Turned out to be a good weekend. Spent some time with Darcy and he surprised me. He actually apologized for his behavior and showed some emotion. Now I know what you are thinking. Especially if you are a male reader. You’re saying, “Wait a minute now. Don’t let him off easy on this. He really upset you.” Trust me. I get it. My guy friends are ready to string him up by his thumbs for making me a big tearful heap.
A couple of my closest friends have tried to tell me since I first started dating him to slow down, take it easy, and let it happen slowly and naturally. And I have not done that. Against my better logical judgment, I have rode it like I was beating a horse to escape Death. When a relationship is in its infancy like this, acting like “Devil take the hindmost” is not the wisest strategy. I’m aggravated because I knew better than to act like that and yet I did it anyway. It was like having my brain hijacked against my will. I’m not going to say I couldn’t help myself; I just wanted the temporary relief of reassurance. So I turned into the sadsack, needy girlfriend who wants to whine and cry and get guarantees every other day. Oy. No wonder Darcy was freaking out. Not saying I excuse his rudeness because I don’t. But he has apologized and shown remorse for it. For now, that’s enough. I want to forgive him and move on. He wasn’t communicating with me enough and I was being clingy and hanging too much of my happiness on him. That being said, if he behaves in such a squirrely manner again, it may have to be “get the fuck out and don’t ever come back.” He’s not perfect and there is no reason for me to act like he is the last chance for happiness in life. Just having the pressure off of myself is an immense relief. We had gotten away from being able to hang out and have fun. Everything had gotten so serious so fast. It was getting to be a buzzkill for the both of us. One day at a time. Less Bronte novel emotions and more objectivity. At any point—and I mean literally at any point—we could reach a dealbreaker in this. It’s so, so early on. One of my colleagues was talking about a client who’d flaked out on him before. He described the situation as, “Forgive and forget, but watch your back” and “Trust but validate.” Meaning: he wants to continue working with this client because they have brokered deals before but he knows he can’t trust that everything this guy says is Gospel truth. That’s it exactly. Darcy and I have had some good times. There are times when I really, genuinely enjoy his company and his affection. And then there are times when I don’t. When he’s on one of his soapboxes, oy vey. Make it stop, LOL. Or when he’s subjecting me to the driest public radio shows on earth and I want to pack my ears with cotton just to get away. His political viewpoints are often pretty different from mine and, honestly, I just don’t care. I’m registered Independent and I try to avoid the bullshit from the Republicrats and Demopublicans as much as possible. The horse may be different but all the horse crap comin’ out looks and smells exactly the same. (Just sayin’, LOL.) I want to get better at establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries here. If I’m tired and not feeling up to it, I shouldn’t go out with him. It’s better to go home and rest than be bad company. And the flipside of that is true, too. If I’m out with him and he’s not being good company to me, I need to leave. (He was very warm and attentive on Saturday. I wanted to spend more time with him than I did, but I felt like he needed some time to understand that if you don’t appreciate what you’ve got, it WILL go away.) Again, I know better than to go out on a date when I am mentally and/or physically depleted. And I know better than to stick around on a date if the guy is being dickish. Go home or go meet up with someone else, but don’t just sit there and put up with a sass-mouth. Men are sometimes better than women at understanding the importance of that. If a dude is wanting to sit at home in his boxer shorts and watch football without leaving the house, that’s what he’s going to do. But if a woman gets an invitation from her boyfriend, even if she’s exhausted or trying to juggle 10 other things that evening, she’ll try her best to go. Why do we do that crap to ourselves? You have the angel on your shoulder saying, “Don’t go tonight. Stay home and rest as you planned.” Then you have the devil saying, “If you don’t go, he’ll find some other woman who will and this will all snowball into him leaving you.” Well fuck that. If he’s going to do that crap, he’s gonna do it no matter what.
I like Darcy well enough to keep dating him. But I’m not even sure if I poppyseed love him after all this. I think the Darcy I poppyseed loved was the one I’d invented in my head. (Keane: “I fashioned you from jewels and stone, I made you in the image of myself . . .”) I need to get to know the Real Arsey Darcy and not Fake Perfect Darcy from Sara’s Brain. As I said in the last post, I had even put my rose-colored glasses on about his physical appearance. I feel like Peter Griffin when he was involved with the cardboard cut-out of Kathy Ireland, LOL. I’ve made Darcy into a cardboard cut-out of Prince Charming in my mind. Sadly, he is NOT Prince Charming. I bought a book last night called Maybe He’s Just An Asshole and I can’t wait to read it. I think it will be hilariously funny. I read the little sample on Amazon and laughed.
