Feel like a failure

Ok, so yet again after I posted that, I printed it and gave it to him. He said he loved me so much and wanted to work on things and make it better. Well that didn’t last long at all. One of the things he complained is that I “hold things in and then flood it all out at once”.

Last night, he called me on his way home from work. He said he was starving and asked that I start dinner. So I get dinner going and it’s nearly ready by the time he gets home. He walks in and has some packages which one of them is a gift for me, which I loved and was super happy about.

Then he comes over to the kitchen and looks at what I’m making, Loco Moco, I had made the hamburgers kinda thick cause that’s how I liked them and I wanted to use all the hamburger in two patties for us to get the protein.

He says: “You should have made the hamburgers smaller”
I said: “how about you appreciate that someone is cooking you dinner instead of criticizing it”
He immediately changes his attitude and walks off. I can tell he’s pissed now, so I try to talk to him about it. He says something along the lines of “Well I guess we just can’t ever cook together” which is a crazy over generalization. I tell him as such that that’s not the problem, the problem is that he’s not appreciative of the fact he has a boyfriend who he can CALL UP on his way home from work and have a nearly completed dinner ready by the time he gets home.

Could I have said it differently, could I have just blown it off, yes. But the thing is that I go out of my way to do shit for him all the time and I just generally feel he doesn’t appreciate the fact that I do this stuff for him. All he had to do to solve this issue with us was to say; “Sorry babe, I do appreciate you cooking for us”. Instead he gets mad at ME for “blowing up” at him.

So then we are sitting on the couch eating and he’s still being grumpy, so I say to him; “Can you look at me and we can talk about this like adults” to which he LOOKS at me and then like bulges his eyes out in like a sarcastic manner. I say to him: “can you look at me normally and we can resolve this” and he just flat says “no”.

And that was the end. Something so fucking stupid, so minor and that’s the end of it for sure. He just cannot communicate, he cannot talk through problems. He says that I “always have to be right”. No, I just want him to hear me, understand my feelings and TALK about the problems we have. That’s what I want. It’s not that I’m right, it’ that I want to feel loved, to feel communicated with.

It sucks for it to end, I’ve really enjoyed our time together. I do love him, we’re just clearly not a fit at all. From day one, we’ve been fighting about this stuff. From the early days he’s made me feel unloved by ghosting me for Eric and maybe I’ve just never got over that and allowed myself to see how he does care for me. Because he DOES care, And I DO care.

But it’s time to move on. It’s time to end it and try something different. This isn’t working any more as much as I want it too. I’m not satisfied and neither is he.

I feel like a failure for it ending, I feel like if we could have JUST communicated better, if we could have just gone to therapy a little while longer. But then, why does a 1 year old relationship need therapy?! Clearly it wasn’t meant to be.

What next now though? What the fuck am I going to do next.

Third Draft – A breakup

Dear Charles,

I love you. I have loved you for a long time, I’ve looked forward to building a life together. When we moved in together, I was excited to make that next step in our lives.

But it’s become clear that we’re not on the same page about what a relationship is and what it means and what it required to maintain one. As I said last night, since last June I’ve been missing two key points, a boyfriend who wants to talk to me, who wants to engage with me and who wants to do the things that I want to do. Secondly a boyfriend who’s passionate about our physical relationship, who wants to love me, who respects my body as it is.

For months now we have been fighting about the same two topics, being engaged and being physical. Every argument comes down to these two things.

I deserve a boyfriend who loves me back in the way that I need to be loved. I’ve tried to make it work, I’ve tried to explain to you how and what I need. But time after time you continue to show that you’re just not willing to do that.

It’s not that you’re not capable of what I need, I can see you do those things with other people. With Eric, with Jay and James, with even random people when we were in tennis class. You corresponded with guys thirsting over you on Instagram while you’re “too busy at work” to reply to your own boyfriend. If you’ve got time to be browsing Instagram, Facebook or TikTok then you’ve got time to reply to someone you supposedly love. Eric once said to me something along the lines of “Charles asks questions about things when he’s interested in it”. To me, the fact that it’s so hard to get you to ask questions or to be engaged, shows that you’re not interested in me.

We have tried, we tried therapy, we’ve tried arguing, we’ve tried talking it out. But every time the outcome is the same. It changes for a few days or a week and then it’s back to the same thing. You said last night we argue every week and this is exactly why it happens so much. Because you just regress backwards.

All I’ve ever wanted from you want to be engaged with me, to be passionate, to be care about me the way that I care about you. I feel like I always give 70% and you give 30%. A relationship needs to be equal. A perfect example of this Is last week I asked you go get groceries while I was at work. You “forgot”, but you had time to go play tennis for yourself.

Your constant forgetfulness is just that you don’t care, you don’t value me or my time or what I need in this relationship as well. You forget about my birthday, you forget about getting us groceries, you forget to book me a haircut, you forget, you forget.

The physical side of what’s missing is easy to explain. When we were in the Thailand/Philippines you were all over grindr, you were horny wanting to hook up every day. But when it’s just the two of us, I can barely get you to have sex once a week. Just this past week, I tried to be “sexy”, I put on a jock strap and came out and laid on the couch. Hoping you’d come over, but instead, buying stuff on amazon was more important to you. That’s incredibly hurtful to me. At one point during one of our past arguments, I asked you “What do you find physically attractive to me?” And you couldn’t come up with anything. You eventually said something like “I like that you work out and trying to improve.” I might not have a six pack body or huge muscles, but I’m sexy and I deserve a boyfriend who sees that.

