Hello, all. I'm a lurker who's popping in for a bit of advice. I'm sorry for the length, this is going to be long...I have a lot to get off my chest.
My boyfriend (T) and I have been together for almost ten months. He is my longest relationship thus far, my first serious relationship, and I love him, and he loves me. We're no where near as far apart as many of you are from your boyfriends/girlfriends--a few hundred miles apart as opposed to a few thousand--so fortunately we are able to see each other every few weeks or so.
Starting in the beginning of July, we'll be living about twenty miles apart from each other for the next two months. Yay! However, in the lead up to those two months, we're still four hundred miles apart and I've been working as an intern for an art/theatre program that's held on a farm. One of the farm workers (A) has really, really caught my fancy. At first it just started as me being physically attracted to him in a big way--not a problem, obviously, as I believe physical attraction is okay as long as you don't do anything about it--but as I've gotten to know him a bit more and realized how much we have in common and how much we enjoy each other's companies, I'm ashamed to say that I've begun to really like him. Like...it's bad. I haven't wanted someone other than T so much since we got together. What makes it worse is a well-meaning girl I know on the farm, who had forgotten I have a boyfriend, wanted to set me and A up because she thinks we would go well together. And like, no matter how much I try not to think about it, I know that if I was single not only would I have gone for him a long time ago, there would be definite romantic potential there. The only thing that's kept me from making any sort of move is my loyalty to T and how much I care about him. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to me and A...there's definitely a spark.
Now, I'm not asking for advice about how not to cheat on T with A. That's not an option because even though (and I cringe to say it) I may really want to, I will not do it. There's no question regarding that. My question is more in regards to how I address this with T. I understand that the urge to cheat means that there's something missing in my relationship with T that my subconscious wants to seek elsewhere, and seems to be finding in A, and I spent a little time thinking about what I might feel like I'm missing.
Generally, me and T have a very loving and affectionate relationship. We care about each other deeply and connect in ways that I haven't really found with anyone else, and in many ways he's very much what I've always wanted from a guy. Often, he's sweet and wonderful and we just seem to "get" each other. We do seem to have one major problem, however, and that seems to center around our communication in a very broad sense. T is a very insecure person. He's also very troubled in a lot of ways, and stressed and confused and unhappy with the direction his life seems to be taking. He's told me several times that I'm one of the only good things he's got going right now. However, his stress and the things he finds annoying often lead to him saying things to me that I find very upsetting. Two examples of what I mean:
Example 1: This is on the very mild end of the spectrum. I tend to put a lot of hot sauce on my food. This "offends" him and he is "disturbed" by the amount of hot sauce I put on almost everything I eat. When he said this to me, I got upset and annoyed. He's free to not LIKE how much hot sauce I use, but there's no reason for him to be noticeably disturbed by it. It could be a funny thing--I like lots of hot sauce, he doesn't. Why's it such a big deal? Geez, it's just hot sauce!
Example 2: This is on the other end of the spectrum. One day, he and I had been having a discussion about his invitation to a family party of mine and how he didn't want to attend, how he's not keen on the idea of traveling to spend time with a bunch of people he doesn't know...whatever. Later that evening, along a dark country road, he and I found ourselves locked out of his car. Understandably, he was very stressed and upset, and we called my mother who was nearby who could come and help us out of the situation. So she's driving down dark winding country roads (something she's not used to) and asked T to call her every few minutes so she could see that she was still on track to our location. What she wanted was annoying and a bit much, yes, but it in no way warranted what T said in the height of his stress: "And you wonder why I want nothing to do with your family." I flipped. After I spent an hour calming him down and trying to stay positive cause he locked us out of his car, he repays me with THAT comment? I almost didn't come back with him to spend the night (our last night of the visit) because I was so furious and upset. He took it back, saying that he didn't mean it and had only said it because he was so stressed, apologized and made it up to me, etc. I told him that under no circumstances is that okay, no matter how stressed he was. He agreed.
