bluecastle

Yeah, I’d say you’re in the Land of Overthinking with the name stuff. He plays softball, he’s made a new friend, he ran it all by you best he knew how—and, hey, was far more interested in hanging with you and your family. I think that having faith and having talks can coexist, each offering clarity to the other, instead of it being binary.

I'll share a story. Maybe it helps, maybe not. About three months into dating my girlfriend—"dating my girlfriend" to connote that we hadn't given it the official stamp yet—she came over, we caught up about our days. I mentioned that I'd had a drink earlier with a woman. I didn't know this woman too well, so let's call her a "maybe friend." We'd met through work around the time I met my gf, we're both newish to this city, have friends in common. In my mind—and, I believe, in this maybe-friend's—that drink was nothing more than that: networking, community-building. She was aware I was serious about someone, because I made that clear, just as my girlfriend was aware this woman existed in some peripheral capacity in my life—the fellow colleague I'd met at that thing a while back. Anyhow, a few days later my girlfriend brought it up. Her wording was almost identical to yours in bold: she would not participate in a date-like event with a man I didn't know. Didn't dovetail, for her, with being in a relationship and creating a space in which a relationship can keep blossoming, deepening. She didn't sound hurt or judgmental or threatened or disrespected, because I don't think she was any of those things. In fact, I think she said another thing nearly verbatim that you wrote above: that she knows she can get hung up in thinking that just because she would handle something a certain way it doesn't make it right, or mean another person, doing it differently, is wrong. She was simply telling me about how she operates. Didn't ask me to change, didn't put it in the context of what she "needs," none of that. It was just us doing the thing that I hope to keep doing for a long, long, long time with her: getting to know each other by sharing who we are, building an operating system from two well-matched, but of course different, operating systems. That conversation was maybe 15 minutes. It has never come up again. I have not gone on a date-like event with a woman she has not met since, and I am a zillion percent fine with that. This moment was not a "bump" in our road, a "thing" we now "work on," a quiet "tension" in an otherwise glittering romance. When I play the gooey tape of all the moments when I've known I'm falling in love with someone and connecting at a frequency I didn't quite know was possible—well, that one stands out right there with all the other obvious gooey moments. Truth is, I'd be okay with her doing the same with a man I hadn't met—that's my operating system, or at least the state of my operating system when I met her. But do I "need" to be able to have those drinks, in exactly that context, to remain "me" inside a relationship? Do I need that to be something someone is cool with? No, I don't. I took a moment to ask myself this, because I'm not interested in shaving myself down to an inauthentic shape for the sake of coupledom or some strained version of partnership—and I know my girlfriend wouldn't want that either. She adores me, I adore her. She just wants me to be me, but she also wants to be able to be herself, alongside me, with me. So no, I don't need that. And not just to make her "happy" and "secure" and show her my adoration. More to the point: I think her operating system, in this respect, is better than mine, more evolved, more conducive to the type of connections I want—with her, of course, and more generally. A drink like that—harmless as it was, fueled by zero shady motivations—was perhaps a holdover from some younger, less evolved me who could see only two steps ahead instead of four or six. So you could say that in sharing that little piece of herself—which I'm sure took a bit of bravery on her part, which of course just added to my respect for her—she helped me evolve, a hair, into a better version of myself (which of course just made me more excited to been with her and keep building this thing we're building). Again, this was 15 minutes, maybe half that. I would not call it "a talk," so much as another extension of our compatibility, the effortlessness we enjoy, both in going with the flow and guiding the flow, just a touch, through honesty and intention, when needed. Knowing that we can not just go with the flow, but adjust it with grace—well, swoon. With another person, with a different tone, at another time in my life, perhaps it would have landed differently. But my girlfriend—and I get the feeling you share these qualities—is a self-possessed, independent-minded spirit. She knows I have lots of female friends, and that I connect well with women. I know she has lots of male friends, and connects well with men. That's a non-issue. We've met lots of these friends, we go out with them—together, separately. For her—and I get it—it was just the slightest difference, but one she found important enough to vocalize. I know her to be someone who chooses those moments carefully, who is not one to react quickly to clumsily to a slight spike in emotion. I'm rambling here, aren't I? I recognize what I'm describing is a relationship very much in the early stages of formation whereas yours has some deeper roots, but I think it's important to have these moments—early, later, throughout. Probably I'm saying that I think there is a way to talk about this—one where, just going from the vibe I get from you and the vibe I get from you two—will only be positive.