Time is precious and I want someone who’s going to give me what I want and need. I’m sure there’s someone out there who matches what you want and what you can give. But it’s become clear that it’s not me.

I love you, I care about you deeply, I want us both to be happy and at this point, our relationship is not making either of us happy. I hope that we can both find what we need and hopefully at some point we can be friends again.

Love,

Chris

Another blow up.

This time, I think it’s the last. We both admitted we are unhappy. He slept on the couch. He left for work without saying goodbye. I texted him and just like always, he ignored it.

That’s the thing, that’s the problem is his ignoring me. Constantly. What started this one? I was talking to him yesterday morning we were on the couch, having a great morning. Cuddling. He got a text message and instantly he picked up his phone and started ignoring me. I just stopped talking, he didn’t say anything, he didn’t go back to the conversation, he didn’t do anything.

It just pisses me the fuck of that I talk to him I try to tell him about stuff and he doesn’t listen or care At all.

I’m still resentful AF about my birthday and I don’t know how to get over it. Eric’s birthday is coming up next weekend. He’s gone out of his way to make sure he gets he day off. He’s gone out of his way to get him a present. He wasn’t able to do ANY of that for me. Last night he said “Well you didn’t plan anything that would make me remember it”. WTF does that mean!? I had told him to take the day off, I told him I wanted to go for a hike that morning. But nothing mattered to him. He worked.

I just can’t do this any more but I’m also scared of losing him. He does love me, I think. I love cuddling with him, I love hanging out with him. But he just doesn’t TREAT me with the way that he does other people.

We went out with his friends yesterday he was engaging, charming, chatty. He was asking them questions bout stuff. He doesn’t do that for me. I tell him something and he just is like “ok”. Maybe I am just BORInG to him. But then why be here?

I think it’s done. What am I doing to do now?

Always so lost

Why do I always feel so lost, like I don’t know what I want, what I love, what I am doing with life.

How do people find things that they “love” doing. I have tried and done so many things, hiking, camping, rock climbing, cycling, scuba, sailing, woodworking, construction, gardening, vintage cars… But I don’t “love” any of them. I don’t CRAVE to do them. I don’t come home and say “omg, I can’t wait to go biking”. I go biking cause I have nothing else to do and it fills time and helps keep me healthy. When I was doing woodworking, I didn’t CRAVE to go do it. I went to do it cause I just wanted to get the project done.

Etc etc. The same shit over and over. I apply the same to my relationship. I enjoy my time with Charles, but do I love him? Do I want to spend my entire life with him? Probably not.

What the hell do I love, what the hell do I WANT to do in my life to make it feel rewarding and exciting.

I bought a ’71 Torino years ago, probably cause I was lonely and bored and wanted something to fill my time. I’m looking at a Sailboat now. Am I just going to do the same thing, spent a ton of money on it and then regret having it. I just dunno. Like I enjoy sailing, I think? But is it something that I want to do enough that I want to have my own boat.

And that’s the thing too, do I actually ENJOY sailing enough to want to do it that much?

What the hell do I LOVE to do that I can spend more time doing it. Charles LOVES tennis. I feel I don’t LOVE anything.

What do I want out of life? What makes me happy and makes me want to get up in the morning and enjoy my day. I have no clue. I’m 41 years old and have no clue what I want to do to make me happy.

The other thing that’s frustrating me is these damn apartments. I was expecting to be flush with cash and it just seems like no matter what we do, I’m just spending and spending and spending. In the past month I’ve had to invest $40k into them because the previous PM just put these trash druggie tenants in who completely TRASHED the apartments. I’ve had to remodel 4 apartments. One guy fucking DREW a dart board on the wall and threw darts at it. He also knocked all the drywall out of the wall between the bedroom and the living room. Like WHO THE FUCK does this shit. It’s just really getting me down. I should be seeing my savings grow, not collapse.

And then the relationship. I enjoy our time but shit just pisses me the fuck off. TODAY is a perfect example of the kind of crap that I cannot deal with. He had today off, I had to go to work. I asked him before I left for work today to go get groceries. I get home from work and he said he “FORGOT” to go get them. Instead he spent his afternoon at the tennis court hitting balls. I get home at 3:30 and he says that his friend wants to play tennis. I ask him how long he will be and he says “one hour” and he would get groceries after. It’s now been NEARLY THREE HOURS and he’s still playing tennis. So by the time he gets home from playing tennis and getting groceries it’s going to be fucking 8:30 or 9pm. I’m so fucking pissed about this right now.

Thailand/Philippines

So, it’s been a while since I got back from the trip, but I wanted to post an update.

The trip overall was fun and great. There were times where I was just totally over the big group though and I thought that we did a bit too much temple viewing in Thailand. But whatever.

Philippines was fine. But because it wasn’t really PLANNED because that was “too stressful”, we didn’t get as much done as I thought we could. IE there were days where we did a morning activity and then nothing else, or days where we spent most of the day just going “well what do we do now” type things.

Overall it went way better than I thought. Honestly I thought we would get into a lot of fights but there was really only one BIG one.

Since we got back, things have also been generally better. I’ve noticed he’s been helping to pay for things more, he’s been more caring. But we still have problems.