Ganb8te 3 - conquering crow pose

[gan]

Well then. 1.23hrs. That's a record for us since BD (x 2 or 3). It wasn't fun but it was the most authentic. The low down:

+1 Ganbatte for suggesting somewhere new (after we arrived, he specifically said he wanted to go somewhere new). Cool place. Hardly recognizable from outside. H found the actual door. And that's why I love him.

He gets the first round and says "you can get the next one." Huh? So this isn't going to be as quick as I expected.

Small chit chat about work, family, his travel plans, etc. He seems agitated from the get go (almost like first time we saw each other after BD) so I try to relax for us both. Did I mention I went to yoga immediately before and focussed on my breathing on the way to our meet up? I mentioned that I was shocked to learn the news about his best friend (open heart survey to remove a benign tumor). He was surprised that I knew about it. To which I said I had spoken with his wife and sent a gift but they had not acknowledged it so I'm not sure if I stepped over the time. He said it was kind of me and that they should have acknowledged it (interesting).

At some point he asks about my plans for the holidays. I say that I'm going back to my parent's place tomorrow and that I was trying to organize a last minute trip to Cambodia after that but it fell through (true) so I'll probably just go to Uluru (Ayers Rock) or the Daintree (rainforest, far north Australia) instead (true). After a little bit he asks who with. I was probably too quick to say "by myself" and so I backed it up with "group tour" (there are single males, not that I'm looking ;-) )

At some point he goes to the loo and gets another drink and returns to say "I'm sorry. It's nice to see you, I'm just frustrated." Why are you frustrated? Long pause. Did.not.interupt.his.chain.of.thought. He explains that this is not what he imagined - me going on holidays by myself and "not that he thinks things should be different" but just that it makes him sad.

More chit chat. He's still doing yoga twice a week. As am I H, three to four times a week. My goal is to conquer crow pose in the next month ;-), and last night I did my first inversion! Heck maybe I'll even go to the upcoming yoga retreat…there's a band playing that we both liked at one of the music festivals we went to a while ago. He's seen the ads. Consciously trying not to get into R talk. He goes to the loo again. We talk about him renewing his visa (easy - phew) and the siege in Sydney.

Eventually he calls me out on making small talk. I say that I was hoping tonight would be fun. He says "maybe some day we'll get together and it will be fun…" but something to the effect that tonight was not that night.

…after some good PMA and self control, the rest is a bit of a blur as I was in tears and he was borderline (in no particular order):
- he was definitely the first to bring up R talk, after I resisted for a long, long while
- at some point he says something alluding again to the fact that he's still sad, to which I responded: "Well I'm dealing with that by going to a therapist, doing yoga, doing mindfulness meditation, and lot's of reading….I came across a good book that helped me understand some of the things that went wrong in our R." He says "I'm doing all those things, too" (therapist, much?) and *literally* says "Maybe you can text me the details (of the book)"
- he says "People don't change"
- he says "You're an amazing person" but "You're not a good match for me" "I'm not a good match for
you"
- I sorta conveyed what I said in my letter but with much less finesse :-( I said for the first time we seem to be on the same page (things weren't going well) and that before I didn't understand he was so unhappy. To which he said something like "How sad is that". I refrained from saying…we'll it ain't like you communicated that very clearly!
- he says "let's meet in February" (one of my goals for the evening was not to suggest that we meet again, which I didn't)
- he says he doesn't want to sit here and cry so makes a move for the door…at which point I say no, he's not going to leave me here, wait for me to finish my drink (ugh...that goes way back, he used to do this and it used to irk me and so I stated my boundary thinking how it would need to be for our new R…but it was probably too early, so my bad. But he stayed…)
- he calls me "hon" at some point on the conversation
- we hug at the end (first time since BD)
- he walked away to catch the bus and was looking at his phone…not reading into that

… … … … … …

Intense. Friends, this is not someone who has moved on. He is someone who can't see us being together in the short term. I am clearly under his skin but he can't see that things could be different if we both committed to the such.

Please help.