Drama, drama, drama

[NOTE: This post has a moderate dad warning. I'd say orange.]

So, as many of you know, the RWBF and I have been going through a rough patch for a couple of weeks now. Actually, "rough patch" is a silly, stupid euphemism. Mainly, I've been super pissed at him off and on, interspersed with nagging annoyance at him, interspersed with missing him intensely. How's that for a recipe for disaster? Meanwhile, he's been typically oblivious . . . sometimes, I am convinced, deliberately so. Such is the stereotypical, drama-filled, completely unhealthy dynamic we've managed to establish at this, the dreaded 5-month milestone in our relationship. Yay, us.

Several times over the past few weeks, I have come THISCLOSE to breaking up with him. When I have time on my own to think, which I've had quite a bit of lately, a thousands reasons why nag at me incessantly. The whole politics thing. The fact that we have almost nothing in common. His job and his obsession with it and the overwhelming machismo that defines his industry and has irrevocably rubbed off on him. The fact that everything about me is foreign to him as well--he's never dated a liberal before, either, or a feminist, or . . . anyone remotely resembling me. My perception of his romantic life before me centers on a string of "Housewives of Orange County"-type women, except even worse--more like "Housewives of Cleveland." One of the things that first attracted me to him was his insistence that he was completely bored with the kinds of women he'd been dating and wanted to meet someone totally new and different and challenging . . . and that was me, and it WAS new and different and challenging, for both of us. For a while.

Now, though. . . .

The problem with "challenging" is that it seems to be directly correlated to the physical relationship. As long as the latter is fantastic, the former is exciting, and can be kind of a catalyst for everything. But when the initial chemistry starts to burn itself out, "challenging" can quickly become something else--annoying, frustrating, infuriating. Too much to deal with. A definite reason to break things off.

And thus have I resolved myself, a few times now. Most recently, last weekend. First, a little background--for the past three weeks or so, we really haven't seen each other very much, mostly because of his job. He's been traveling a lot, and when he's been here in town, he's had clients to entertain. (This situation in and of itself has been a point of contention, as you might suspect. I'm not going to get into all of that, though--suffice to say that it's one issue of many.) Anyway, last weekend he was going to come over on Saturday night, and we were going to talk. And I was going to bring up . . . everything, including my increasing feeling that we should just rip off the band-aid and be done with it. But then, he got here, and we hadn't seen each other in several days . . . and it was Saturday night, after all, and it seemed stupid to waste a weekend night together arguing endlessly, toward an inevitable result that neither of us was quite ready for, and . . . well, we didn't talk. I can't deny that there's a certain benefit to going a while without seeing each other, which I don't think I need to spell out.

So, here we are, a week later. I haven't seen him since he left last Sunday morning. He was in Indiana and Cleveland for most of the week, and then we got hit with the great blizzard of '08, which complicated things. Once again, I've had a week to let the creeping doubts seep in, and by last night I was once again fed up. I had one of those horrific nights when I was just obsessing, thinking about him, getting angry and upset, and totally determined to NOT call him or respond to him until I was firm in my decision to just break it off.

So this morning he texts me at 8:30. I don't respond. He texts me again at 10:00. I respond, but not in an overly friendly way. He immediately calls. I don't pick up. He leaves a message, wanting me to call. I don't call. An hour later he calls again. Again, I don't pick up. He doesn't leave a message this time.

So, can you guess what happened next? I called him, of course. Drama, drama, drama.

He's coming over tomorrow, and we've renewed our plan to talk. But of course, once again, we haven't seen each other in a week. How much faith do I have in my resolve?

I'll let you all guess.