The Ones We Love
Bill, his (then) girlfriend, and I ended up going out to dinner one recent Friday evening. Since he and I were out and about she drove up to join us. We picked a restaurant and set about enjoying dinner. Rather, I tried to enjoy dinner.
My struggle came from his incessant need to be touching her, caressing her, or otherwise making physical contact with her. Now, your first instinct is to believe that my problem with all of that is that it's hard for me to see him acting like a boyfriend with his girlfriend. That isn't the case. The amount and kind of touchy-touchy was just uncomfortable. I am fine with holding hands, or resting a hand on the other person's leg and even arm-around-the-waist-or-over-the-shoulder. What I'm not ok with is the kind of caressing and touching that belongs in the bedroom. And, that goes for everyone, not just boys I like.
After dinner he and I were in the car taking me home. "Well," he asked, "what do you think?" His query was what I thought of their relationship and how she felt about it, etc, since it wasn't in a good place and he and I had been talking about that. I intended to tell him that his over-the-top PDA made me uncomfortable, and that she clearly wasn't down with that much public affection. What I ended up doing was yelling at him about it.
The ensuing argument was not awesome. He said somethings he shouldn't have led with, and I retaliated with something that shouldn't have been mentioned in this argument. It spiraled out of control. He ended up saying some quite hurtful things, so I just stopped talking. It was evident that this argument was just going to get more vicious and the only way to stop it was to quit raising the bar of mean.
We were able to restore some peace in the car before he dropped me off, but it was a bit tenuous.
We don't get in fights that often, but when we do, they're apocalyptic. Historically we've been much better about fighting fair (yelling: yes, unfair references to unrelated matters: no), but this one had very little held back. I take responsibility for taking things down that path, but Bill certainly escalated it to epic proportions.
Bill and I haven't talked much about that argument since, except for me raising a few questions based on some of the things he said to me. He, on the other hand, apparently learned nothing for the experience, as he hasn't brought up any possible learnings. I'm pretty sure he feels fairly blameless in the whole matter.
The thing is: the closer we allow ourselves to be to others the more we expose ourselves to potential pain. It's our responsibility as loved ones to be sure we don't violate that trust. Because when we do, the damage may be irreparable. I'm not too worried about it, this time.
My struggle came from his incessant need to be touching her, caressing her, or otherwise making physical contact with her. Now, your first instinct is to believe that my problem with all of that is that it's hard for me to see him acting like a boyfriend with his girlfriend. That isn't the case. The amount and kind of touchy-touchy was just uncomfortable. I am fine with holding hands, or resting a hand on the other person's leg and even arm-around-the-waist-or-over-the-shoulder. What I'm not ok with is the kind of caressing and touching that belongs in the bedroom. And, that goes for everyone, not just boys I like.
After dinner he and I were in the car taking me home. "Well," he asked, "what do you think?" His query was what I thought of their relationship and how she felt about it, etc, since it wasn't in a good place and he and I had been talking about that. I intended to tell him that his over-the-top PDA made me uncomfortable, and that she clearly wasn't down with that much public affection. What I ended up doing was yelling at him about it.
The ensuing argument was not awesome. He said somethings he shouldn't have led with, and I retaliated with something that shouldn't have been mentioned in this argument. It spiraled out of control. He ended up saying some quite hurtful things, so I just stopped talking. It was evident that this argument was just going to get more vicious and the only way to stop it was to quit raising the bar of mean.
We were able to restore some peace in the car before he dropped me off, but it was a bit tenuous.
We don't get in fights that often, but when we do, they're apocalyptic. Historically we've been much better about fighting fair (yelling: yes, unfair references to unrelated matters: no), but this one had very little held back. I take responsibility for taking things down that path, but Bill certainly escalated it to epic proportions.
Bill and I haven't talked much about that argument since, except for me raising a few questions based on some of the things he said to me. He, on the other hand, apparently learned nothing for the experience, as he hasn't brought up any possible learnings. I'm pretty sure he feels fairly blameless in the whole matter.
The thing is: the closer we allow ourselves to be to others the more we expose ourselves to potential pain. It's our responsibility as loved ones to be sure we don't violate that trust. Because when we do, the damage may be irreparable. I'm not too worried about it, this time.
posted by granola girl at 10:51 pm
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