Time and space

Tomas and I have agreed on spending less time together. Nothing too drastical, and substantially it doesn't mean our relationship should be any different, but it will create a time and space for introspection and evaluation.

In retrospect, the four days I had left and came back only when the dress had gone, have been an eye-opener.

We were moving too fast, and he needs more space. More than I do, definitely, but I need the space too to get myself straightened out and be the strong and independent woman I know I can be. No lesser version of me can deal with this relationship, or life in general (or at least not in a satisfactory way).


Rewind a week, when I didn't have the energy or the mindset to find words to post anything more than a quick update.

The night I came back after the dress had gone, we went out to dinner, and he told me about everything he had realized during the time we were apart. Many harsh truths, amongst them he told me he had even considered breaking up. He felt smothered by my presence and was worried I would not be able to take a step back in our relationship and slow things down so he had thought of breaking up as a last resort.

Less obvious to me during the last month or so, when he explained it to me I realised he was right. It was like we were practically living together, and neither him or our relationship are ready for that yet. He has been living by himself with his daughter for nearly three years before meeting me, and he was not ready to give up his routines, his habits and his solitary moments. Also because I make myself noted in a household and he is a quirky man, but really it has to do more with him not being ready yet to completely move on.

He explained there had been times over the past weeks where he knew I needed certain things from him (whether it be affection, communication, or just for him to take out the trash that my beloved dog would mercilessly go through if it stayed there any longer) and he couldn't fulfill my needs. Didn't know how, couldn't be bothered or just felt my change of attitude but didn't know what it was I needed. A variety of failures on his behalf that he recognised, but were now explained by realizing we were moving too fast.

And then he dropped the double-edged sword "you are the right girl at the wrong time" on me. He wants to be able to give me everything I need and when I need it, but he can't yet. He is not ready to have someone be "his everything" again, however much he wants it. And he knows I deserve no less than that, therefore he went into asking me if I would be able to wait that undefined period of time, if I wouldn't be better off just finding someone else that provided me more certainty and reassurance. Summarizing, why on earth I chose and was still willing to choose to stick with him.

Many questions that I've been asked by several other people before. I don't have an exact answer, saying "I love him" doesn't quite do it either. The dress is gone, he did that just for me. The fact we were still sitting there and we were actually communicating our needs and feelings, backs my motto of "where there's a will, there is a way." He would be my perfect match if only he were to open up and let it all in.

Although all the harsh and truthful things he said did hurt me, it made me appreciate him for making clear to me where he was at, and what he needed to hopefully get to the next stage. Because that's what he wants too, so he can give me what I need and no less than what I deserve. But it wasn't working out like this. He needs space, and by extent, time.

A few days later he told me that if I wouldn't have understood that, he would've probably called it quits. He can deal with subtle nodges in the right direction, even handling deal-breakers like the dress, but he couldn't put up with me imposing myself on him and his daily life this fast, this soon. 

And I actually did understand. Time and space would be good for me too, actually. To regain independence but also to stop focussing on the little things and focus on the whole. Mainly, why we are in a relationship to begin with. Being constantly involved in what he still considers "his territory" didn't only bring about annoyance when our personalities would clash, it also made me disconnect with my own haven, my mental safe place.

My actions and feelings at the moment were constantly influenced by me worrying more about what I (or him) would be doing and feeling in some time. I couldn't enjoy the present anymore because I worried too much about the future, or even the hypothetical future (the dreaded "what ifs").

I feel like giving ourselves some time apart will make us appreciate more the time we spend together, and will be an asset to our communication, which will eventually help us grow together. He wouldn't have been able to even communicate about this if he hadn't had the time to think it through without being pressured into it, and determine what he was feeling and thinking. And things would've probably exploded rather sooner than later through miscommunication and our strong personalities.

For all clarity, we still are as exclusive and as serious as we were before. He would've given up way before if he didn't want to meet those standards, and I wouldn't want any less either. He just needs more time for plowing through his own grief and adaptation process, and getting where both him and I want him to be, although realistically speaking, that remains a hope and a goal, not a certainty.

Sometimes I want to be like my dog. She never thinks about tomorrow and just enjoys life today. I believe it's a gift.

Instead of spending one night at my place on average, I will be spending a three night minimum at my place. We've fixed days of the week on which to do that, so there is no reason to feel insecure all day because of "what will happen" later (this would take place in my head exclusively, he worries less than me by a thousand). Now I will spend Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays at my place, almost unnegotiable.

