This is not a love story, no happy ending here. I’ll just go so far to say that Mr. Almost-Perfect is anything but, though he did give me lots of great material.
Our seemingly perfect relationship was going so well during the first couple weeks. I even had moments when I thought “wow, I’m not even freaking out about not freaking out”. Mr. A-P was so into me, and instead of that scaring me off like usual, I was really enjoying it. I was flattered, and loving the change of pace from my usual boyfriends. So end of week two, the weatherman was forecasting a snow storm, and as a teacher, I was hoping for my first snow day in two years. I told Mr. A-P what I was wishing for, and he jokingly said he would come over after his climbing practice, crawl into bed with me, and take the day off of work if I got the day off. I figured he was kidding, because he rock climbs until 11pm and I fall asleep by 10pm usually, and he had told me that he only had two weeks of vacation a year. That night, however, I was awoken to him coming into my bedroom, and my heart was soaring; we don’t live that close, and it was so sweet that he wanted to spend time with me so badly that he was risking the possibility of just seeing me until I got up for school. But the next morning, I woke up, turned on the news, and only had to wait minutes until I saw that my school district was closed. I was doing my happy dance around the room, and Mr. A-P was laughing along with me. I went back to bed for several hours, feeling so elated to be laying in his arms, and planning out what our day o’fun would consist of. I think back now and realize that this was the last of our magical-feeling moments.
We got up and made breakfast, or rather I made coffee and cereal for Mr. Almost-Perfect. I was going to make a bigger breakfast, but he woke up complaining about a stomachache. When he saw that I drink almond milk, he was hesitant to try it, but I told him he would love it- he didn’t. We had decided to start our day with a matinee movie at the theatre, but throughout the movie, he was telling me his stomach ache was worse, but now was blaming me and my milk. And then, when we left the movie I saw I had missed 3 calls from my mom, and my stomach dropped. My grandmother had been sick (battling Alzheimer’s for years and more recently cancer) and had been getting worse, so I didn’t have a good feeling, and the conversation confirmed that my grandmother had passed away. So much for our day o’fun; I was extremely emotional about my grandmother, and Mr. A-P was dealing with feeling sick. I could tell that he was feeling awful, because he really didn’t comfort me. Our day o’fun was shot, and our weekend wasn’t that great either because Mr. A-P was feeling sick for a while longer, so we just chilled at home- his home actually, and he didn’t have cable or internet, so we spent a lot of time watching music videos he had downloaded, and I’ll tell you, we don’t have the same taste in music. He enjoys electronic music and Christian rock and I enjoy- well, good music. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very fun weekend. I did talk him into leaving to get something to eat, which was a feat because as Mr. A-P put it, he didn’t enjoy putting thought into food. His diet mostly consisted of fast food and greasy Chinese (which is what he ate the evening before our day o’fun by the way- but there’s no way that’s what made him feel sick- right?), but I talked him into going to Red Robin so he could eat a burger and I could have a salad. So that’s where we had dinner, and I blamed it on his feeling sick still, but he complained the whole time. It was too expensive in his mind, and as we waited for the food to come out, he said to me “I could’ve cooked three of these meals in the time it took them to bring it out to us”. This is why throughout the almost three months of Mr. A-P and I dating, we ate out at a restaurant 3 times. As he told me several times “I don’t find as much value in food as you do”, because it’s true, after all, who enjoys a good meal? Unheard of, I know I’m a rarity.
