentle, comfortable, when things were going well. He was pretty short with me in our last conversation and instead of talking things through, he’s currently being silent. I am not sure about honest. He has three grown kids, but never mentioned them on our dates. I thought that was a little strange. I knew about them because when he gave me his card, I read his bio on his website, and he writes about them on there. And it made me a little nervous that he never mentioned them. Why wouldn’t someone talk about their kids?

7. Spiritually compatible with me, open to personal growth.
I am not sure. He is really into the yoga lifestyle, and I don’t know much about it. We are both Eastern spirituality leaning, but I am also in Alanon, and love the community aspect of it. I think his spiritual path is more solitary.

8. Musical
Yes. He told me he plays guitar and harmonica, and he likes to dance.

9. Likes my cats.
Yes. He loves cats. I’m sure he would love mine.

10. Well-traveled or wants to travel. Curious and knowledgeable about the world.
Yes. He lived in Asia a couple of times.

Anyway, so that’s that cookie. So he had everything going for him, except for his out of stateness, his secretiveness, and his way of dealing with conflict. Also, the fact that he won’t talk to me kind of rules him out.;)

Also, my therapist suggest changing number 6 to ‘relationally compatible’, which would include all the nice things and even more that I forgot to put in, like conflict resolution skills, willingness, openness, honesty, etc. I also think I need to take a break from dating and do a bit of self-examination. Some things came up during this last week or two, and I really want and need the time to take a look at it.

Mr. Yes and I were driving to my house after dinner and I said something about how unbelievable it was that we’ve been dating nearly a year. He kind of shrugged. I joked about how I’d usually panic at the year mark. Having been in a three year and a sixteen year relationship (more than half his life!), he didn’t get it. He asked me why I felt that way. After telling him that the conversation was making me hyperventilate, I told him.

The longer we’re together and it’s still good, the more it’s going to hurt if something happens, specifically if he dies.

By that point, I was near tears and having trouble breathing, so we let it go. I hate feeling this way. I want to enjoy him as long as we’re together. Everybody dies and no one knows when. But my hyperawareness of how painful that loss would be is hurting me now, when everything is good. Obviously, it stems to my husband dying at 35. It’s all well and good to realize this thinking isn’t useful, but how do I stop? (As a side note, is there anything more annoying that someone telling you to ‘let go’ of a thought, as if you wouldn’t do that if you could?!) ^{I originally typed that as “die note!”}

I hadn’t realized how much it scares me to grow closer to him, how fear has been simmering under my surface thoughts about the two of us and the future. Perhaps acknowledging the fear and anxiety is a first step to releasing it.

Perhaps I need some outside help.

but I think the point of this goal is to learn from my dating experiences so that I can be smarter and smarter each time and know what I prefer. I’m mulling things over. It’s an interesting time for me now. I., who was not a good match for me but was constantly in touch, is gone for good now, and T., who was here briefly, but showed me an example of someone who would be a more ideal person for me, seems to be gone, too. After stopping in at my work after being out of touch for ten days due to a retreat in another state, he has continued to be withdrawn and I haven’t really heard from him since then except to talk briefly and a bit uncomfortably. And, much to my disappointment, I didn’t see him when he was here.

I learned that I really like a person who stays in touch, and is in touch consistently. T.’s behavior really confused me. He communicated really consistently in the beginning, but at his retreat he disappeared, and I was confused why he seemed to lose the ability to communicate even at the end of the retreat, and in the couple of days he was back here. Although when he visited me at work he was very affectionate towards me, he seemed to avoid phone contact with me, and I took it as a decline in interest. Although I don’t think he ‘owed’ me this, by any means, I felt like I was left hanging, not knowing when he’d be back, when we’d see each other again, or if we wouldn’t, and I just think it would’ve been the kind thing to do.

In contrast, although I. was constantly irritating me with his fantasies and ideas, he called me a lot, and let me know if he’d be out of range and when he would be back in range. Somehow we were able to maintain a relationship while he was bicycling for three months through Chinese mountains in this way; by constant contact. Maybe I was spoiled by this. If someone can do this from distant China for three months, someone who is in New Mexico for a much shorter time can probably send me a text message every couple of days. No?

Lesson: Observe the flow of communication. Seek out reciprocity. The first stages of a relationship are important, and it’s best to communicate with kindness and care. When communication breaks down in the beginning, it can impact the most fragile stages, so if the relationship is important to you, stay in touch.