Deja-vu

Well, I've not taken my own advice and have ended up in feeling hurt again.

I got involved with - well, I got pursued by - a guy who was married.  We met in January on a course and he started pursuing me in July, texting me when drunk, texting me when not drunk, e-mailing me.  I resisted because he has a wife and kids even though he’d already been seeing someone else for 6 months at the beginning of the year.  I didn’t want to be that kind of person.

Anyway, he left his wife a couple of months ago so I gave in.  Part of me knew what I was getting into but after all his overtures I thought it would last more than one night.  But that’s it – he’s gone quiet since.  It’s all so familiar to what I went through at the beginning of the year.

And how quickly I can feel as I’m about to topple over the precipice into depression.  It’s frightening. 

I feel hurt, rejected, gullible. 

I’m pretty sure that he’s seeing his ex again.  The signs are there and it’s my instinct that he is. 

I thought this would be more than one night though. 

Will I learn this time?

Things I have learned

I will be adding to this list as and when things occur to me.  But, having reflected on this most recent - and hurtful - experience, I want to take away something from it at least for the future.

- Never go out with a guy who has only just split up with someone.  You will, except in rare cases, be their rebound relationship.  If the relationship ended very recently, you are likely to hear them talk about their ex - their likes and dislikes will pop up in conversation.  I recall W mentioning his ex on several occasions now.  She liked this celebrity, she liked cooking, she liked X Factor (when I saw he'd got some recordings on his tv).  Yeah, ok, get over her. 

 - Never go out with a guy who avoids life by taking drugs.  He won't have time for you, unless you are into taking drugs too.  You might be able to get him off them but chances are you won't.  If you want to try, good luck with that.  Don't believe him if he says that he doesn't take all that much. He means, not as much as his cokehead sister who takes a gram a day. 

The avoider

So I realised today that he is an avoider.  The guy that I thought was so cool and sorted and together isn't as together and sorted and cool as I thought he was.

He:
- has avoided telling his ex-girlfriend that they are no longer together.  On Facebook, she still has that she is in a relationship with him.  She is still phoning him as much now as she ever did.
 - avoided telling me that our relationship was over by ignoring me, then sending me a stupid text that started off with 'Hiya (Hiya???), no I'm not seeing anyone else but I think that this may be unworkable because of schedules etc'.  Which was the worst excuse ever.
- avoided being on his own by joining a dating website a week or two after finishing a long term relationship.  He needed to think about what he wanted not jump straight back into a relationship with someone to try to fill the gap left by his ex.  
 - avoids facing up to life by snorting cocaine at weekends - and perhaps more often.  So much for being into fairtrade...the more I read about cocaine production and smuggling, the more I think that he is a huge hypocrite for fuelling the trade by taking coke and possibly dealing it.

Can he be on coke for ever and avoid thinking about what it is that he really wants?  Is he going to avoid thinking about the harm he's doing to himself with his chronic coke addiction. That's not good enough for me.

I think someone who needs that much coke to get on with life must be dead inside.

The effects of coke

It:

Dulls the senses
Uses up your dopamine receptors.  The brain only has a finite amount so after the high, comes the comedown.
Is a selfish drug.
Gives you confidence.

Things people have said that have helped

Gary - "He's damn well getting on with his life so you need to make sure you are getting on with yours."

Georgie (with contempt) - "He's just pathetic.  He realised he could have a grown up relationship with you and he panicked."

Janet - "Coke is a subtle drug.  You can't compete with it."

Sarah - "After a weekend with you, he realised he hadn't seen his friend Charlie all weekend and he missed him.  He knew spending time with you would mean making a choice."

Helen - "Perhaps if he stopped taking drugs and got to know himself a bit better, he might actually know what he wants."

Val - "He's heading for a fall."

Letting go

I'm in pain.  I need to let this pain go but it means letting go of him and I don't want to.

I suspect that he's barely given me a second thought since he finished it so I should do the same but I liked him.  It hurts to think that I meant so little to someone that I liked so much.

The hardest thing

The hardest thing is that I had really started to like this guy. When I was visiting him for the weekend, from the time I arrived on the Friday to the time I left on the Sunday, we talked and laughed non-stop. I'd told him about XN and I'd started to feel safe with him.

It's coming up to 3 years now since I kicked XN out and this is the first guy I've met that I've really liked. I was very guarded at first but then let my guard down because he seemed to like me and he was lovely when we were together.

I feel incredibly disappointed that something that I thought was going to be so good has gone wrong. 

How can we have gone from talking, laughing, having great sex, cuddling, feeling comfortable together, and walking along the beach with our arms wrapped each other to a week and a half later, him breaking it off?

That hurts so much.

On the Friday evening, we were sat in the pub, arms around each other, him giving me little kisses and saying that he was glad we'd cleared the air the week before.  

I still don't understand what happened.

I liked him.  

I'm disappointed.