And that's the problem, guys...sometimes he just...says things. Says things he doesn't really believe, things that don't seem very nice or true, and then when I react to them/become upset, he apologizes and takes it back and doesn't seem to know why he said it. A lot of this happens on the phone, during which he sometimes gets distant and says strange things because he's not a good phone communicator. A lot of it happens in person, though. I get upset, sometimes I cry, and he apologizes and feels awful and knows that he needs to work on all these things. We've talked about it a few times now. When he does this, I feel upset, depressed, lost, confused...I feel like I'm going crazy and I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I love him and we often have a wonderful time together, but these random outbursts of unkindness and apathy are not doing any good for my peace of mind. It's also gotten worse the last few months because he's been more depressed. We've been arguing more...I don't know what to do.
So now, ladies and gentlemen of LFAD, we get to the crux of my problem. Farm guy, A, is here on the premises with me. He's very kind to me. We have a spark. I will make no move because I love T, but T is being at turns apathetic, upsetting, and distressing to me at times. (When he's not being wonderful.) It's hugely distressing to me that I'm even feeling this way about T at all. I don't WANT to be! I miss, I guess, T's happiness...and I'm not about to just jump off the boat because he's depressed and going through a hard time, but the way he deals with it has been messing with my mind. It's led me to think that if this can't be fixed, if T can't work on how he deals with these things and what he says to me and have improved on it, it pains me to say that it might be a dealbreaker because there's no way I can live with getting upset like that every few days for the rest of my life. And it's sad, because we love each other and I see a lot of long term potential, but it's just this depressed, stressed side of him that makes me want to cry.
I tried to talk to T about this earlier but it didn't really work. I don't want to tell him that I have feelings for another guy because I feel that that would do more harm than good, but I DO want to communicate the important thing to him which is that meeting a whole bunch of new people recently has caused me to think about things very seriously. This was hard to get across and I think I just freaked him out. It doesn't help that he doesn't currently have good phone service and no Internet so we can't really communicate all that much.
I didn't mean to make this a long rant. Maybe someone can help me make some sense out of all this? Please...help.
My boyfriend (T) and I have been together for almost ten months. He is my longest relationship thus far, my first serious relationship, and I love him, and he loves me. We're no where near as far apart as many of you are from your boyfriends/girlfriends--a few hundred miles apart as opposed to a few thousand--so fortunately we are able to see each other every few weeks or so.
Starting in the beginning of July, we'll be living about twenty miles apart from each other for the next two months. Yay! However, in the lead up to those two months, we're still four hundred miles apart and I've been working as an intern for an art/theatre program that's held on a farm. One of the farm workers (A) has really, really caught my fancy. At first it just started as me being physically attracted to him in a big way--not a problem, obviously, as I believe physical attraction is okay as long as you don't do anything about it--but as I've gotten to know him a bit more and realized how much we have in common and how much we enjoy each other's companies, I'm ashamed to say that I've begun to really like him. Like...it's bad. I haven't wanted someone other than T so much since we got together. What makes it worse is a well-meaning girl I know on the farm, who had forgotten I have a boyfriend, wanted to set me and A up because she thinks we would go well together. And like, no matter how much I try not to think about it, I know that if I was single not only would I have gone for him a long time ago, there would be definite romantic potential there. The only thing that's kept me from making any sort of move is my loyalty to T and how much I care about him. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to me and A...there's definitely a spark.
Now, I'm not asking for advice about how not to cheat on T with A. That's not an option because even though (and I cringe to say it) I may really want to, I will not do it. There's no question regarding that. My question is more in regards to how I address this with T. I understand that the urge to cheat means that there's something missing in my relationship with T that my subconscious wants to seek elsewhere, and seems to be finding in A, and I spent a little time thinking about what I might feel like I'm missing.
