Am I Being Pursued or Played?

[AnneMargaret]

Hello....

 

Following a small fight, a male friend (50s) whom I have been seeing on and off over ten years, went NC for about three weeks. We have known each other all that time first as strictly friends but then as a romantic friendship, if I could call it that.

 

We had seen each other about a month prior, for the first time in three years. Everything went beautifully, and the relationship advanced at his initiative, with his consistent conversations with me about future scenarios, talking in depth about finances, children, this and that and so on. I am early 40s, we are both very attractive and highly educated and mature.

 

I live abroad by the way, but am from the same city as he so going here and there is not a big deal.

 

The fight happened over the phone having to do with the pace of how we were to proceed. A kind of "typical" scenario. I did not push, but matters became a bit tense. So, the NC

 

Almost four weeks later, he contacted me. I had kept the NC--rather proudly, I must say, though it was quite difficult.

 

Well, now there has been another fight. He asked if we could resume our friendship. I agreed, and thought to myself that beginning with friendship and working up from there was the right way to go. No pressure. He seemed excited and nervous on the phone to have me "back" and I kept things light and nice when we first spoke.

 

But then I noticed he was not calling so much. Sort of once every twelve fifteen days. I thought this much too little. It is not so much the concern that there are "others" (or not) for this was in the start-up stage, so to speak.

 

I began to ask myself: Did he contact me after that 4 week NC because he had genuinely missed me and was serious about me, and his spacing of the calls is just to play it cool, to not show rushing....

 

Or is it the case that he sought to see if I was "still interested" and wanted only to contact me when it was convenient for him, here and there, only concerned with knowing I am "still in the stable", as it were

 

I wrote him an email (I do not write these often to him, nor do I call--I let him mainly do that), saying that I was not interested "any longer" in casual friendship. My correspondence was firm but not harsh.

 

I have not heard from him, it has been two days.

 

Am I reading this right? Was his original desire to contact me again more superficial then I had presumed?

 

Thank you in advance for any replies.

 

Confused,

A M

Edited November 7, 2012 by AnneMargaret

[pcplod]

Hello AM

 

Having read your post I have to be honest and say I really have no idea how you might interpret things. YOU need more information.

 

However, I will make a couple of observations based on purely personal preferences. Make of it what you will.

 

I am about his age, a little older. I can lose my temper, mostly with myself. Irrespective, I don't like myself much when I do it, because, frankly, I really expect better of myself and I am only letting myself down when I do it. Frankly, I prefer to believe that I did most of that in my far from adequate youth and via experience I SHOULD be capable of something better than that.

 

Unbridled anger and petulance is a sign of personal weakness and inadequacy, of being unable to competently express yourself in plain language without giving in unnecessarily to the worst extremes of your emotions and inadequacies. All other things being equal, I think you ought to think about simply walking away.

 

As for yourself, if you had to draw up a critique of yourself as an exercise for, say, a psychology class, what would you make of yourself, if you were brutally honest? Do you think you could have and should have handled things better as a matter of principle, irrespective of the context and any provocations? Do you have any objectives for yourself to strive to be that 'better person' as the cliché goes? Were you attempting to negotiate with him or were you just issuing an ultimatum?

 

Me, personally, I believe that all that is a laudable objective purely for selfish reasons in order to like myself better as a person and to be able to get more out of life with less stress and anxiety. Being better at expressing myself with confidence and assertion without offending or upsetting others, even if it is primarily their issue is a wonderful skill to have. You, I, will never totally master it, but it is about the process, not the end goal.