If You're Under Him, You Ain't Getting Over Him in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of HAPPINESS

It’s been SO long since I’ve written, I quite frankly don’t have the energy to back track to get you all where I am from there…so I’ll just start from where I am.

Today, I stepped COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone, and cooked a meal for someone (spinach and ricotta stuffed shells with parmesan and mozzarella and focaccia garlic bread) who I have been completely nervous to cook for. This person is very specific in his likes/dislikes and what he eats, so I’ve always been hesitant to cook for him because I am not a natural born chef and it’s nerve wrecking when you’re cooking for someone who is so GOOD at cooking and is so into things being homemade versus “processed”… I have a really huge CRUSH on this person. We were dating at one point some months ago.

Anyway, so I went to his house with the hopes of having some kind of “talk” with him to share my true feelings for him. This has not worked out for me the 7 billion other times I’ve tried to have these conversations with him. He’s not an emotional person. He’s not open with his feelings in the same way that I am. In one of our most recent arguments, I told him that if he had any romantic feelings toward me at all that I didn’t know. I don’t see it, and I certainly don’t feel it. He was offended of course and said that that wasn’t true, and then he went on to explain things he’s done or said that I was supposed to magically make the connection that those were his romantic feelings toward me. This person is super complicated. I would be better off forgetting him. Our communication styles are completely different, he’s disconnected from showing emotions…he’s completely opposite of me. We have so many miscommunications because I cannot read him and socially, he doesn’t respond or react as a “normal” person would to most things. He grew up in a dysfunctional household, and with a mother who never quite connected with or nourished him, so he doesn’t GIVE love the way that I am used to receiving it. PDA makes him uncomfortable. When I like someone I want to be all over them, whereas for him, this type of thing makes him uncomfortable. The long gazes I like to give for no reason other than the fact that I like staring at them, makes him uncomfortable. Everything I know about making a connection with someone doesn’t necessarily work with him.

When I talk to him, I sound immature and unconfident. I feel like an inexperienced child who has no idea what she wants next to him. Some of that is the way that he spins conversations or says things like “you have to be confident”/”you have to be yourself”…which is funny because I AM confident. I’m also socially awkward which is not synonymous with not being confident.

Anyway, so he was extremely happy about the food and surprised because we’ve been hanging out practically this entire school year (our daughters are in the same class at school) and I’ve never once cooked for him. Even when we lived at his house for a while (long story), I never cooked or offered to cook because I feel like his expectations are so high that it just makes me not want to try. I’m sure he’ll hate the food and that’s not because I don’t cook stuffed shells well, it’s because I OVERTHOUGHT IT and ended up over seasoning my sauce (TOO SALTY) and I realized that I forgot to put actual GARLIC on my GARLIC BREAD! I’m embarrassed honestly, but I figured it was better to do it and surprise him and follow through with it than to waste it. So I took it, and ended up staying over there for like 2 hours talking. I tried to have the talk about my feelings for him. Our relationship has been rocky due to those things I mentioned before. This hasn’t stopped my actual feelings for him, but I have had moments where I’ve been like “I don’t want to be his friend”/”I want to be Friends with Benefits”/”I don’t want to be friends with benefits”/I don’t want to talk to him ever again”/”I miss him and want to be his friend”…it’s very weird and I’ve never had this type of feeling about anyone ever. I really should be putting this energy into myself honestly because just thinking about it, I realize it doesn’t sound good.

It’s like I’m caught in between, going after what I want and truly trying to work through it and communicate in a way that I’ve never been asked to do before or to just LET IT GO and say it’s not worth all of the energy that it’s taking.

He’s AMAZING at putting his foot in his mouth and sometimes saying things unintentionally that really just makes me want to go the other way.

I have never in my lifetime encountered a situation like this. I have STRONG FEELINGS for this person, and when we’re together and on the same page, we’re unstoppable, but because he’s socially VERY different than anyone I’ve ever dealt with, I struggle with UNDERSTANDING HIM and having the ENERGY to figure him out all of the time. It’s a CONSTANT lesson of learning him.

I left his house feeling like maybe I shouldn’t have gone over and opened my mouth at all. I should have kept my stuffed shells to myself and just let this feeling PASS.