Long Distance Dating Hiccups

I hate my stupid long distance relationship so bad. 

Ya’ll know this already. 

The only thing I would hate worse is not having Al in my life. 

But sometimes the whole thing is just weird.

He was here for 5 days for Thanksgiving.

And it was great, but total kid immersion.

I felt almost like he was ready to go home.  I don’t think we got tired of each other but we were both definitely tired.  During that week, we had my kids, his kid, my parents on Thanksgiving day, my entire family on Sunday for my mom’s birthday, took his son back to college, I had a crisis with a patient and had to work some, it was just generally insane. When he left, we were both kind of like, “yeah, bye.”

We didn’t talk about it for a long time but really didn’t make a plan to see each other again either.

Never a good sign.

Then I had my night that I cried myself to sleep because I felt like he was distant from me.

Hiccup.

He reassured me that all was okay.

Well.  Somehow over the weekend, it all came up and we had a come to Jesus talk.

I think both of us were kind of worried and mad.  He said he was afraid I was getting bored wtih him. No, I’m not bored with him but I am terribly bored with this situation.  The distance, the kids, not being able to plan for a future because of the distance, etc. 

Hiccup.

Then I admitted to being afraid the bloom is off the rose. 

We have had a wonderful romance.  Nobody farts, we always smell good, we kiss constantly, even out in public in front of strangers (but not our kids), we hold hands and walk with our arms around each other, we flirt, we share food and drinks, all the stuff new lovers do. 

But after that 5 days of running around like chickens with our heads cut off, being parents, cooking in our jammies, being exhausted at night, what if the romance is dead?  What if the romance has died and it isn’t special anymore and we haven’t even gotten to live in the same town yet?  What chance has a relationship got if the people are bored before they even cohabitate?  We’ve both been married, we aren’t naive to the fact that farts happen and sometimes people are in a bad mood and before you know it you don’t kiss much anymore. 

Hicthefuckup.

Could this be happening before we even conquer the distance?

Then he finally admitted that he had been ‘sort of’ angry with me for being short with him during Ice Apocalypse 2013.   He kept telling me to be careful while driving, and my mom kept telling me to be careful while driving, and I knew I had to be careful while driving and I guess I had enough of that and told them both to lay off.  I don’t even remember.  I apologized profusely.

But him feeling at liberty to say he was mad made me feel at liberty to say I was mad.

Hiccup.

 

I admitted to him that it hurt my feelings that he was critical of my family at my mom’s birthday dinner.  It is nothing I haven’t said, but you know how you can talk bad about your family but other people can’t?  This was Exhibit A.  I got defensive of my family.  I started thinking, well, if he feels like he can say that about my family then God knows, he must be getting sick of me.  That is married talk.  Not dating talk.

Hiccup.

He apologized.

I don’t know.  This is hard, with no end in sight.  Plus it seems that when we spend more than a few days together we do have some hiccups.  I don’t want it to be mundane and boring before we even can live in the same town.  What’s the point of that?  Of course there is a huge difference, Al has become my best friend and Stanley and I couldn’t communicate at all. 

We have a plan to spend the week after Christmas together.

Stanley has that week so it will be no kid time at all. We are considering going on a little road trip to a romantic inn or maybe a few days in New Orleans just to get away.  It will be interesting to see how we do. 

Dating after divorce and making a good decision about new relationships when you are both dodging landmines from previous relationship trauma is hard enough.  Throw in 915 miles and I can see it is virtually impossible. 

Neither of us want to make another bad decision.

 We are just going to keep rolling and trying to cure the hiccups.