Interesting thread this one is turning into. For what it's worth, I don't think the specifics of his marriage are really important: not how long they've been separated, not the fact that final papers have yet to be signed, not the fact that he didn't get a certificate from the One Year Single School, not the "lifestyle change" that set all that in motion. All of that stuff can be small potatoes, thorns to pluck and calmly discard as they surface. Different strokes, different folks. I think the question here basically is whether this is a "wobble" or whether dude is simply more wobbly, on a deep emotional level, than he initially seemed. Verdict is still out, and I don't want to ring the big alarms. But what I'm seeing here leans more toward the latter. He was gung-ho quick, twisting the throttle all the way. Always intoxicating, that, but often a sign that someone is running away from something (unresolved feelings, a messy situation, pain, etc.) as much as they're moving fast into something. Emotional unavailability, in short, dressed up as the opposite. How do you know if it's the opposite? Generally when someone starts tapping hard on the brakes and saying things like, "My life is a mess right now." Were there signs of this before the wobble? Certainly sounds like it. The "clashes" about time spent together, for instance. I'm not sure those were really about you wanting x amount and him being cool with y, because of a difference in natures and temperaments, but you sensing a lack of equal enthusiasm and presence on his part. Were you a different poster, I'd be reaching for the cord in my back that, when pulled, spits out some aphorisms about anxiety, self-soothing, and the beauty of respecting different natures. But you strike me as pretty with-it and cozy in your own skin, which makes me think your intuition was spotting something: wobbles, basically, before he came right out and said he was wobbling. Or, put another way: you were wobbling a bit, and with reason. My read on this guy is that he really, really wants to be emotionally available but isn't, and whether he's ever known what that feels like is hard to say. He stayed in a relationship, according to him, that had long ceased to be a relationship; not only that, he married her. All that is the behavior of someone whose emotional pipes are clogged, someone with some skewed ideas of commitment. If he wants to blame her boomerang sexual awakening for things ending that's his business, but to me it's the easy story. He gets to be the good, loyal, commitment-prone guy—the guy he first presented as—rather than the guy you're right now very much wishing he was and hoping he'll prove himself to be: a man who made a number of emotionally dishonest choices in his past, came to see that, reckoned with it, and emerged with clearer eyes and a more open and available heart. I'd say this is a really good moment for you to take a breath, remind yourself that it's only been six months, and take stock of how you feel. To ask hard questions like: How long have you been concerned, even during the sweetest moments of the honeymoon, about whether he is fully present with you? (I use that word "present" because I think it's something you can detect and feel pretty quickly, even while you're both leaning into full "commitment" at different paces.) How much of your emotional bonding has come from him dissecting his past relationship and talking about it in general? How interested does he seem in your emotional truths—who you are, where you've been, how you're feeling—that aren't connected to the relationship but simply the singular being that is you? Does he seem to have space to take interest in that—in the story of you as opposed to just the ways you help him tell a story about himself?

Are you the first person he's been with since his marriage?

I'm of mixed minds here. On one level, it sounds like you guys have something great and still promising. Aside from the obvious connection points—having a good time together, laughing, bonding, rolling around—you've been able to communicate about feelings in a way that is calm. Sharing and listening. Vulnerability. Sweet stuff. On the other, it sounds like a lot of that "openness" as been about his ex. Talking about pasts is normal, of course, but there's a fine line between telling someone where you've been and using a new relationship as a mode of therapy to process where you've been. The former isn't really so deep, because the wounds are healed, more facts being shared than feelings being flung; the latter can feel very deep, and seductively vulnerable, but the risk is you're making fragility, rather than strength, a bonding point, and in the process building a foundation on pain. A lot of "ex talk" early on, for me, just triggers an automatic emotional divestment; I wasn't always like that. New romance invariably stirs deep waters. I'm sure, for instance, that my girlfriend has had some thoughts and feelings, and will continue to have them, about her marriage since being with me—that being with me, feeling whatever she feels with me and for me, stirs them. But I'm "sure" of that not because she talks to me at length about how "intense" and "overwhelming" it is, but because that's kind of life, humanity. Falling for someone makes you reflect on that stuff, on past falls, past pain. The hope is that they surface as soft little jabs, easy enough to process, rather than sudden blows that destabilize. In your shoes, what I'd do is just slow things down a bit. Not in some aggressive way, and not through countless "talks," but just sort of accepting that this new information means pressing pause on the pace of emotional investment and observing for a bit. But make that your pace—not you going along with his pace—since there is power and security in that. Active vs. passive, compassionate (to yourself, him, and reality) rather than being confused. Let him process this stuff without being the go-to sounding board, without needing to have a "vulnerable ex talk" twice a week. That's a skill, and it's a good one to have. It's an illusion, after all, that two people are feeling the same things at the exact same time; the intoxication of the honeymoon stage is that it feels that way, of course, and it's always a record scratch when that myth is exposed, when a "wobble" comes along. But just as there is beauty in connection, there's real beauty in being able to respect moments of disconnection without getting too thrown. That's real vulnerability, the beginning of it. It's a reminder that you two are not "one thing," but two separate things engaged in a kind of dance and still very much learning if you can be good dance partners. A good dance isn't just two bodies pressed together stepping in the same direction, yummy as that feels, but a flow—being able to step forward and back, being able to stand still as another steps back or forward, and so on. This is a moment for you to stand still. Odd as it may sound, whenever I've had a moments like this—the early wobble of another person—I find great comfort in reminding myself that I will be okay if it doesn't work out. I was fine and alive before I met them, and will be fine and alive if I lose them. That's not coldness or a steel heart, but an ability to shore up your own emotional security rather than wait for another to plug the hole. I find it actually allows me to stay present, and genuinely open, rather than getting skittish and reactive and increasingly insecure. I think it's a good sign that being open brought out more calm and affection in him. Hopefully this was just a little jab, you know, rather than a dynamic. Time will let you know the answer to that, so just be a little still and let time do its thing.

Just end it. If he wants to look at pretty things on IG, he should do that. If you don’t want to date someone who looks at pretty things on IG, don’t date them. Sorry to be blunt, but if this is something that gets to you this is just so not the dude for you. You’ll find someone more on your plane.