The next week, my family came into town and I didn’t get to see Mr. A-P that much. My grandmother’s showing was on Wednesday however, and I thought it was so sweet that he came to it to support me. This also meant that he had to meet my family, but I was feeling so good about him, I didn’t mind and I barely freaked out. He did a great job with them, though he was quiet, but that didn’t bother me. I was impressed that he didn’t even bat an eye when my older brother told him “I don’t need to meet you. She’s going to dump you in a month. By the way, have you read her blog?” If you knew my brother, you wouldn’t be surprised that he said that to him, though I did have to tell Mr. A-P about my blog, but he dealt with it all pretty well, and even went to dinner with my family afterwards. Thursday was my grandmother’s funeral, and I didn’t handle it well. I was very upset, and I don’t come from a very touchy-feely family who talks about their emotions, so I don’t feel like I was dealing with the situation very well. Of course, I was also on my cleanse, and was watching everyone eat yummy comfort food (including my grandmothers favorite food- ice cream!) at my grandmother’s wake at my house after the funeral. I was eating hummus and carrots- you know, another comfort food. So when I went to Mr. A-P’s house later that evening, I really broke down. I hate when people see me cry, so I tried to hide it from him, and change the subject, but he was insistent that people who care about each other open up, and I needed to do that for him. That’s a hard thing for me to do, and I didn’t do a great job of it. And therefore “it” happened- I had my first freak out with Mr. Almost-Perfect, and tried to push him away. It was the day of my grandmother’s funeral, we had our first fight, but I just wanted to be left alone! We made up before I returned home, but I felt awful that my first feelings of fear and doubt about Mr. Almost-Perfect had surfaced. We texted before bed and promised ourselves that we would have a better date night the next day.
The next day, however, ended up being perhaps worse. I got into a huge fight with my family, and ran to Mr. Almost-Perfect’s house to hide out. I called him before I came over and told him I wasn’t in the best mood, and suggested that I go to another friend’s house, because I didn’t want a repeat of the night before, but he was offended by that. When I showed up at his house, he just kept asking me to share what was wrong. I just wanted time to be alone for a while, or at least not talk about what I was feeling, but he just kept pushing, telling me that I needed to talk about my problems. That opened a big can of worms though, and I ended up over-sharing including my concerns about getting hurt by people, especially in relationships. I talked to Mr. Almost-Perfect about my broken engagement, when I was cheated on and blind-sided months before my wedding was to take place. And Mr. Almost-Perfect said to me “maybe you should evaluate what you did wrong that made him do that to you”. I was floored, but maybe he was right? Even though my super-ex (the fiancé) told me that it was entirely his fault and I didn’t do anything wrong, I really started questioning myself more. Like I said, not a good night. But the rest of the weekend was okay, and we went to an OSU women’s basketball game on Sunday, and had a great time, it seemed our bad times were behind us.
Mr. Almost-Perfect and I at the OSU game
That feeling didn’t last long though, because the next week our next fight occurred. Mr. Almost-Perfect’s problem was he didn’t like my friends. Well, he didn’t know my friends, but he was bothered that a lot of my friends are guys. Since we had started dating, I had gone out to dinner three times with three friends, which would’ve been fine if they weren’t all male friends. I mean, I did hang out with an ex-boyfriend (The Dentist, who I am closer to now than we even were when we dated), but the rest were all strictly platonic. But Mr. Almost-Perfect didn’t like it, and he didn’t understand it. Especially when they happened during a “date night”, which I can understand more, but if he didn’t tell me in advance that he wanted to hang out on a Friday night, why should I have assumed? And my thoughts were, he clearly didn’t want to feed me, so I’d have to look elsewhere for my good meals, I was doing him a favor really! Too bad he didn’t think so. But before you take his side, let me explain something else; Mr. Almost-Perfect’s “best friend” was a girl! And not just any girl, she’s a girl that he met from a dating site, that he went on several dates with before she decided she just wanted to be friends. Not only did he talk about her all the time, but he also rock-climbed with her weekly; “but those aren’t date activities”, he told me, so it clearly wasn’t the same thing. This is when I really started to notice the cracks in our relationship.
To be continued….
Okay, in his one and only defense, Red Robin does suck. Now, on to what you did to make the super ex cheat on you?! Seriously? He must be the kind of guy that cheats too.
Well I don't think Red Robin is that bad, you can get a yummy veggie burger. Good point though, does sound like something a cheater would say.