Insomnia

I can’t sleep. It’s 1:30am on a Tuesday morning and this is the latest I’ve been up on a weeknight in forever.

I haven’t written in a little while – the bf’s moved. I helped him that weekend and when I was in line for security at the airport for my flight home, I was standing there with tears just streaming down my face because I was so sad for us to be split apart. I mostly recovered after that day and the next, so haven’t been emotional since, until today. (Yesterday? Well, my day isn’t over until I’ve fallen asleep, so “today” means Monday as I refer to it in the rest of this entry.)

So this afternoon we got into a huge fight. He was originally going to come up at the end of the month for work and spend the weekend up here as well, but told me today that since he’s still a new employee he couldn’t book his flights so his boss did it for him and instead of spending the weekend with me he is coming up Monday and leaving Friday at 5pm. That made me really sad because I was really looking forward to that weekend – I need it.

I’m going to see him for Valentine’s day but because I haven’t met the daughter yet and because this is his first weekend with her, I can’t go see him until Sunday late afternoon, and I’m leaving Monday early evening. Literally just 24 hours and I have to leave him again.

So after that news about not having the whole weekend like I thought we would have, I said that we should plan our March visits. I looked at a calendar and realized I have a work trip right in the middle of March so don’t want to fly to him the weekend before or the weekend after – too much to handle and too much travel and too much to pack (work trip is to the east coast, which is still in the middle of winter), so I offered up the last weekend of March even though that’s another weekend with his daughter. I was kind of thinking that maybe he would realize that but it would be okay because maybe by then he will finally introduce me to at least his ex wife so we can get that out of the way, if not his daughter. But, nope. Immediately he told me that wasn’t a “free weekend”. So I was stung – again – and instantly started feeling emotional, so I texted my bff about it and even she agreed with me that it’s strange he doesn’t seem at all excited for me to meet his daughter, and also that he literally has zero plans on introducing me or even a time line or time frame on when he might want to do so.

He called me a few minutes later and we got into a huge fight about it, him using excuses like how he’s only lived there for 9 days and how he’s only spent 4 hours with his daughter, but I was like “Ummm I’m not talking about meeting her THIS weekend, I’m talking about the end of March or maybe sometime in April or something but you NEVER give me even a general time frame!” And he was super defensive, as I knew he would be. This is why I HATE bringing this up all the time even though I’m thinking it – he always gets so defensive about her and I just don’t see where my needs and wants are being taken into consideration at all.

Look at it this way: here I am, almost a year into a relationship with a divorced dad. My parents are ultra conservative but I told them about his situation 2 months into our relationship because I know he’s The One. I almost moved 40 miles away from my city to help him out when he was unemployed (before he got the verbal offer from his current company), and I am trying to get a job in/around his new city so I can move to be with him and leave a city I love and friends and family. What has he done for me?

I finally see what my sister was talking about all along – how he hasn’t done a single “big thing” on a similar scale to show me his commitment to me. (Even though I will never admit this to her!) Flowers, paying for meals, little trips – yes those things matter, but those are not on nearly the same scale as anything life changing. I sacrificed my relationship with my parents for him, for Christ’s sake. Almost that of my sister too. I’m willing to pick up and move for him, and he still doesn’t have even a TIME FRAME for me meeting his daughter?

That would be HUGE. I know how important she is to him. He left me to be with her – right now as the situation stands, he is the one who left me behind to chase what was important to him. He’s also the one who holds the cards. The only thing we ever fight about is his daughter – mostly about when I’m going to meet her.

His concerns are her asking him constantly where I am and why I’m not around more. I’m no child psychologist, but is that so damaging to a child’s psyche to delay me meeting someone who will be a Very Important Person in my life and our life together? She already knows about me – she asks him about me as it is right now.

Do I look like a fool that I am willing to do all these big things for him when he hasn’t even introduced me to his daughter, though he does talk about marriage and wants me to live with him in his new city?

