Saturday, May. 24, 2003
Me vs. her Therapist, posted at 10:38 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com So I've been communicated back and forth with Michigan girl. It feels good to "talk" to her, but I'm not ready to talk on the phone nor am I ready to declare us friends again. I've lost a lot of faith in her, and, while there is miles and miles of compatability between us, there are enough gulfs to where it seems evident that things could never work out between us. There now seems an ocean and a continent in the space between our hearts in Baltimore and Michigan, with both of us mistaking the other one for backing off, with both of us hurt at different times. I still think that to any objective observer, it is much less my fault than hers - she decided to start dating someone else without telling me, she decided to air out her problems with me with mutual friends when I had no inkling the problems even existed, she decided to break off communication without telling me why or asking any questions. But a few of her points have been valid.I'll be honest, I feel a little steamrolled by a man I never met - her therapist. Actually, for all I know, it could be a woman. But she declares him an objective observer, and right away, I'm questioning this. I mean, she pays him. How can someone who you pay to talk to be an objectional observer about a relationship with a guy he's never even met? This baffles me, that she could even believe this. Then, she talks about all the healing she has done in recent months, which I guess is great, except that I totally feel like a victim of this healing. It might be better for her, for all I know, but it certainly leaves me out in the cold. And I'm not sure that this healed person - the person who starts dating someone and doesn't tell the man who, two months before, she told she was in love with for years - is one I want to be with, anyway.
I just keep coming back to this: Two months after ending a 3 year relationship with a good friend of mine, she expresses her true feelings for me and I concur and we have an incredible week. We decide to leave things as they are for a bit, let her be single for a while after six straight years of end-on-end relationships, and agree not to develop a long distance relationship, the pain of which neither of us could endure. I tell her in Michigan and then people back here that I could have found "the one" and things feel so right. Then, two months later, she's dating someone else. Now it's May - still less than five months after that week we spent together - and she stopped talking to me when she started dating him, didn't tell me about it, and we're left airing out our problems over e-mail months later. This, from a girl who was my best friend.
Perhaps I am not a good judge of character.
I'm still dumbfounded about how this could happen. But Boston Betty had a good point. She said, "This reminds me of Kathie Lee Gifford. She was shocked and devastated when Frank cheated on her. Well, I don't know why she would be surprised. He cheated on his last wife for months with her before he left her." She didn't have to connect the dots for me. Her tacit message was, "She broke up with her longtime fiance and two months later got together with you. Why are you surprised that, two months later, she starts someone else?" I thought it was a good, if sad, point. After I defended her a bit, she said, "Oh, I know you love her very much. And I don't think she does this on purpose. If she does, she's a bad human being. But I don't think it's purposeful. She's just confused and doesn't know what she wants. But just look at the bright side, that you escaped what was going on without it being worse."