The Boy and I have been together for almost 2 years now. In that time, he's given me the whole "I don't know what I want" bullshit twice. The first time, toward the end of last school year, I flew off the handle and more or less broke up with him - I'm not sure he accepted that, because a few days later he acted as if everything were normal.
But there was this guy at work that had been flirting with me pretty hard - he's pretty playful anyway, so it was hard to know for sure - and he asked me to happy hour the next day right after The Boy had his little commitment glitch, and I said yes.
Bob and I started dating. Now, I had already told The Boy, "Fine. You don't know what you want? Then go out and see if you can find it, and so will I." And I was upfront with Bob from the beginning, and told him about The Boy and what was going on. Bob said there was no reason for us to rush into anything, anyway. So that was good.
Even after The Boy started acting all normal again, things got better for awhile, but the sex thing was still an issue. My drive is out of control and The Boy could probably live the rest of his life without sex ever again. There are certain things he will not do and he's pretty conservative about sex in general. I'm a freak. I admit it. So we weren't having sex.
Bob and I, however, continued to see each other, and the sex was phenomenal. I told Bob that although I was still seeing The Boy, we weren't sleeping together, and I wasn't going to have sex with more than one person. He said he was okay with that, as long as I was always honest with him. I promised that I would do that.
Somehow, our principal found out we were seeing each other. She asked Greta, a co-worker who happened to be my best friend at the time, to tell her how serious we were. Well, I hadn't even told Greta. She was going through all kinds of problems with fertility and she didn't need to hear me whine about my relationship drama. Greta answered honestly when she said she didn't know. Then she called me and I told her that, yes, we were going out on occasion. Greta got very upset with me, told me I was being a total bitch for stringing Bob along, and on and on. She didn't seem to hear me when I told her about being honest with both of the guys and the full deal.
She also mentioned that my principal had it out for me, and she was totally against colleagues dating and that she would do whatever she could to get me out of the building if she thought it was going to be a problem. It wasn't ever going to BE a problem, because he works on the other end of the building, he's in a completely different section, and he teaches a totally different content. We literally never see each other at work unless we make it a point to do so.
But Greta kept putting pressure on me, making me feel bad about myself and my choices. After all the problems I'd had with my principal over the year, I was a little frightened that my situation was going to get even worse if I kept dating Bob. I discussed this with him often and, even though we'd both confided in a couple of people at work about us, we eventually decided to take a break before school started, to kind of feel things out at work before we decided what to do. He seemed to me like he was getting a little too serious too fast anyway, and that scared me.
About three weeks after school started, I emailed Bob at work to ask him to return a cooler he'd borrowed over the summer. I gave him the option to just drop it off on my porch or put it in the bed of my truck, but he gave me his number again and said we'd work it out.
That same night, I got some vile, hateful texts from Greta, telling me how much of a liar I was and how I was so selfish, that I'd never stopped seeing Bob. Now, how in the HELL would she know we'd been in contact again? I know. My principal had been monitoring my emails and then reported back to my "friend," Greta. I tried to explain to her that I hadn't been talking to him at all, that I was just asking for something he'd borrowed months before, but she never would reply. That was in October, and I haven't spoken to her since. I figured if she wasn't even going to believe the truth, after being my friend for 6 years and having me as a bridesmaid, then fuck her.
Bob insisted on delivering the cooler to me while I was there, about two weeks after the email. We lounged on the couch and talked for about 3 hours. We decided to get back to the dating thing but we also decided we would keep it private from people at work because neither of us needed the problems. He keeps joking, even now, that he stole me away from my best friend, and I keep telling him that she's the one that caused us to end our friendship, not him.
So The Boy and I are still seeing each other and we're still not having sex. He's not a liar, and I know where he is pretty much every minute of the day. His dad was a liar and a cheater and I know with all my heart that if he weren't happy with me, he would just break up with me before he would ever cheat on me, so that's not it. If he were interested in seeing someone else, he would just tell me so. He's a good man like that. But he's also mildly Autistic and has a tendency to be extremely selfish. His back-and-forth with the "I don't know what I want" crap is him feeling like it would be easier on him if he were just alone.
His business is failing and he has to get help from his mother every month to make his mortgage and taxes. He took a job offshore and was gone 14 days at a time. I couldn't handle it. I missed him so much. This was before Bob and I even started dating. I had to find a way to be okay with being alone all the time and I had to find a way to deal with the fact that he was okay with being gone for two weeks at a time. Eventually he quit because he couldn't do whatever he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. Throughout all this time, The Boy has been trying to find alternative ways to earn income.
He started to put together some products we use in the racing stuff, and it's starting to pay off. But I also get maybe twenty minutes of conversation with him a day and, even on the weekends, I don't see him much because he's so wrapped up in working on this new thing. He's also extremely insensitive with the things he says - like, no tact - and my doctor says that's part of his autism. Nice, huh?
And, here we go again, with Stillie learning to be alone but wishing I could do things with someone important to me. Bob and I have been spending more time together. I've met all his friends, I hang out with him and his mom and aunt, we take his aunt's awesome Borzoi on walks, he introduced me to the best place to get authentic Chicago-style Italian beef in the whole city...we're having a good time getting to know each other better.
Today, we had this conversation. It started off something like him saying, "I know you see a psychiatrist and you were very honest with me about how you're working through some of your issues, so here's me, learning to work through some of mine: I'm going to be better at communication, so let's talk." We discussed our relationship and he told me that he was totally committed to me and had no desire to see anyone else. He wanted me to understand that his schedule is busy (i knew that), but he loves spending time with me and says I make him very happy. He said he's ready to get a bit more serious.
In the meantime, The Boy seems to be trying to keep a distance from me and put distance between us, and it almost seems as if he's fallen out of love with me, even though he says it pretty often. Reminds me of that song, "Love Done Gone" by Billy Currington.
Wow. So, anyway, I'm not sure what the point of all this was, except that while The Boy does everything he can to pull away from me, I've got another guy who's actually interested in doing the opposite. I'm not sure what's going to happen.
I have a lot of decisions to make.
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