Hi folks. Lots of things to report, backsliding on my part (though largely unknown to S., thank goodness)… The Green Monster (and I’m not talking about Fenway Park!) took me over and I had a bad reaction to something S. was doing with a F colleague that I thought he was lying to me about. As it turns out, I did NOT show up coincidentally – thankfully, H2H over e-mail, and the good MF I went out with last night, largely talked me out of it. In the end, it was good sense that won over (I knew I shouldn’t be doing it from the very beginning).
Here’s the scoop: Last week, I saw an e-mail he had forwarded to himself from work, inviting him to a party hosted by friends of the F colleague. He doesn’t forward e-mails to himself unless he wants to record them in his laptop at home. Later in the week, he told me he was going out with this F colleague that night (no mention of the party) “to help her with her finances.” I thought it was odd that finance night had been planned so far in advance (also that a colleague would do something so personal as to show him her finances), and the reason my mind went straight to the party in the first place is that this woman is in a music group with a “sexy trumpet player” that S. asked out on a date while we were split up. My crazymaker thought he was lying to me in order to go to the party, so he didn’t have to invite me and feel awkward in front of this sexy woman.
OK, so if you’ve made it this far, you know there are about 50 ASSumptions in the above 2 paragraphs. As it turns out, S. really *was * helping F colleague, and it was brief, because he leaves work at 8-8:30 and at 10:10 he called my cel. phone to tell me he was on his way home (I had invited him to meet up with me and my MF). Since I was in the subway and didn’t get the call, I called him back around 11 and he was already home. We chatted for a few minutes, and he sounded happy to talk to me, and asked if me and MF were “in the neighborhood,” because he was going to meet us if so. But because we weren’t close by, S. told me to come over after I got home, and said good-night for now. I went over when I got home, and S. was very sweet and happy to see me.
Stupid, stupid me. L So I wrote to H2H that I had learned a lesson – not MY lesson but A lesson nonetheless. She wrote back (reprinted with permission):
Quote: Again, I'm glad you didn't go […] Now, more important than that whole event - what effect will this 'lesson' have going forward? What can you say has or may change as a result of this 'experiment'? I'm trying to make you go beyond recognition of the lesson, and actually incorporate it (do something) into your R. By everything I hear about [S.], I think you've got quite the guy there... love, nuture, and adore him. You'll get the 'wrinkles' out of him along the way...
I told her that I already knew what to do, and I hope I do. Maybe you guys can help me figure it out better than my old pathetic mewling self can at this low moment.
My plan is to take this “surprise” that I felt when I found out S. had NOT lied to me, the surprise that he is actually on the up and up (DUH!), and turn it into genuine admiration, to recognize that S. is respecting me, that he doesn’t always get it, but that he is trying very hard. And act accordingly, which means give myself over to the R and TRUST again.
Another thing that happened this a.m. illustrates his effort: We have theater tickets for Tuesday and Wednesday nights next week. He works at a major news organization two nights a week - Thursday and Friday. Yesterday he was begged by the paper to come in on Election Day, and the day after. Well, he said he had tickets and they asked him to come in after the theater on ED, and he said yes. He also said yes to the next day, meaning that he would be running straight from work to the theater to meet me.
He sent me an e-mail immediately from work, stating the change of schedule and saying he wanted to let me know ASAP. At first, I pulled a 180 and wrote back, “Hey, thanks for letting me know! Bummer not to watch the election results come in together, but our hero is needed in the trenches and I understand.”
But this morning, I could not keep my fat mouth shut, and started a conversation about how they should have asked him way in advance, etc., that got us into a conv that ended with him saying “I feel like you’re questioning my judgment… etc.,” and I took a deep breath and thought for a minute, realizing that it DID sound that way, and said I was sorry, etc., and I didn’t intend to, and that where it was coming from was that on a personal level it would mean a lot to me to hear from him that he was bummed about having to rush back and forth on our planned evenings out, and that I just wanted to hear that it mattered to him. A conv. about that ensued, whereby he wouldn’t budge an inch and wouldn’t EVEN say that it WASN’T IDEAL (he kept saying over and over that we hadn’t made any plans around the theater, so it was OK, completely ignoring that we USUALLY go out to dinner before or after, and saying that it wasn’t a hardship for me so he wasn’t going to apologize for it), and finally I said, “It sounds like you are telling me that what I want to hear is wrong, that my needs somehow are wrong and that I shouldn’t need them.”
Whereupon he thought for a minute and backtracked all the way and said “I’m sorry, I guess it does sound like I’m saying that, and I do want you to know that I’m sorry I have to work those nights, and you’re right, it does interfere somewhat with our plans.” and THEN, he invited me to come into work with him on Tuesday night and hang out in all the excitement of a major newspaper and watch the election results come in. I was thrilled!
So sometimes, we manage to communicate. It took awhile, but we actually ended up hearing each other. I would never have been able to do that 4 months ago. I just need to work on reining in my crazymaker more.
