Necessary

Valentine's Day was good. No man, but I spent it with friends - Brooke and her husband Jack's place, with Rosa and Brian. We ate dinner, talked and stuff, it was a lot of fun.

Since the epiphany, some things have happened. This past week, I spent some time trying to figure things out. Not so much the truth of the relationship, but trying to figure out what to do next. It's kind of like, "Yeah, now I know, but now what?"

I decided that I would email Alex and tell him how I felt and that I couldn't be a part of the relationship in its present form. So I wrote it on Thursday and sent it off Friday. I thought that would be it. I should've known better.

Alex wanted to talk. I don't know if I did, but I felt that I would need to verbalize to make it all more clear. So we spent both Saturday and Sunday (earlier/yesterday) going over things. Saturday with me explaining how I felt and him trying to clarify his true feelings. And I found out that he broke up with his girlfriend (tried to make sure I didn't look like I was happy or something :-P - yeah I know it wasn't right).

Sunday we put everything out on the table. Everything. We were both probably the most honest about what pisses us off about each other than we ever been in the entire friendship. He got out his problems, and I got out mine. All of them. It was a good thing, I think.

What's so weird, though, is that for both of us this particular friendship is the only one that causes this much tension, stress and drama. I don't know what that means, I don't think he does either, at least not completely. It might be that our personalities conflict. We communicate well on most things - school, life, etc. But not when it comes to each other. I think it's where our communication styles and thought processes cause problems. Typical male/female differences - Alex is more rational, and he's not into "feelings," while I am more emotional, and while I care about being rational, I am also quite passionate, and a lot of times my passion overrides my rationality. Another thing. I am the kind of person who is both outspoken and indecisive. I will tell you in a minute how I feel about something but I am not good at being able to communicate what someone should do about it, or even what I should do about it. I don't like making that call. At the same time, Alex is sort of passive and just internalizes stuff until he is really forced to say something, or feels that he can't get away with not saying anything. And both of us are good at remembering what the other one did, or what we think s/he did, and then bringing it up much later. So that combination of similarities and differences, plus five years worth of misunderstandings, misinterpretation, and misstatements, makes for plenty of tense sotrs/dtrs*.

I think the talk was worth it. I don't know what's going to happen now. But I have too much on my plate right now to deal with it, in terms of school, etc. I don't think that, at least between myself and Alex, that there is anything more to deal with. I think that whatever else there may be is internal. I think that in some ways, I'm too emotionally involved, too emotionally attached to Alex. How one gets attached to someone who is emotionally distant, I'm not sure. But that needs to get untangled. Seriously. Good news is that I won't be hearing from him for a few months, since he has comprehensive exams coming up. I was going to at least give myself space from him, if not cut him off completely. I do think he cares about me to some extent, but I cannot be content with just whatever I get, either. I still do deserve better.


*state of the relationship/define the relationship talks