Not easy to do for me. I had easily adapted to his place (with the dress gone it will be even easier to feel like a home), his routine and his company, and it's been years since I lived all alone. 

My dog is still with me, of course, and I know already I'll just fall asleep on the couch snuggling up to her instead of going up to my bed by myself most of the nights. But that's OK. If I didn't have a boyfriend I would be "the dog lady" anyway, and probably have a couple more shelter dogs under my care by now. That's still my plan B actually, in case things take a turn for worse.

I struggle each night I'm by myself, because my thoughts will not quit pondering and inciting anxiety out of thin air. If Tomas is not there (whether it be physically or platonically, by text or phone) it's almost impossible to distract myself or hide from all of the "what ifs" this world harbours and my head becomes the national top-notch breeding ground for brooding thoughts.

This has been truly exhausting, both physically and emotionally, and has been showing its effects in all areas of my daily life. I need to get past that myself, and although Tomas' issues aren't helping, he himself has little or no share in my at times poor emotional condition.

As someone amazing who's helped me through some of the dark moments of being alone with my thoughts said: this time and space we give ourselves will be beneficial to us, to appreciate more the moments we spend together, to him so he can organize his thoughts and have solemn moments to process everything and move only forward, and to me, so I can work on winning myself back from the claws of neediness and insecurity and becoming the version of me that would make him fall in love.

You know who you are :)

Open the communication gates, flood the mind.

A lot of things have changed since I spent 4 days of minimum contact and not seeing Tomas.

He promised to take down the dress by Wednesday, yesterday, and I would not come back until it was gone.

Yesterday we had a long, serious talk, which I'm not sharing for the moment being as I have not yet found a way to put it into a coherent story, or figured out my stand in it.

As he's trying to figure out himself, I'm trying to figure things out for myself, and we're trying to figure out our relationship, I think things never have been harder emotionally, especially on me, having a mind that wanders more than I can sometimes handle. Not much of our talk had to do with the actual dress or the emotions involved with that, because those seemed trivial to other issues on Tomas' behalf.

The communication gates have opened and most of it doesn't exactly give reasons to celebrate, but we are communicating and trying to figure out things from here.

And on an absolutely positive note, if there is one thing that does give a reason to celebrate, the dress as of yesterday has gone. I can walk upstairs again free of ghosts.

Save the date

Today exactly 3 years ago, Tomas' wife Tereza came home from a shopping trip with a friend. Her husband had stayed home, flooded with work, she had taken their 3-month old with her. After she had put down the baby, Tereza fell to the floor, unable to catch her breath.

What followed was a 911 call, instructions for giving CPR during the next 30 minutes until the ambulance arrived, and a trip to the hospital where all friends and family passed by in the course of three days, until finally, upon the announcement that all brain activity had seized, Tomas and his wife's parents gave permission to turn off all the machines that kept her among the living. She was buried a few days later.

I was planning on starting off easy on this blog, looking back on 5 months of being in a relationship with Tomas, sharing the feelings and experiences I lived while getting the blog up to date. No pressure, we're having our ups and downs but why hurry, there's enough time to tell everything. But then I realised I have to adress this issue now, today, the only relevant day in a year's time to do so.

It just so happens that from the start of December on, it is the most hectic season in Tomas' business. It's a race against time and neverending problem-solving. Papers lie around the house shouting for his attention, a mechanical failure can mean an utter disaster for the schedule, his cell phone needs charging every night from the continuous phone calls (OK, he charges it every night anyway, but that's not the point), workers start to take off for the holidays, etc.

Less coincidential is the fact that there's a turning point in December, a previously fixed date where the business stops its regular activities and goes in overdrive into a transition period till the end of January, in the way I described above. This turning point is a date most companies in his sector have set at the beginning of December. He has set it on today, December 18th, for the past three years already. I've never asked him about whether it's coincidence or not, I assume it rather isn't.

Since the beginning of December, he has stopped sending me textmessages during the day to see how I'm doing, if I slept well, how my day's going, or what my plans are for when I get out of work. When I send something (which I do every day if I don't hear from him), it either goes without response, or gets a short reply some time later saying he's busy. And then I don't hear from him until hours later, after he's put his daughter to bed.

This all fits in with what a busy period in a business might bring about, and in no way do I blame him for it. He's very driven at what he does and I admire him greatly for what he's done, what he's achieved, and what he continues to build. I will address this in a post later on, because work is with him day and night (and I mean that literally, he often gets up in the middle of the night to attend to an urgent problem), yet he finds time to be a caring father for his daughter. And he used to find time to be a husband too.

