Finally! But What Now?

[UmbrellaBoy]

I've been "involved" with a guy for 3 years now. It's been extremely messy (I've written about it here before) mainly because it was a love triangle from the start.

 

We're gay guys. He and I met online in May 2010 and hit it off right away; we talked 5 or 6 hours online every day that first summer, and he had me come up to visit him in Canada only three months after meeting, late that August.

 

However, he was already also "involved" with a more local friend. Well, actually, he was still hung up about an ex from 2009 (who dumped him for waffling). But I could tell that this friend was in love with him and was cultivating a "special friendship" even though my/"our" guy denied to me that he had "that sort" of feelings or attractions for his friend.

 

But, when I asked him about us having a romantic relationship after my trip in August, he said the same thing about me. But then he started a relationship with the other friend a couple months after that, in October 2010. However, I could tell it was reluctant, and he and I continued this sort of long distance emotional affair that became increasingly more invested for both of us. It became more than just emotional in May 2011 when I came to visit and he "bare-chested cuddle cheated" with me (he initiated).

 

After that almost two years of "on-and-off crisis" started. I cut him off after he did that, he came back a few weeks later, said he'd leave the boyfriend, but then he changed his mind a month later and they moved in together. We didn't talk for a couple months again, but I made an international move with only 6-weeks notice and moved in a block from them in September 2011. We started talking again, there was a lot of drama, they broke up (because of me) in December 2011.

 

He and I apparently both thought this would start our relationship after some healing time and space; the ex was supposed to move out by February. But then he decided to let the guy continue living as an ex in the apartment because he had no where else to go, while he and I continued this awkward detante. During this time, of course, there were other fights and tension and cut-offs and reconciliations. Information fed to me from mutual friends indicated that my guy really did love me deeply and was just "confused."

 

Finally, their lease ran out in August 2012 and they moved apart. I went back to the US. My guy promised before I left to prepare himself mentally for our relationship, and invited me to visit his new town in November 2012. However, a week before that, he had a freak out and asked me not to come, that he had been thinking we'd make our relationship official on that trip, but that he just couldn't go through with this, that he was thinking of going back to the ex. Well, I managed to "beg" my way into visiting anyway "for closure," but the understanding still that this was that this was "the end" and that we wouldn't talk anymore. Nevertheless, on that trip, things got more physical (and somewhat sexual) than they ever had before.

 

3 months later, around the end of February, after absolute no contact and tons of grief, I sent him one little text to feel out the waters. This unleashed a flood-gate and he started texting me a bunch and sent me a gift by mail and things seemed great. However, I did confront him about what the hell was going on.

 

He hadn't gone back to the ex, but I found out a lot of stuff. Apparently after they broke up in December 2011, the ex's alcoholism had become a real problem. The ex started dating other guys (some sketchy characters) to make "our" guy jealous/worried, and I think may have needed to be taken to the hospital or bailed out of jail a few times. The ex stopped paying his half of the rent. Basically, he held my guy emotionally hostage, but because he has good intentions, he allowed himself to become an "enabler" in this codependent thing, especially since he allowed the other guy to guilt him over the break-up due to the emotional affair with me.

 

It seems the ex has long used guilt to sort of trap my guy. The ex was abandoned by his parents for being gay as a teenager, never graduated high school, and used this fact passive-aggressively to guilt-trip my guy into the relationship initially, into moving in together even after my guy had been building up the courage to switch to me ("I have no where else to go!!"), into not moving out after they broke up, and finally even in November he went no contact on my guy (but then started acting self-destructive, which my guy found out about through mutual friends) which caused my guy to freak out and cut me off so he could go back and "help" the ex.

 

I had a long talk with my guy about how he can't keep enabling like this, and that eventually he just has to move on, but he gets very defensive "I feel like I'm betraying him when I disclose stuff like this to you," "Even if we're not together, he needs me to help get him on his feet," "I'll just feel so guilty if he dies or something." Nevertheless, he knows it needs to end and that it's not fair to BOTH of them (or me) to put all our lives on hold in this weird codependent ex limbo.

