After he sent me the music video link, I simply sent him one text telling him ow much I enjoyed it then let it be. I figured he would tell me more when he was ready. So this afternoon I received this text from him:
"I sincerely tried to spare you my mercurial spirit. My apologies for not being a decent person"
Now- I know that's vague as heck and without context hard to understand. But from what I know of him, he's probably saying that he stayed away from me because he didn't want me to be hurt by his inconsistent moods and felt that it was better for me if he disappeared. He tends to be very hard on himself, has bad depressive episodes, and because of a complicated childhood and poor past relationship history, he tries not to get too close to people - all things that I absolutely knew up front and was fine with. Poor guy - I feel bad that he thought I wasn't up to the challenge of being his friend without expectations - I always have been.
Anyway, it's nice to get an apology and to hear he's alive. Poor guy. I'm glad I kept letting him now I was here as his friend.
Thanks, kml, you inspired me to shoot a message to Ms. Woodnymph which got a <3 and an update she's alive. I think it helps people in hard places to know somebody out there cares. Good for you that you kept writing SpaGuy, knowing his ghosting was about him.
Well, now Spa Guy has sent me one of his love poems. (For a guy without a college education, he's quite brilliant, well-read and good at many things, including poetry). I can't tell if this is a new one, or the one he sent me many years ago, which I have somewhere in my keepsakes I think. Not necessarily one written about me, although I never know with him.
I know it means he's missing me and having fond feelings about me. That's nice to know.
For background - he's a SUPER Love Avoidant, if there is such a category. I think he lived with one woman one time in his adult life and it ended quickly with someone throwing the other person's belongings off the balcony! But as my BFF once said to me "Love Avoidants need love too" and I never doubted that his affection for me was sincere, even if he did his best to keep me at an extreme arms length.
Some might view him as a "player" but he's actually a guy with way too tender a heart. Getting too close to someone means he could lose them - and he's had some terrible traumatic losses in his life. So he manages to get his needs for intimacy and connection met with multiple non-monogamous "friends with benefits" type relationships.
I know it sounds like I'm making excuses for him, but on the weekends I did visit him, he was as attentive, open, kind, and interested in me as any lover could be. Just too terrified of hurting or being hurt to go any further than that. And like I've said, since he is self-aware and was clear from the start, he never hurt my feelings.
In a way, it's reassuring that he still sounds the same - after worrying about him over this long ghosting period, I feel reassured now that he's not fundamentally changed in any bad way.
And I can say, I count myself lucky at this age to have a few past lovers-turned-friends who still send me music videos and jokes and chat once in a while. It helps the loneliness of this year to have that male energy in my life. And to receive a love poem at this age - well, it's a great bonus.
A couple more text exchanges with Spa Guy. Note, it's not the normal kind of "how you've been doing? I've done X, Y, and Z in the last 4 years since we talked" kind of conversation you might have with a typical person. I'm just sitting back and letting him take the lead. My longtime friend from these boards, Survival Goddess, calls people like him "Shy Woodland Creatures" and I'm being careful not to spook him.
Honestly, although it would be nice to have a weekend "Spa Visit" with him sometime, I'm also perfectly okay with just being friends who chat about movies and music. I'll admit though, I was trying to figure out the other day how long I've known him. It's somewhere between 10 and 12 years. In that time I had a 5 year relationship with crazy ex-BF and 3 1/2 year relationship with CMM, so I only saw spa guy before and between those relationships. But part of me now feels like "Dang! He should have taken advantage of getting to see me more often in between relationships - what was he thinking?? Such a waste!" Lol.
Mostly I'm just happy to know he's okay. I don't need anything from him so whatever he offers is okay with me. I could make an exception to my "no dating for a year" for him, because I feel like he's a known quantity and not really a normal "date" (as in, not knew and not with relationship in mind). But I'm in no hurry either. And if I'm correct in my previous internet sleuthing, he's moved to the desert and I wouldn't want to drive there until the weather cools off.
My BFF says I'm a "secure attachment" type, and that's why I don't struggle with relationships like this. I know it wouldn't be for everybody. And really, since my divorce, I feel like everything is just gravy.
And really, since my divorce, I feel like everything is just gravy.
As time passes, I think that I'm veering that way myself.
I had what I thought was a decent marriage. It's over. I have a new life where I know that I am not "needing" to have someone else in it even though intimacy and companionship would be nice.
It's like the ancient philosopher Sir Michael Philip Jagger once opined "You can't always get what you want But if you try sometime you'll find You get what you need ...."
Mind you, later he also says "I saw her today at the reception In her glass was a bleeding man She was practiced at the art of deception Well, I could tell by her blood-stained hands"
It's coming into "cuffing season" soon - perhaps you are getting that itch.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
"Cuffing season"? No, not really. I'm far from wanting a new relationship yet. But that does make someone like Spa Guy look more attractive at the moment - someone who is already a known, if erratic, quantity. Someone who would only be available for an occasional weekend of fun, but who also won't expect anything from me or make any demands on me. Guaranteed good sex. It's been almost a year without sex and I do miss that physical intimacy with someone.
I'm too busy the next couple months to even contemplate visiting him anyway, so if he did extend an invitation, he would have to wait a bit. It's a 4-5 hour drive to where I think he lives now, depending on traffic, and would take up a whole 3 day weekend to be worth it. (Although still much easier than the 11 hours I used to drive to visit my first post-divorce boyfriend!!!)
(And why wouldn't he visit me, you ask? Aside from the awkwardness of my eldest son living with me, and Spa Guy's preference for his own fastidious digs, I'm not sure he could comfortably sleep at my house in my queen bed. He's 6'5", broad shouldered, muscular - fit but just BIG. His king bed just fit the two of us. To think my exH and I shared a little full mattress for most of our married life!)
Interesting comment in a Wired article about Date Me docs: " “Good romantic partners are difficult to predict with data. Desired romantic partners are easy to predict with data. And that suggests that many of us are dating all wrong.”"
Update on Spa Guy: We continue to have a smattering of text conversations. One of which was about the fact that he has legally changed his name! (No, not to Tiffany - phew!).
It's kind of a non-slave name, which I can respect - but also one that is a bit strange. It kind of took me back - like maybe he's a bit weirder than I remembered? Or then again, maybe he just got bored during the pandemic. He wasn't working but was volunteering delivering meals to the elderly during the worst of the pandemic. But lives alone and maybe had too much time on his hands?
I also had the sorry duty of informing him of how social security works, and that his full retirement age won't be at 65 (as he thought) but at 67.
Just good reminders of other reasons why he was only ever just "Spa Guy", and why I was okay with that.
