Impression

A few things have been going on as of late.

First of all, I'm sort of kind of talking to a new guy, we'll call him Pete. He's a farm boy in Indiana, about an hour away from Cincinnati. He seems nice enough, and I like talking to him. He also says he respects my decision to wait for sex until marriage, and actually says it makes him like me more, which one never sees out of a guy. At the same time, he seems a little too nice, a little too good to be true. My inner wise woman says to pay attention and be vigilant. I learned from Nikolai, and so this time I think I will listen.

Meanwhile, I talked to Jordan online earlier today. I think I feel better regarding the situation, and I've managed to get back to being centered emotionally. So it feels fine talking to him. He and I were kind of flirting and teasing each other, particularly after I kind of made a dig at him when I was talking to him about The Sims 2, where you can, among other things, make your sims cheat. It was just playing around, although I know it's not right. What can I say, it is what it is. At the same time, I have no intention of doing anything with him sexually. That would be selling myself short. And I don't want to find myself in conflict with Bertha, because as much as I don't like the situation, for me to knowingly deal with Jordan on that level would be wrong on my part. Even though I am not responsible to Bertha (Jordan is), I would not have a leg to stand on if it appeared that I was the other woman. Come to think about it, I'm not even sure if it's a good idea for us to see each other, all things considered.

Speaking of selling myself short, my mom saw Jordan at the local grocer, where he works. She went up to him and introduced herself. She said, "You probably don't know who I am." He looked at her, like "no, not really." She then said, "I'm Jaye's mother." Then he said, "oh okay."

I was first told of this encounter by Jordan in our online chat conversation. He said that he was surprised she knew who he was, and she seemed nice and he was nice to her. He then said that his impression was that he impressed her. He also made a wisecrack about the encounter, saying, "she probably knew it was me because she noticed my sexiness." Yeah, okay, whatever.

I talked to my mom later on today. She tells me, "I met Jordan today at the store. I went up to him and introduced myself. As soon as he opened his mouth, I knew that wasn't you." She then said, "You can do a lot better than him." I asked her if there was something wrong with him. She said, "No, but I just think you can do better. He's not good enough for you. Don't sell yourself short."

I find it interesting that the same encounter, while recounted consistently, elicited a totally different impression on both parties involved. Jordan thought my mom seemed nice and that he impressed her. My mom thought that while Jordan seemed fine enough, he was nowhere near good enough to date her daughter.

In particular, the conversation I had with my mom was strange for a couple of reasons. First of all, I didn't tell her about the situation with Jordan and Bertha, so I'm not sure where this "he's not good enough" comes from. I wonder what it was about him that gave her that sense. Secondly, my mom usually tells me that I shouldn't act so elitist when it comes to who I date. In her view, it shouldn't matter what the guy does, as long as he has a job. But when she met Jordan, she didn't think he was right for me. So it's kind of weird, in a way. I wonder what the deal was. She's probably right, though.

Untenable

So pretty much, nothing has changed since the last time I wrote. Jordan and Bertha are still together, and he spends his every non-working moment with her. Apparently it's to where even his friends no longer see him and he can't do the things he normally does. Bertha writes messages on his website that are, well, crazy. She says that she and Jordan will be together and "ain't no female gonna come between us - I'll make sure of that." I truly wonder how long this is going to last. This is untenable, I can see it, and apparently so does at least one of Jordan's best friends, "Janet." I have never met Janet, but I think I like her already. She says what she thinks, even on Jordan's public website, and Bertha's extremely jealous of her.

I don't think this is going to end well. See, Jordan tries to act like he is assertive, but he's actually kind of passive. Nevertheless, even a passive person can only take so much. I said to one of my friends that from Jordan's end, this will be "resolved" in one of three ways. 1. he will regularly cheat and/or live a double life; 2. he will blow up at her (ranging from verbally going off on her to killing her), or; 3. he will break up with her. For the first six months of their relationship, he seemed to have chosen number one. However, with Bertha now taking up all Jordan's time, he will eventually resort to numbers two or three. I hope it will be three, because I would hate to see anything happen to Bertha by Jordan's hand. At the same time, I have a feeling that he doesn't want to do number three, because he doesn't want for Bertha to do anything to harm herself. But I wonder if he realizes how much danger he could be in.

Hostage

Just when I thought that I knew all there was to know in regards to Jordan and Bertha, the other shoe dropped.

