I need advice.
This business with Michael is becoming too stressful and confusing for me to handle, and with a week left to make any changes before it is just too late to alter our plans, I am crying and pacing instead of sleeping (in spite of a nightly high-dose trazadone-diphenhydramine cocktail) and having a fairly major bulimic episode. I'm so tense, even my kitty won't come near me. I am pathetic. At the same time, this isn't even mostly my fault.
The original idea was to sequester ourselves in a hotel room and not come out again until it was time to get him to the airport. This was to be primarily an intensive exploratory introduction/sexual compatibility meet-up. For the record, that was his plan, not mine, I was scoping out places to show him around town until he informed me that if everything went as hoped, we would not be leaving the room at all. I was okay with this, being quite interested in him. Until that started to change, thanks to the woman he is staying with in Seattle having insecurity issues about sharing him with anyone else on the continent during his trip. (Maybe, for all I know, he has lied about that, too. Comments have made me doubt everything he's said.) I told him that if our meeting was constrained by a third party with no standing to interfere, he could skip Portland entirely. Allowing someone else to place boundaries on our interaction was, and remains, a deal-breaker for me. He whined and fretted about it but eventually assured me that they had come to an agreement and it would not be an issue.
The problem is, I don't believe him. Ever since then, he has been really squirrelly about the whole meet-up subject, where he was, frankly, almost aggressive before. I have tried to calm his nerves, have gone to considerable lengths to make sure he was comfortable and wasn't feeling pressured about anything on this leg of his trip. In spite of this constant reassurance, he has gotten progressively more anxious and evasive about our meet-up. There came a point where he became so perplexingly distant and opaque, I very nearly severed all contact with him. The only thing I can think of to explain this erratic behavior is that he is lying about or covering up something, and it is causing him significant distress. Perhaps there are other issues, he certainly has a lot of problems, but I keep coming back to the overwhelming feeling that there is something very important to which I am not privy.
This isn't the only thing he is being secretive and twitchy about, but it is the one that keeps me awake nights, because it is a huge extension of trust on my part.
If I were not paying for the room, this might not be such an issue. I would still be anxious, would still feel like this was unsafe terrain, but it would not be costing me very nearly every penny I have. That is not a small consideration, to be blunt. There is some process or some dynamic in this that I am missing, and it feels awful. A very large part of me wants to say, "fine, if I'm going to be lied to and used, stay in Seattle, I can find so many better uses for $260 than wasting it on someone who can't be honest with me." In fact, it might yet come to that, if nothing changes between now and this time next week. That is sort of my deadline for canceling the hotel reservation. I'm not really sure how that might change, since he has been fastidiously avoiding me online since his, "I've arrived, must sleep," comment a few days ago. I am admittedly curious just how long he will keep that up, but when it comes down to a day or two from the do-it-or-screw-it deadline, I will have to be the one to initiate contact to find out what is going on.
I don't know what to do. A non-trivial part of my brain is screaming at me that I should just call it off, tell him to not come down, there are too many gigantic red flags here. But another part of my brain is screaming equally loudly that I would be making a terrible mistake and would regret it for a very long time. I hate this.
I'm going to try again to sleep.
The original idea was to sequester ourselves in a hotel room and not come out again until it was time to get him to the airport. This was to be primarily an intensive exploratory introduction/sexual compatibility meet-up. For the record, that was his plan, not mine, I was scoping out places to show him around town until he informed me that if everything went as hoped, we would not be leaving the room at all. I was okay with this, being quite interested in him. Until that started to change, thanks to the woman he is staying with in Seattle having insecurity issues about sharing him with anyone else on the continent during his trip. (Maybe, for all I know, he has lied about that, too. Comments have made me doubt everything he's said.) I told him that if our meeting was constrained by a third party with no standing to interfere, he could skip Portland entirely. Allowing someone else to place boundaries on our interaction was, and remains, a deal-breaker for me. He whined and fretted about it but eventually assured me that they had come to an agreement and it would not be an issue.
The problem is, I don't believe him. Ever since then, he has been really squirrelly about the whole meet-up subject, where he was, frankly, almost aggressive before. I have tried to calm his nerves, have gone to considerable lengths to make sure he was comfortable and wasn't feeling pressured about anything on this leg of his trip. In spite of this constant reassurance, he has gotten progressively more anxious and evasive about our meet-up. There came a point where he became so perplexingly distant and opaque, I very nearly severed all contact with him. The only thing I can think of to explain this erratic behavior is that he is lying about or covering up something, and it is causing him significant distress. Perhaps there are other issues, he certainly has a lot of problems, but I keep coming back to the overwhelming feeling that there is something very important to which I am not privy.
This isn't the only thing he is being secretive and twitchy about, but it is the one that keeps me awake nights, because it is a huge extension of trust on my part.
If I were not paying for the room, this might not be such an issue. I would still be anxious, would still feel like this was unsafe terrain, but it would not be costing me very nearly every penny I have. That is not a small consideration, to be blunt. There is some process or some dynamic in this that I am missing, and it feels awful. A very large part of me wants to say, "fine, if I'm going to be lied to and used, stay in Seattle, I can find so many better uses for $260 than wasting it on someone who can't be honest with me." In fact, it might yet come to that, if nothing changes between now and this time next week. That is sort of my deadline for canceling the hotel reservation. I'm not really sure how that might change, since he has been fastidiously avoiding me online since his, "I've arrived, must sleep," comment a few days ago. I am admittedly curious just how long he will keep that up, but when it comes down to a day or two from the do-it-or-screw-it deadline, I will have to be the one to initiate contact to find out what is going on.
I don't know what to do. A non-trivial part of my brain is screaming at me that I should just call it off, tell him to not come down, there are too many gigantic red flags here. But another part of my brain is screaming equally loudly that I would be making a terrible mistake and would regret it for a very long time. I hate this.
I'm going to try again to sleep.