After hours of fighting over text/phone calls, I was talking to my roommate and she was like “well maybe you just need a timeline for when you will move – that might help him”. So in our last conversation I offered that up, since he explained that he is totally insecure about whether I’m actually going to move or now (he also used “What if I introduce you and you never actually move?” as an excuse – to me that sounds like he thinks we will break up, since if I don’t move that means it’s the end of our relationship – we can’t do long distance forever! But to him, as he explained it, he is just insecure about it since “life and things always change”.) So I said ok, let’s say 6 months from now if I still don’t have a job in that city then I will move without one. And he was like “Well I want to make sure that is what you want to do”, but he definitely was placated. We were much calmer in our last phone call and we hung up with “I love you”s and good nights, but something still didn’t feel quite right for me, not quite settled.

Now, hours later, I am realizing that maybe I am still being a complete fool. I have to make ANOTHER life changing promise to him with a definite deadline, and he STILL doesn’t have an actual time frame for me meeting his daughter? Why am I giving so much, and he isn’t really giving me anything at all? Am I being a total idiot still?

I mean, he did throw a “ok well I will introduce you this Sunday” out there, but I don’t know if he actually means that. And then when he said that I felt bad because I don’t want to FORCE him to introduce me – that’s not how it should be at all. He should introduce me because he wants to and because it’ll make him happier to do so, not because we got into a fight about it. He did tell me that I will definitely meet her before I move, and when I asked, “Does that mean I need to have a job offer in hand before you introduce me?” He replied with “Oh my God we have been over this and over this, I’ve told you over and over again.” (When he really hasn’t.) After asking a couple more times and getting variations of that reply, he finally said “NO, you do NOT need to have a job offer in hand for me to introduce you.”

I don’t know…this whole thing is making me question everything. I tried telling him everything about how I feel like he is compartmentalizing me vs his daughter and how I feel like he is putting his and his ex wife’s needs before mine and about how I feel totally separate from all his plans and how he never brings up the subject of me meeting her or tells me any sort of time frame or what he’s thinking. It’s always vague statements like “When things are settled”; “When I’ve had more time with her – I’m catching up on 6 months of her life”, etc etc etc.

Am I being a bitch, or am I being a complete fool?

One thing he’s right about though – there is no manual for this at all. He may not realize it but I am also trying to be as patient as possible. I just want to be integrated into his life and for it to not be a huge deal about what weekends I can visit because I haven’t met her yet. I still remember in early summer when I was so upset that we barely got time together as it was, and one Sunday he had to kick me out of his apt because ex wife needed him to watch their daughter for a few hours and I was crying and sad that I had to take the damn train home all by myself – again all because I hadn’t met the daughter. It’s the same feeling I’ve been having for the better part of a year, and he doesn’t seem to understand that at all.

I’m just at the point where I don’t know if I can keep giving without getting SOMETHING in return. And I know this post makes him sound like an asshole – he isn’t an asshole, but in regards to his daughter he always acts like this with me and it’s upsetting. Yet when I tell him how it’s embarrassing for me when other people find out we’ve been dating a year and I am trying to move to be with him and give up everything I’m going to give up and he hasn’t even introduced me to his daughter, he gets angry.

Funny thing is I was talking to a coworker about my situation today because she heard me yelling and wanted to see if I was ok. When I told her what we were arguing about, she tells me “I think it’s a load of bullshit that he wants to prolong this. I mean, I understand where he’s coming from, because I was raised by a single mom and she didn’t want strangers around, but you are not a stranger and you have got to be one of the sweetest and loving people she’ll ever get the chance to be around.” Which has got to be the nicest thing she’s ever said to me, and it means a lot because she was a daughter in that same situation.

I don’t know. What’s right here? If he’s as serious about me as he says he is, why hasn’t he DONE anything about it?

Sorry for the crazy long post. Damn this is longer than most essays I wrote in high school. Ok, I’m done, for now. Hopefully I can get some sleep after getting this off my chest…