Tuesday, after coming back home from work and the gym, Jordan text-messaged me to say that he had emailed me back tonight, since I had emailed him a few days earlier. He said, "Please understand that this is going to shock you. It isn't bad just explaining some things better." So I text-messaged him back to ask him "Do I really want to read this?", to which he responded "Yes."

So I read the email. In the email, Jordan confessed that he knocked up Bertha back in May, but didn't find out until mid-July. At that point, they decided to stay together for the sake of the baby. Come to find out, Bertha had gotten pregnant to trap Jordan (although he didn't exactly say how she "trapped" him in this fashion considering he's anti-condom).

Recently, due to fights over his faithfulness (although I'm still sure she doesn't know about me), her possessiveness and drug use, she soured on him. She decided to get a late-term abortion and pretty much wanted Jordan to leave her alone. He said that if she doesn't change her mind by the weekend, he's letting it go and letting everyone know he's single again. He didn't want to have a child, he didn't think he was ready for that, considering he still lives at home. At the same time, he said he'd be damned if she would raise his child without him. While the way everything went down was messed up, he said that As far as I'm concerned, he said that he wanted to put everything out on the table so there are no secrets. No matter what happens with us, he wants to be able to see me and spend time with me, and that he will make sure he makes time for me when I come back to town.

So I later talked to him on the telephone. I told him I wasn't surprised because from reading Bertha's webpage, I knew she was pregnant. I just wasn't completely sure it was his. I said to him that I was planning to ask him about it, but I didn't because I didn't think it was my place, and because I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know...but I do know now. I could understand better why he was with her, considering the circumstances. He admitted to me that he met her in December, had started seeing her in March, and they were together on and off. He didn't really feel a connection with her, and she rubbed him the wrong way because right away she was jealous and possessive, and she was on drugs. Furthermore, they had very few of the same interests, and her favorite music is the same music he hates the most (country and rap). However, against his better judgment, he kept seeing her because the sex was really good.

Well, we see how well that worked...

Anyway, so we stayed on the phone for about an hour and talked a while. It was good to talk about things, whether it was about the situation with Bertha, about us, or about interests and life. It reminded me as to why I like Jordan in the first place. Even though on paper he seems so not a match for me, when we're together, whether on the phone or in person, we are just so right. It's the kind of thing I know can't be duplicated.

So since Tuesday, I've had a chance to think through everything, and take note of some developments. Bertha and Jordan have gone back and forth online the past couple of days talking about how much they love each other, yada yada, which makes me wonder what Bertha is ultimately going to do in regards to the baby and their relationship.

On one hand, I commend Jordan for wanting to stay with her for the sake of the baby, but at the same time I wonder if, considering the fact that they have such a volatile relationship, it's a really bad idea. I really think he needs to grow some balls and make some decisions regardless of those that Bertha makes. He's being taken hostage by her instability. And I feel like I'm being taken hostage by his indecisiveness.

Jordan and Bertha's relationship is like watching a really bad train wreck in slow motion.

I also have a sneaking suspicion concerning the situation, of which I don't have evidence of except for an understanding of male-female relations and human nature...as well as from my experience with silly females from in and around Detroit:-).

It dawned on me yesterday as I was talking to one of my best friends. Here are some things to consider: Bertha is very possessive and smothering (which is clear even on her webpage) towards Jordan, and then she turns around all of a sudden and says she wants to have an abortion and cut ties with him? On top of that, practically speaking, she is in her fifth month of pregnancy. It is very difficult to find a doctor that will perform a late-term abortion. In addition, she is always talking about in her messages to him how "horny" she is. But usually women don't get their super-libido until the last trimester of pregnancy. She is a big girl, too...a really big girl. I know from personal experience that many big women don't have regular periods (amenorrhea), so conceivably she wouldn't have to take that week per month to not have sex because of menstruation.

I'm wondering if she may have trapped Jordan, but not in the way he suspects. I wonder if she had invented the pregnancy so that Jordan would not leave her, because she had to know that he wasn't as interested in her as she was in him. Considering that he was continuing to sleep with her, but would not claim her as his girlfriend, would make it pretty clear to anyone, naive or not, what his intentions with her truly were. She may have been hoping that if they continued to have sex unprotected, he would get her pregnant for real. However, by the fifth month, with no pregnancy, this strategy becomes untenable and she has to find a way out. The easy way out would just to claim a miscarriage. However, considering Bertha's penchant for the dramatic, going down in a blaze of glory may seem more exciting to her.

I don't know, it's only speculation, but to be honest I don't think I will completely believe there is a real baby involved unless or until I actually see a real baby.

