It's time I came clean...

I broke up with a guy who called himself my boyfriend a couple weeks ago.

Coincidentally, he shares his name with The Guy, so we shall now refer to him as The Old Guy. Now, this name may be extrememly hilarious to those of you who knew anything about The Old Guy, but I assure you, the name has nothing to do with the fact that he is 15 years older than me. What can I say? I have an eye for older men. I tend to steer clear of younger guys, just as a general rule, so I guess, in the back of my twisted mind, the opposite of a younger guy is a much older one... but his name merely has to do with the status of the relationship between him and myself. Old.

Anyways, we had been semi-dating for three months. He turned out to be everything that I don't need right now.

Here's a little backstory:

I met him back in November of '05. Basically a week after I got pregnant. I was in a play at the time, he came to see it and we double dated with another girl in the cast afterwards. He came up the next day as well with a beautiful bouquet of flowers for me. Only thing was, I had another friend coming to see me that night. (The one from a few posts back that I won't be speaking to anytime soon...) So, The Old Guy traveled for work and I'm an 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' kind of girl, so we just kinda fizzled out. I did feel it was really that big of a deal, but apparently it hurt him really badly. He deleted me from his inbox and I started dating the other guy.

Well, back in May, I was going through my old e-mails, looking for something specific when I found an e-mail he had sent back in '05. He's a nice guy, has a great sense of humor and I started to wonder why I hadn't talked to him in so long. So I sent him an e-mail:

Hi The Old Guy,

I came across an old e-mail from you today, one of the first, if I am not mistaken. It made me smile. Hope you are well. Would love to get together sometime. Maybe catch up a little bit. It would be nice to see you.

~Me~

We went out to lunch, it was fun, we had a few dates, a few dates turned into going out as regularly as possible and eventually he met The Baby. I was not ready for him to meet her, but she ran outside when I opened the door to come in after he dropped my car off (he took it to get the oil changed and put some kind of coating on the windshield and got new wipers - all of his own accord) and there he was. So I let her say, 'Hi.'

I believe that was the begining of the end. I told The Guy about The Old Guy. I had to tell him because I would want him to tell me if he was ever going to have some strange woman hanging around My Baby.

I tried to limit contact between The Old Guy and The Baby, but he really wanted to spend time with both of us, so we went to a movie together. It went well, but I realized that I might not be able to handle someone else trying to steer my child to being better behaved.

The Old Guy then started talking about how he was glad that we fizzled out before because he wasn't ready for anything serious back then and how glad he was that I had contacted him in May. He started saying how he was finally ready to settle down, get married, have kids. Oh dear, I know to most women, that's like a glorious and melodious songs spewing from a mans lips. To me, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard, like the screeching tires of a car coming to a sudden stop.

I felt that I was leading him on after that. I couldn't shake the feeling that this 'relationship' was all wrong. I mean, I couldn't stand the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend', and we had been dating for three months. That's not a good sign.

So I broke it off. He took it well, so I thought. Then he started writing. Now, he had written before, but it's just unsettling to keep getting letters in the mail after you've already broken up with somebody. Especially when these letters are written on pretty green stationary with butterflies and flowers with matching envelopes.

Then came the long e-mails. He started therapy and he would write to me about how his therapy sessions were going:

Subject: Good therapy session

"You,

First,I'm not expecting these letters to change things.

Second,I'm not expecting you to reply to these letters. I'm not even expecting you to read these emails.

I enjoy communicating, and I'm writing these emails for me. If you want to read them, then that's fine. And I'm certain that these letters will cease soon anyway, so minimal worries on your part."

Ah, thank you for giving me permission to read my own e-mail...

I received this first e-mail the day I found out that my good friend/mygood friends grandmother had died. I have now blocked his e-mail address and will not be getting any more of his e-mails. As much as I wanted to, I did not tell him. He doesn't know that I'm not getting his e-mails, so if they are helping him, then thank God for that cause he needs all the help he can get.

At one point while we were dating, I got mad at The Guy and his family and, in the midst of a vent, said to The Old Guy, "Well maybe I just won't invite them to the birthday party then! *harumph*" He took me as being serious and from then on was expecting that he would be at the birthday party instead of The Guy and his family. I tried to let him down easy, I thought he took it well. I was wrong.

I got a letter in the mail a few days later. Essentially he wished that I would have called him during the birthday party (that I had already been stressing about) and while we were at the Aquarium the next day with The Guy. Just so that he would know that I was thinking of him.

AH - I'm tired of writing about him. So, in short, he turned out to be very needy and insecure and in need of constant validation for his actions.

All things that I don't have the time or the patience to deal with in a man when I am already dealing with them in toddler form.

*whew*

I feel better.