August 1, 2024
He could have this friendship with anyone.
The more I think about this, the more it’s so odd. This piece comes most readily to mind:
So, it seems the relationship he would have wanted to have with me was just shooting the shit. You know, what’s going on at work, how’s family, is Dump going to win the election? That’s all he wants to have.
But you can have that friendship with anyone. You don’t have to have it with someone who made it very clear they were in love with you, you could tell them anything, who would have bent over backwards to make a sexual relationship work with you, who clearly wanted to take you away from all this and be a major threat to your marriage.
I know this guy has other friends he can have these kinds of shoot-the-shit discussions with, and by his own admission, he only saw those folks once a month or so, and maybe talked to them on the phone now and then. If that’s what he wants, he can just see those folks more and have that relationship with them. He doesn’t need the person he almost walked out on his marriage for to do that.
I can only see two explanations here:
1.) He really is just fine with how things are. He’s going, “Self, I want to stay and help my family, and I’m choosing to stay in this marriage with these limitations in order to be with the people I love and continue to help them, and that makes me happy enough and I’m really, truly, honestly okay here and my needs are met enough that I’m not resentful about it and this is cool.” And he really just didn’t realize how his behavior was going to look to any reasonable person. He really is just sorry for me, and that’s the end of it.
or
2.) He wants that friendship with ME because I was there for everything deeper he ever had to say that he couldn’t tell other people, and he knows I would have been there for him in every deeper way, so there’s way deeper emotional support there than would be coming from anybody else, and although he doesn’t actually want to avail himself of all there is to offer there because it isn’t socially acceptable and he would have to assert himself and put his foot down with family and renegotiate those relationships, it’s a way of getting what he can from this one without making everyone else upset. (You know, that “everyone else” who lives behind an emotional veil and can’t really be shared with and hasn’t touched him or had sex with him since 20-fucking-16.) And he’s just being passive-aggressive about it. And, most decidedly, not on the up-and-up. This way, he also gets to put the blame on ME for being inappropriate.
Who’s really being inappropriate, here? And who’s really not being fair?
The fact is, I will never know. Communication has ended, and it’s probably for the best. The subtext of these emails? Dubious at best; Not Good at worst.
The fact is, it’s not my job to determine what’s going on with this person. It’s not my job to figure it out. It’s not my job to straighten out anyone else but myself.
“Myself” reads the words, “I can’t offer you anything but friendship,” and just gets the sense that that’s inappropriate, so it’s on me to sail on out.
He has other friends. Why does he need to do this with the one person who’s made it elaborately clear she would have done anything to make a real romantic partnership work with him?
He’s either quite emotionally clueless … or he’s even more emotionally clueless.
In either case, there’s nothing here for me. So, I stay away, and make my life work with whatever there is. I don’t have much, but, like him, I will make it do.