Is it fast? Terribly. Impulsive and impetuous? Probably. But more than any of that, I think, it's a manifestation of the fears and trust issues that I've yet to really deal with.
I've let go of the loves that didn't work, let go of the pain of the rejection and the feeling of being lied to, but the one thing that's stayed with me throughout every failed attempted and actualized relationship was the inability to trust the people that I wanted to be with. It felt like each time a relationship didn't work put a little nick on my self-confidence and my belief in the innate good in people.
I know I have to realize that those past hurts won't necessarily manifest in my new relationship, that those things and people were different, and that most importantly I'm different. It's hard, though, because the relationship that I'm in happens to be a long distance relationship, and so my reluctance to really trust and let go of the fear is pushing me, and in turn it's making me push him.
He's not ready to move. I've known it for awhile, but I just kept pushing, thinking that him not willing to make this move with me means that he doesn't love me or doesn't believe that we'll make it that far. He expressed concern once about the temptations that he'd face once he let people know he was dating me (because you know those chicks, just like I do, who don't want a dude until he's with someone else) and that made me freak out. What if I wasn't what he wanted? What if there was something there that was easier that the relationship we're in?
Then it hit me. Maybe I wanted him to move here so badly so I could keep an eye on him. Now don't misunderstand, I want to be with him. I love waking up and seeing him, I love joking around and talking with him in person. But maybe I was pushing so hard because, if he were here, I'd be able to, in my mind at least, know if something was amiss. Me even wanting it for that reason let me know I wasn't in the right place.
I want him to move with me because he wants to. I want him to do so of his own will and feel secure enough in and of himself to just say one day "Say Jane, how do you feel about me moving in next month?" More than that, I want to trust him, whether he's with me in person or not.
My parents were long distance relationshippers in the sense that Pop was military and deployed a lot. They worked, at least in my eyes they did. They laughed all the time and had fun and then one day, they didn't anymore. One day it all fell apart and neither I, nor my mother, really knew why. For a guy I'd known my whole life to just decide "Welp, this ain't it for me no more," and just dip right as I reached adolescence? It hurt a lot. It confused me; if my Dad couldn't even stay around for me, what makes me think any other guy would?
And so started a very confusing cycle of me either chasing dudes I knew would let me down, or allowing dudes in who weren't really what I needed, just for the sake of not being lonely. The latter, I didn't worry about trusting, as truthfully I barely liked them anyway, but the former? The former I would put all my hope behind and push. Then when they pushed back, in the opposite direction, I fell down and got hurt. I got hurt a lot, not realizing that it was my own choice. I chose who I gave the power to hurt me to, and up until that point, nobody has shown they were worth that much.
Tarzan met me at a tough time and picked me up, not expecting anything in return. He's been a friend to me before anything romantic happened and has proven he's worthy of my trust. He's worth my love and my faith and yet it's still so hard to give it so freely, still so hard to not push him either to his breaking point or completely away.
I'm trying to learn to trust, trying to not smother. I think working on myself, while working on us, is the key; I thought a relationship would "fix" me, in a way so I'd kind of stopped thinking of myself as an individual in process and a switch was flipped to turn me into a couple in progress, not realizing I could do both. I thought all my previous issues with myself would dissipate once I had someone giving me their heart, but the reverse is true; they've been brought more to the light. I don't want to be a liability to him, nor to myself.
I'll keep working at it, and in the meantime stop putting so much pressure on him; I'm sure he's already putting a lot of pressure on himself for so many other things, and I don't want him feeling more trapped than loved. As for myself? The only way to learn trust, is to practice it I suppose.
So here's to more practice.
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