Talk about the elephants

So, RockDaddy and I really need to have an overdue talk. I think. Maybe.

Back in November I emailed him one very depressed night to say that I could really use someone to talk to. Life seemed to be falling apart and even though he was one of the causes/reasons, when we broke up he made me promise that if I was starting to feel depressed that I would reach out to him. So I did.

From a slightly clearer place after sleep, I realized maybe bringing him back in at this point wasn’t the best choice. I needed a friend to lean on and someone to give me a big hug but I should probably figure some shit out in therapy first and figure out boundaries.

When theEx and I broke up, we tried to work through things together, or at least I tried to work through my stuff with him. That was a mistake. I should have separated the need for physical comfort and support from needing to work through the problem. I needed someone outside the problem with no personal investment to help with the latter.

So I decided I could ask RockDaddy to be there as a friend to give me a big hug and to distract me. I did not want to get into the reasons for my depression with him. It wouldn’t be fair to him to be a sounding board for how he hurt me and wouldn’t help me focus on my own feelings. I didn’t want it to seem like I wanted to pressure him into getting back together because I was unhappy. I just wanted someone around with me through my being unhappy.

Since then, he’s tried very hard to be a better friend to me and with spending more and more time together. At first it felt like him being there for me, then it started to feel like him wanting me to be there for him too and things sort of naturally slip back into familiar casual-pseudo-non-relationship relationship. By early December, he told me there was something he “wants to talk to me about, but isn’t quite ready to talk about”. He suggested the conversation wait until we got back from our respective travels.

A little over a week later, I was back from visiting family, and he from a weekend in NYC. He brought it up and said he realized he had asked to wait until we returned but he still wasn’t entirely sure he was ready. I honestly wasn’t sure if his original time-delay request was for just that week or if he meant after the holidays. He had another trip planned the following week so I said I didn’t want to push him if he wasn’t ready and was already prepared to wait another week.

Now it’s been two weeks since he returned from that trip and still no big talk. Things have continued to slip further into our old pre-breakup routines. Not fully and with some additions.

Part of me doesn’t care and doesn’t feel a need to push for the talk or definitions around what just seems like us finding our natural resting place with each other. “Just friends” was really hard for us. It didn’t feel right. It felt forced and forcible restrained. I’m enjoying being back in a place where we see each other more regularly, where he asks to see me, where I have someone to talk to, where we have someone to cuddle up with, and of course sex.

Part of me is going crazy not having a full picture of what is going on between us or at least whether what he thinks is going on is what I think is going on. This part is also probably a bit too scared and hesitant to bring it up for fear it might lead to losing the things the other part is so happy about. He’s pretty obviously avoiding the conversation too.

Life ain’t easy.

• the impending Talk