A picture my dad took while we were living in Poland. The 1st of November was a date to save, as huge amounts of people would go visit their loved ones, at some of the eeriest yet most beautiful graveyards I've ever seen.

He admits one of the biggest ways of getting through the initial emotional desolation his wife's passing brought about was devoting himself to his business and his child. Perhaps 'getting through' is not the right term. He rather avoided it by keeping steady on his goals in life, to raise a child and a business, and that has kept his mind from wandering off.

In addition to maintaining a very sharp focus in life, he has shut off emotionally. He has created a wall of apathy, that only his daughter can break through. If his emotions were to be a graph, it would be a straight line. He is content and optimistic about almost everything, but he is unable to feel emotional highs or lows. Another way of coping, he admits, another way of keeping his mind in place. That's against nature and prevents a natural healing process, some would say, yet a very effective survival technique, others might argue. I would agree to both I think, but I only know for sure: that wall is so darn hard to break through...

Recent developments and heart-breaking conversations (a few weeks ago) with him have taught me he perhaps is not ready to move on yet. He didn't know this himself before we started dating, as he's had a couple of relationships before me (both didn't survive the three-month threshold, as he lost interest and he only felt apathy towards them) and this time he says it's different. In me he sees an ideal partner for sharing the rest of his life with, after 5 months I still make him feel things that resemble love, and he definitely doesn't want to lose me. But he feels there's something missing, which he can only explain by saying that he might not be ready to open up.

What I'm getting at by telling all this, and which I didn't realize at the time: his sudden epiphanies on how he feels about our relationship and his lack lately to give me the affectuous attention he used to, are more than likely related to the fact that today's date and the holiday-season as a whole just takes him back three years ago. And in his mind nor in his heart is there room for anyone else during those flashbacks that come and go, and have done so since December has started. Or at least I think.

Is it the business giving him such a hard time? Is it the date, the emotions and nostalgia provoked by this period of the year? A combination of both, I guess. But that's all I can do, guess. He is in no mood for having profound conversations these days, which is (and I'm pretty sure of that) caused by work-related stress.

Two months into our relationship, we went to a bar in the centre of Mechlin, to celebrate his sister's birthday. It was only on our way back to the car, some hours past midnight and some beers later, that he showed me the beautiful place where him and Tereza had their wedding celebration 5 years ago. Yes, 5 years ago almost exactly, as he told me that it would've been their 5th wedding anniversary the next day. He told me about the place, the music, the people invited, how it cost a lot of money but was worth every penny. He was being nostalgic without being sentimental, but two months into our relationship I wasn't exactly ready for that, so I kept silent and listened with mixed feelings.

Last night he got up right as I was falling asleep. He took his phone and his pillow, and as he opened the door I lifted my head and asked where he was going. To sleep in the other room, he said (which is an empty room with some old furniture, and a big mattress on the floor). He's done that on only one occassion, saying he couldn't sleep with me lying next to him, he had to be able to move around freely because stress and thoughts on work were killing him and he didn't want to keep me up writhing around. It had nothing to do with me he said. The first time I was really confused, I found it a pretty confronting way of withdrawal and I felt hurt. That first time, in the early morning when he hadn't come back yet I went and cuddled up next to him.

Yesterday I let him be. I asked if it had to do with work, and if he was ok. He said affirmatively that I shouldn't worry. I didn't worry, but I did feel left out again, and although I know better, it also feels like a form of rejection.

Tonight I'm having dinner at his house and we're planning on going to see a movie. I hope to keep it light, and if he didn't want to be with me tonight he would've said so, but I'm prepared for anything.

Some time ago he said the date(s) Tereza passed away don't mean nearly as much to him as her birthday, in February. I'm bracing myself for that time, seeing as now I often find myself not knowing how to act or react when things get tense, or when he shows an utter lack of affection and empathy. I try to be as understanding as possible, but without any insight in his thoughts I can only show him my love and concern which unfortunately I've found to have a wayward effect sometimes, especially when he's less receptive like he's been these days.

During All Saints in Poland, one could spot the graveyards from miles away, as they were lit by thousands and thousands of candles.

I want to be there for him when he feels like talking about his emotions, even if it is being nostalgic over Tereza like when he did in Mechlin. But I can't force him to talk about it, if it has at all to do with his state of mind these days. I'm writing down the dates in my agenda, just to be prepared and give him a rain check if he needs one. I just hope one day he can share those things with me, because it just might actually prove helpful for both of us.