I briefly mentioned a man I met online many months ago. That was when we discussed meeting each other in person in September.
Well, the much awaited September meeting came...I got home last night...so sad now.
He wrote to me in April, all the way from (you guessed it) Belgium. I told him what an impossibility. He suggested I kept an open mind. He told me he is 57. (I'm 45). This man is amazing intellectually and I found myself so infatuated and even in love. The correspondence was not without a hitch. He is somewhat eccentric and difficult, but I figured I had to wade through it just to see what he is like in person. He sent me two pics: a close up shot (he looked OK in this one), and a distant shot with his dog. This one he looked old but still OK. during the correspondence, he made reference to something he did professionally in 1971, which I found impossible, because he would have been only 16 yrs old. I asked how old he really was. He didn't answer.
He told me he would pay for airfare and hotel. He ended up only sending me 500 euro, and only after I reminded him. After some time, told me he would give me 300 euro more when I get there. But he changed his mind too and came up with some lame excuse that I didn't deserve to get the rest of the money. It's not much considering everything else but still it's the principle.
OK, long story short, fastforward. I arrived in Brussel. He came and we rode the train together to Antwerp where he lives (35 miles away). As I already suspected, he's much older and looks it. But I didn't let on any disappointment. I found out later he's really 69 (as I have suspected).
He is bad-looking for a 69 years old. He's heavy with a pot belly, sparse white hair. I kept a nice attitude. After all, I've traveled 4000 miles. We've made deep connections in the five months. He's still the same person inside. This indeed was true, after the brief initial awarkness, the conversations quickly picked up. Everything else seemed to check out. I went to his house and was quite impressed with his open and spacious house, sparsely furnished except for the books. He struck me as a an eccentric intellectual without much regard for outward appearances.
A very major problem, besides the appearance is his difficult personality. He got upset very easily and would ignore me as a punishment. I can elaborate more, if you need to know, but in order to keep it short, I would only say, we planned to take short trips and do some sight seeing but because I "forgot" to call him, the plans was canceled. I was in Belgium 8 days but could only count a total of 2 1/2 full days when he actually had fun together. When we get along, it's nice. There's definately romance. The rest of the time, I was left alone in a strange city and worst of all, not knowing whether I would hear from him again. Had to apologize for doing this wrong and that wrong.
I took off two days to go to Germany to visit my cousin, which took away from our time together but on the other hand this occurred after he got upset and ignored me for an entire day.
The last day, which was tuesday, we got along well, but even though his house was only about 6 miles (and the hotel where I stayed was in the midpoint) from the airport express busline he didn't want to drive me to the bus (which I would take to go to the airport).
I found this very strange and can't understand it myself. While I'm embarrassed to be seen with him, there's an attraction physically and emotionally. I kept running over scenerios in my mind how embarrassed I would be to introduce him to my family and colleagues.
But in the end, I think it would not work out, because of his age and at least as important his personality. I'm tired of being ignored and blamed. Constanly walking on eggshell because this man has big ego and he's never wrong.
I'm so sad now. I kept trying and trying and nothing works. Might as well give up.