9 years and counting - help
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| Sat, 05-01-2004 - 9:06pm |
Here's the deal -
I've known a guy for 9 years. We dated off and on all through high school, and it included dates to the Homecoming dance, dressing up and going out on majorly romantic dates to the beach, under the stars, dinners weekly with his parents.... In college I went to a sister's wedding... The thing is it's always been off and on... and it always ends before it can be something else, tho when we talk about it he refers to them as dates. He comes in and out of my life. We hang out and go on what I think are dates for about a month. He spends the night -- no sex -- but we cuddle... etc. Then he just drops off my radar. Anywhere from 6 weeks to 9 months later he calls me out of the blue - just when I've almost forgotten about him and decide to give up. It's always a surprise. He wants to talk for like 2 hours- and then go out to dinner -and go on a few dates - and then he disappears.
What I wonder is why he keeps coming back? Does he "need" me in his life but can't figure out why? Does he feel the same way about me but is just too shy or too respectful to cross the line of a 9 year friendship with obvious attraction? The guy has a key to my apartment & an open invitation.
This year he went to a Christmas party with me (an hour or more from where he lives) and spent the night. Then I didn't hear from again until the middle of April. We went to Disneyland, I haven't heard from him sense. Does he just get busy and not realize that a week becomes a month and a month might become a year? Is this worth waiting for? If I've never had the chance to tell him -- in person -- that I love him and would rather have him in my life sporadically than not at all, but for nine years I've been wanting to kiss him. We had many missed opportunities in high school because of all the nervousness.
Two years ago I learned he kept everything I've ever written him in a drawer and used to wait for me outside a classroom in high school - but I 'd go the other way and never notice him there. Is he just still fixing his wounded ego - and is he expecting me to say, look I love you, I want you, and I want you romantically? We're almost 24 -- and this has been going on for far too long.
I'm willing to wait -- I'd love to marry this man someday -- but it's been 9 years. Can I end this like Ross and Rachel do in the season finale?

You can not know what goes on in his mind and why he does what he does unless you have an honest conversation with him and ask him yourself. If he can't even bring himself to a face-to-face and honest conversation with you, you have to ask yourself if that quality is something you would want in a relationship.
You said, "The guy has a key to my apartment & an open invitation." Open invitation to what? You may have "expectations" of what that means but how do you know for sure that he is on the same page as you?
I find it unsettling...when you said that he "re-appears" whenever you feel like moving on with your life. Unsettling because his reappearance derails you and lets you keep wondering and asking questions you are now asking, without really getting a clear and honest answer.
You can not "fix him" -- ego or not. Just as you have a choice to wait for him (I personally don't understand why you would), he has a choice whether to take you seriously enough to make this friendship a romantic relationship. Anything less than that is a cop-out.
For all intents and purposes, in my opinion, he is NOT available to be with you, and he is, ONLY when it suits him. How does that make you feel?
This is *your* life, not a TV show. Whatever you choose to do is something that you will have to live with.
I know my life is not TV. I'm a writer and work in TV for a living so I think that way a lot. I'm a producer. I plan things, I think things through.
This is a person that even if his purpose in my life is just to show up every now and then and have a good time, I need to know that, or learn that, but I need to communicate with him because I'm a communicator for a living -- and in my world not saying somethign is just as guilty as saying something that is untrue. (And I'm guilty because I haven't looked him in the eye and said it hurts me that we don't communicate enough. It hurts me that we have a good time together, at least I do, and you dissappear off the radar.). I suppose it's a risk I take to lose him from my life forever if i say that, but it would be a lot better than going through life just wondering. Easier said than done.
Good luck.