# Tying to figure it out....



## hurtnohio (Jul 17, 2011)

Hello all!

Happy New Year!

My 7-year old son was recently diagnosed as having behaviors consistent with bipolar disorder. He's under the care of a child psychiatrist. Obviously, I'm concerned that he might have genetically inherited some of his mother's crazy genes. I can't change that, but I'm hopeful he'll get the help he needs. I'm actively working with both my therapist and his to make sure I'm doing all I can as a father to help him. But it's still a hell of a diagnosis to get....

I'm regularly seeing a therapist and I also attend Codependent's Anonymous meetings, but I'll admit that my CoDA meeting attendance is sporadic at times. But I see my therapist at least once or twice a month.

As you know if you've read my other posts, I still struggle at times to figure out how to date in a way that's healthy and avoids the drama of the past. I am thankful I got away from the alcoholica woman I ended up with as my "divorce rebound" relationship. 

Since divorcing the alcoholic, I took the advice someone here gave me and went out on roughly ten first dates. Just to get a feel for who is out there in the dating pool in my age group. It was an interesting experiment. Of the more than ten, I went out a second time with a handful of them. I dated one lady about two weeks, but that's about as long as I've date anyone since I broke up with the alcoholic.

Recently, I started going out more seriously with a lady my same age. And I'm having trouble gauging exactly how I feel about her.

Her story: She's divorced with two adult children. She was dating someone about 5 years ago and then broke up with him. He became obsessive and started stalking her. She's provided me enough information that I could check out her story if I want to. He eventually went to jail for cyberstalking. She decided to get as far away from the situation as she could so she moved to Alaska to become a school teacher there. In Alaska (by her own admission), she ended up in a relationship with a big, assertive, Type A guy who promised he'd protect her. No surprise but before long her "protector" became her abuser.

She left everything she had in Alaska to get away from him. She's now underemployed and renting an apartment in a friend's basement until she gets back on her feet. She's very smart, college educated and she's worked both in education and the health care fields (including teaching college classes), so I sincerely believe it's just a matter of time before she's back on her feet.

We have dated now about two months. And I'm not sure what to think....

First the positives: The sex is awesome. Not sure how else to say it, but we're very good together!

We've had a couple of times where we said something the other one took badly. In past relationships (including my marriage), those kinds of things could have led to days-long bouts of silent treatment or long, dragged-out verbal fights. In her case, we each kind of withdrew emotionally for a few hours and then reconnected and talked it out like adults. I won't say it was pleasant working through these disagreements, but it was respectful. And things eventually got back to good within a few hours.

We went away on a trip together between Christmas and New Year's. There were inevitable travel snafus, and while I could tell that these things caused her anxiety, she didn't turn and blame me or throw a temper tantrum. Even when annoyed, she was respectful.

But there are some negatives: Today is my birthday. When we were together on our trip, she promised to take me out for my birthday. But we were flying standby (long story....I get free air travel but I must fly standby to do it) and she started getting edgy about getting back to work by Monday. So she asked if we could fly out earlier to make sure we got a seat. We did, but there was no time for my birthday dinner. 

When we got back to town earlier than expected, she said she had to go home and make sure her roommate was OK. Apparently the roomie situation is fraught with drama and she thought it might be best if she went home as soon as we landed instead of spending the day together.

So no birthday dinner for me either on the trip or here at home.

When she got home, she texted me that her roomie was very distraught over something and that she'd "touch base" tomorrow. It's now almost 6 PM and I haven't heard anything from her. No "Happy Birthday" text. Nothing. She said it was best if she didn't contact me again until today and now today's almost over.

Strangely, when she left yesterday, I felt an odd emptiness. Not as in feeling empty because I missed her. More of a "I can't believe I just spent a week with this woman and feel this lonely afterward" kind of feeling. Very odd and very disconcerting.

I don't want to make my birthday thing that big a deal. But she had made it a big deal while on our trip and now she can't even send me a text? WTF?

And I'm trying to pay more attention to my feelings; while I feel great and connected to her during sex, there are many other times when we just feel distant. It's like she's in another zone. When I ask her if anything is wrong, she just says that she's trying to think through all the ways she can work herself out of her current situation and get out on her own to spend more time with me. Yet I often feel like she's not "with" me when she's with me.

I don't know....the whole thing seems oddly empty.

And yet....In the past I've felt this intense connection with some of the most screwed up women on the planet and that never ends well. So I'm willing to admit that maybe my emotions aren't properly calibrated yet. Maybe this woman - in spite of her past and her issues - is an otherwise healthy woman who is temporarily in a bad spot. So far, we've been able to work through any disagreements we've had without fireworks, so that makes me hopeful. And yet I sometimes feel this vast emptiness when I'm with her.

For what it's worth, there has been no talk about me taking her in. She's not trying to "guilt" me into taking care of her. From what I can tell, she seems genuinely committed to trying to work her own way out of her mess. She even helped pay 50/50 on the hotel bill. So it doesn't seem that she's trying to be "taken care of" in spite of her situation.

Not sure what to make of this........


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## Lilac23 (Jul 9, 2015)

Sounds like she likes drama.


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## Ynot (Aug 26, 2014)

Two things I see in your tale. The first is your need to "figure it out". I think you are not listening to yourself. Those feelings you get? Those are the little voices in your head telling you something aint right. Pay attention to them. Secondly, she may be feeling the same thing as you are, which could explain why she wigged out on you after the trip. If she came from this background of being trapped by abusive men, she may be starting to feel trapped in this budding relationship as well.

My suggestion is to let things settle. Let her know you are open to talk and then let her come to you. Be prepared to let the relationship end, it might be the best thing for each of you.


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