Generally, me and T have a very loving and affectionate relationship. We care about each other deeply and connect in ways that I haven't really found with anyone else, and in many ways he's very much what I've always wanted from a guy. Often, he's sweet and wonderful and we just seem to "get" each other. We do seem to have one major problem, however, and that seems to center around our communication in a very broad sense. T is a very insecure person. He's also very troubled in a lot of ways, and stressed and confused and unhappy with the direction his life seems to be taking. He's told me several times that I'm one of the only good things he's got going right now. However, his stress and the things he finds annoying often lead to him saying things to me that I find very upsetting. Two examples of what I mean:
Example 1: This is on the very mild end of the spectrum. I tend to put a lot of hot sauce on my food. This "offends" him and he is "disturbed" by the amount of hot sauce I put on almost everything I eat. When he said this to me, I got upset and annoyed. He's free to not LIKE how much hot sauce I use, but there's no reason for him to be noticeably disturbed by it. It could be a funny thing--I like lots of hot sauce, he doesn't. Why's it such a big deal? Geez, it's just hot sauce!
Example 2: This is on the other end of the spectrum. One day, he and I had been having a discussion about his invitation to a family party of mine and how he didn't want to attend, how he's not keen on the idea of traveling to spend time with a bunch of people he doesn't know...whatever. Later that evening, along a dark country road, he and I found ourselves locked out of his car. Understandably, he was very stressed and upset, and we called my mother who was nearby who could come and help us out of the situation. So she's driving down dark winding country roads (something she's not used to) and asked T to call her every few minutes so she could see that she was still on track to our location. What she wanted was annoying and a bit much, yes, but it in no way warranted what T said in the height of his stress: "And you wonder why I want nothing to do with your family." I flipped. After I spent an hour calming him down and trying to stay positive cause he locked us out of his car, he repays me with THAT comment? I almost didn't come back with him to spend the night (our last night of the visit) because I was so furious and upset. He took it back, saying that he didn't mean it and had only said it because he was so stressed, apologized and made it up to me, etc. I told him that under no circumstances is that okay, no matter how stressed he was. He agreed.
And that's the problem, guys...sometimes he just...says things. Says things he doesn't really believe, things that don't seem very nice or true, and then when I react to them/become upset, he apologizes and takes it back and doesn't seem to know why he said it. A lot of this happens on the phone, during which he sometimes gets distant and says strange things because he's not a good phone communicator. A lot of it happens in person, though. I get upset, sometimes I cry, and he apologizes and feels awful and knows that he needs to work on all these things. We've talked about it a few times now. When he does this, I feel upset, depressed, lost, confused...I feel like I'm going crazy and I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I love him and we often have a wonderful time together, but these random outbursts of unkindness and apathy are not doing any good for my peace of mind. It's also gotten worse the last few months because he's been more depressed. We've been arguing more...I don't know what to do.
So now, ladies and gentlemen of LFAD, we get to the crux of my problem. Farm guy, A, is here on the premises with me. He's very kind to me. We have a spark. I will make no move because I love T, but T is being at turns apathetic, upsetting, and distressing to me at times. (When he's not being wonderful.) It's hugely distressing to me that I'm even feeling this way about T at all. I don't WANT to be! I miss, I guess, T's happiness...and I'm not about to just jump off the boat because he's depressed and going through a hard time, but the way he deals with it has been messing with my mind. It's led me to think that if this can't be fixed, if T can't work on how he deals with these things and what he says to me and have improved on it, it pains me to say that it might be a dealbreaker because there's no way I can live with getting upset like that every few days for the rest of my life. And it's sad, because we love each other and I see a lot of long term potential, but it's just this depressed, stressed side of him that makes me want to cry.
I tried to talk to T about this earlier but it didn't really work. I don't want to tell him that I have feelings for another guy because I feel that that would do more harm than good, but I DO want to communicate the important thing to him which is that meeting a whole bunch of new people recently has caused me to think about things very seriously. This was hard to get across and I think I just freaked him out. It doesn't help that he doesn't currently have good phone service and no Internet so we can't really communicate all that much.
I didn't mean to make this a long rant. Maybe someone can help me make some sense out of all this? Please...help.
Comment