This whole situation seems like a good case study for the darkness of human nature, particularly the depths to which people go due to the emotions of desperation and selfishness. I also notice that even my own feelings denote a degree of less-than-noble intent. Deep inside the dark reaches of my heart, I do wish that Jordan and Bertha would break up so he could be with me. This is the first time I've really felt this kind of connection with anyone, and I don't want to lose that. At the same time, there is another part of me that knows that Jordan is, in a sense, trying to do the right thing, and I can't fault him for that at all. I do want for him to get his life together, because it is a mess and being with me isn't going to fix the things that are broken.

I told him, against every fiber of my being, that if Bertha goes through with the abortion, and they break up, he needed to be by himself for a while and not worry about dating or women. That was hard, because I would so love for him to run to me, and try to make a long-distance relationship work. But it may not be the best thing for him to rebound into something else given the seriousness and gravity of the current situation. And while I feel selfish about it, and this situation is killing me, I can't be self-serving and still be able to look in the mirror.

I wish that Bertha would just do what she's going to do and not drag Jordan through changes. I wish that Jordan had a backbone. But my wishing isn't going to change the situation. I am really considering taking a break from it all until everything is settled and I truly know what I'm dealing with.

Drugs

So I thought that this was the end of Jordan. Unfortunately, men have a way sometimes of lingering a little longer than they deserve to.

I went through a range of emotions...pissed, angry, sad, depressed, etc. It's not because Jordan was the best guy on the face of the planet; he definitely wasn't. It was because on some level, I liked Jordan, and I was hurt about being lied to, and unwittingly playing second fiddle to someone else.

On Friday, I had confronted Jordan about Bertha over the phone. He was being kind of bitchy because I was pushing to talk to him and he had to work 48 hours last week. But did I care? No way. When I asked him why he didn't inform me about the fact that he had a girlfriend, he changed his tune. He said that he didn't tell me "because I suck," and then proceeded to tell me that he hadn't been sure he wanted to commit to anyone. He said that he didn't realize his boundaries with me considering how I felt and that I'm still a virgin. He said it was good that I was waiting. Come to find out, his first sexual encounter happened to be with a girl who was mixed w/black, and the sex happened to be good. But for whatever reason, he waited for a few years to sleep with someone else. In any case, he also mentioned that he was iffy on Bertha, that on one hand, there are things he likes about her, but on the other hand, she's on drugs (pill popping and smoking weed), and she's immature and full of drama. To which I told him that he chose to be with her, and he should commit if he really wants to be with her, and if not, he needs to break up with her. That simple.

I had reverted to passive-aggressivism for the past few days and wrote a series of blog entries on that site chronicling my feelings about the situation (without spelling out the situation in detail). Cried, talked, wrote, got trashed, etc. The situation bothered me even more. It seemed like something was wrong with Bertha anyway because she came off as being a little too sold out for Jordan - too clingy, too sensitive, too willing to start arguments with random people over him. The other day, she even cursed out some girl who wrote a comment about Jordan's ex-friend back in January. She also looked a lot older than 24 years of age...more like 40. And so on one hand, the fact that she's a drug user makes the picture clearer to me. On the other hand, it hurt my pride because I played second fiddle to a crazy drug addict. What the hell?

So I get an email from Jordan Monday (that he sent on Sunday). saying that he read the weblog articles, and while he wasn't sorry he made out with me, he was sorry that he didn't tell me he was with Bertha. We ended up writing back and forth since. What it comes down to is that it seems he wants to stay with her so she can get off the drugs and get over her mom dying a year and a half ago. I don't think it's going to happen, it reminds me a lot of myself and Matt. But to each his own.

I didn't realize at the time that this situation would bother me so much. It's a strange pain. I cannot say that there is anything about Bertha that makes her more desirable than me. She's on drugs, is unemployed, she lives a life full of drama, she looks old and homely, and she's bigger than me, both size, weight, and height, and doesn't carry her weight as well as me. Even he says that she is not as mature as me, and I'm more stable than she is. And yet Jordan got with her, and I was the other woman. This is hard to wrap my head around. I cannot figure out for the life of me what is wrong with me to where I ended up losing.

And also, this...we did things that friends don't do. He and I were friends, I felt comfortable with him and everything. We crossed that line between friendship and something else. And now come to find out, it was really nothing. That really hurt. How did I end up being the one who is alone? I have everything this man seems to want, and I was willing to extend grace to him, and yet I get cut?! That really, really hurts.