[Bruce's_Mom]

So why is it that men can affect one’s feelings so negatively…I haven’t been a regular poster for sometime so it may seem weird for me to be sharing something so personal, but I am at work and just trying to do something to avoid either vomiting or sobbing as this is a new job…Here is the story.

I have more or less been with this guy for about 4 years. It has been on an off because he has had this wonderful pattern of breaking up with me anytime something significant in my life happens particularly if it is good or if I do not conform perfectly to his ideas of how I should be as a girlfriend…Some history is needed:

We met in law school, and I was pretty much instantly smitten with him. Basically we start spending all our time together and things move pretty quickly. A month into the relationship he reveals to me that he has gone and slept with his exgirlfriend and he is sorry. I decide I can get past it because things were just developing at the time so it was not like he was really untrue to me…Never the less I have a difficult time trusting him and some issues develop…Then our first finals period comes up, he has a nervous break down and calls me at midnight the night before our contracts exam…I drop my own studies rush to him, get him through the night, after which things improved for a while…Then we are on break and he promises that he will come to my family home for Christmas Eve, he just never shows. I am hurt and cried things went down hill. By January he is skipping my birthday to have drinks with friends, and when I get upset about it he emails me a long letter detailing how I am too difficult to deal with and he just cannot handle me anymore…We still have to see each other everyday, so we sort of get back together…Then he dumps me again because we were going abroad separately for the summer and he needed to be free.

I go off to Paris, am enjoying myself and getting over the relationship he is in South America. My parents receive a call from a very drunk and hysterical Brian professing his love for me and begging for my phone number in France. My mom refuses it, but agrees to pass on the message. I get a call on my cell while I am fall down drunk (not the best time to get word of an emotional situation) at a club in Barcelona, it is my mom and she explains that she spoke with Brian and she believed him to be sincere and gives me his number in Argentina…I call explaining that I am doing well, he breaks down and gets me all emotional. He calls me in France everyday after that…I think wow this guy must really care for me if he is going to run up $3500 in phone bills to talk to me. We reunite at the airport in the United States, we are inseparable for 6 months…Then he starts withdrawing…He begins not showing up for significant events for me and uses excuses such as “I have to move a couch for my mom, she really insists” or the more frequent “why do you care so much” sometimes there is no attempt to make any excuse at all, like at my birthday that year…The next day after he skipped my birthday I take him out to dinner and as I am dropping him back off at his house again he just says I cannot do this anymore, goodbye…

In spring I get a job with a rather prestigious law firm and am very excited, the catch is I will have to spend 2 months doing work in Alaska. He hears I will be leaving for the summer and there he is soooo in love with me again…He talks the talk and walks the walk, and there I am right back there with him…The catch this time is he has assured me that he has not been dating nor been intimate with any other women, but when I go by his apartment the night before I leave to Alaska he has a large number of condom wrappers in his bathroom trash…I question him about it and he comes up with an outrageous excuse…I decide no way am I dealing with this again and leave to Alaska. There I meet a really nice guy who is going to be attending graduate school in Seattle the following year…We begin dating and sure enough I get the call…It is Brian he loves me, he confesses he lied about being with another woman (which to this day I do not think I got the whole story on) but it is me he loves, and he is insanely jealous that I could be dating someone else…He shows up in Alaska a week later…We get back together…

Our final year of law school passes, he again skips my birthday, refuses to go to any of my family functions, has a number of emotional crisis I have to get him through, skips a reception at which I am receiving an award, etc...Throughout this period he complains excessively that I am financially better off than him so what do I do buy him a new wardrobe and take out an extra credit card to purchase a trip for us to Argentina because he spent the entire year going on and on how nice it would be to go back there before our bar exam…

Graduation comes he ignores me and my family at our graduation ceremony. Then later becomes enraged when I am late to HIS graduation party. The next day, exactly one week before our nonrefundable trip to Argentina he calls me…The conversation goes like this “Allison I cannot go to Argentina”…I think something is wrong “Is everything okay we have been planning this trip for months?”…”Everything for me is okay but I just do not want to be with you anymore” Click…So needless to say I am crushed, I literally spend a week in bed crying and unable to eat…I have to pull it together to study for the bar though so I rely heavily on friends and begin to trudge through…During this period his family is sending me really nasty and hateful myspace messages for some reason…Sure enough 2 weeks before the bar he starts contacting all my friends saying he is worried about me, really cares about me, etc…As a result I call him and try to take a hard line and tell him I need him out of my life. This is where he turns the “I love you so much, I have been an immature fool” routine on real thick then he sucks me back in…

After the bar our relationship gets markedly better, and everything is going fairly well…Until my birthday rolls around again and he skips my party again. This time because his mother needed him to watch her dog…I got upset and I finally just came unglued on him…The next day he shows up at the house of my friend that I was house sitting, before we are supposed to join a group of friends to watch football playoffs mind you…He is running late so I try to rush out the door to go meet our friends…He just sort of blurts out “I am moving to Atlanta in a month, just so you know.” Again I am crushed, oh but here is the kicker…He tells me he still loves me, wants us to work something out, etc…So we decide that we will try to do a long distance thing a little while and see what happens, we jointly make plans for me to go down and visit on his birthday right after he arrives. A week before he calls me and tells me he has to be doing this on his own and I should not come, if I do he will not be seeing me while I am there…I go through the heart brake again…Then as sort of a rebound thing I began dating this other attorney I knew and we were getting along well…Sure enough there Brian is again with a tale of how wrong he was, how wonderful I am, etc sucking me back in.

I go down to visit him after a couple months of daily 4 hour telephone conversations. We pick up where we left off, we are in daily communication, talking seriously about the issues between us, or so I thought, and I purchase another ticket to go down and visit over labor day…Oh wait, suddenly he is too bush to talk to me for 5 minutes on the phone…His communications with me are very platonic in nature…He still gets jealous and yells it me if I have even professional contact with the other attorney I had been seeing…Yet he has been spending every single evening with his neighbors having dinner, going out till 1am to bars, etc…Now the neighbors are 1 gay man and 1 single gal…He would have me to believe everything is just platonic and he is mainly interested in being friends with the gay male…AM I A COMPLETE IDIOT?

I am afraid the answer to that question is YES! I have done everything I can for this man for 4 years, I have put up with horrible treatment, I have continually dropped whatever I am doing for him, I have let him ruin things that should have been happy times, and allowed him to make me feel bad about myself when I should have been proud. Still here I am completely devastated because the bottom line is I love him so much and I will never be good enough for him. I have devoted myself to something so completely and it is like I failed…I just feel horrible because my heart is broken, I feel like a fool, and no matter what the reality is he does not give a rats a$$ about me. Then I also realize hey I am not getting any younger and I sure pick winners, I may die alone and that adds a new feeling of weird desperation to it. I wasted my last years of not having crows feet on this guy. In sum, never be the fool ladies or you may end up devastated…uggh…