 

Anyway, things were very warm after that, and in March my guy agreed to come visit me at the end of April. Things seemed to be going great, and I even felt like there was an implicit understanding this meant the deal would be closed between us. My guy had expressed his feelings before, we were obviously "involved," we were both single, I just wanted the official title of boyfriend, of having a steady relationship. I felt like if my guy could just get over the "hump" of starting to think of me in those terms and supplanting the ex, things would be a lot less confused.

 

Well, he came down last week. Things seemed to be going well until I pushed the relationship question when we were getting physical. He confessed that he thought we'd close the deal when he agreed to come up in March, but then the ex had another crisis and when he went to "help" him out of it, they ended up sleeping together again, this had stirred up old feelings, and now he thought maybe he did love the ex. It was a long argument. I explained to him how ex-sex is not recommended as it stirs up the old feelings again, how they obviously became attached if they were living together for a year, but that this happens when two people are physical and oxytocin was released. On the other hand, it was sort of a good sign for me, because it meant that he can get attached to people over time even for whom he was initially reluctant.

 

Finally, he agreed to try our relationship, we finally kissed for the first time, and after that were holding hands and being more free about that sort of thing than we'd ever been. There was a bit of a crisis when he was about to leave, I asked something like "So...what can I tell people we are? Boyfriends? Can I say that?" and he got all freaked out and "I don't know if I want that. I need time to figure out what I still feel for him, etc" but I put my foot down and was like "No, that's a year and a half in the past, you hooked up again and it stirred things up, but we all need to move forward" and he knew I was right and agreed.

 

So. It's finally accomplished. He seemed a bit distant and moody the first few days by text, but things are warm and back to normal now. Still, I don't know what comes next really.

 

It's a long distance relationship. I might be able to get a job near him by the end of the summer, but I also don't know that for sure (or if he'd freak out if I moved like that again so soon). I'm sort of afraid of what happens if the ex pulls another trick and if my guy will cheat. He's never cheated sexually on anyone before, and he understands there is supposed to be exclusivity and that if he wants to do something with someone else he needs to break up with me FIRST, but then again our relationship did start as an emotional (including cuddling) affair...

 

Part of my hopes, as I said, is that it's merely a question of the ex still holding the "default" relationship slot in his mind, and that if he starts thinking of me as his boyfriend, it will finally "dethrone" the ex (I actually told him: you should have discreetly had a rebound with a third party when you first broke up to "cleanse your palate" so that you could have had a clean break, emotionally, from the ex instead of lingering in this weird ambivalent limbo where you still feel a loyalty in spite of the break-up).

 

But I also don't know "where next." In reality, emotionally, our relationship is 3 years old. We already know everything about each other, and have been through the rock tumbler so many times that we've sort of polished out most of our rough edges with each other (we've both changed and grown so much in many areas, which is one of the reasons I think in spite of all the drama we're such a good team; we've always found a way to negotiate a solution in the long-run). On the other hand, I sort of feel like I've spent my honeymoon energy now (I was really cutesy and romantic with gifts and stuff at the beginning, but have slowed for lack of ideas lately) and also I think for him it is awkward to consider starting more of the sexual stuff finally given that I was default friend-zoned for so long. It's an awkward place to be; in some ways the relationship is brand new, in some ways we have a comfortable 3-year interaction already going, and it's confusing as to how exactly (besides getting physical when I see him in person; I'm hoping to visit him beginning of July again) to shake things up or make them new or to distinguish official-relationship-us from the old emotional-affair-"friendship" us.

 

At the same time, until I see him in person again in July and have him in an affectionate cuddly place, I don't want to have a relationship "talk" yet about that, as I don't want to scare him off again so early given how much "nudging" it took. But I want to know what the next step would be or how "serious" I should consider this or how to progress things. Given that the relationship is only a week old and so fragile still, I don't see getting engaged anytime soon, lol. Then again, the relationship is REALLY 3 years old. So it's very weird territory in terms of wondering how things should be different or the same or how to make them deeper now.

Edited May 6, 2013 by UmbrellaBoy