2:09 NSG - friendzone Part 2

So.

Yeah.

The adventure to Montana wasn't even over, and within it Drunken NSG's admission of love and patience, and driving the final leg of I-84 I broached the discussion about how to re-negotiate our boundaries to be more relationship-like. It did not go well.

NSG was extremely fixated on my limitations at that time, and her unease was distressing. This transformed into a conversation that demonstrated more of the difficulty communicating clearly with each other. This disconnection very much seemed highly correlated with relationship anxiety for us. Which is bad, considering that all the best ways I know of to address relationship anxiety involve communication. The miasma of feelings and confusion was eventually reigned in at a point where we agreed to take things extreeeeemely slow. Which, by definition, meant that I was still in the friendzone.

With the onset of new time commitments on top of teaching starting up, NSG had precious little free time. So I made a point of finding ways to be supportive in the gaps. But the interactions continued to be strained, tainted with doubts that plagued NSG. My heart sunk ever lower, as I refused to make the same fucktarded mistake of giving up hope on someone else's behalf. So I held my hope, and stayed as open to connection as circumstances allowed.

It was only a handful of days before the penultimate blow. Riding along with NSG, she reiterated her view of how I had "said no" to our possibility of a relationship - even though I felt like I had never "said no", but had only agreed that I had some temporary limitations. This moved to her admitting that the trip to Montana was a test, and that I had failed. This was confusing to me, because I felt like she had been very clear that the Montana trip was meant to be free from relationship complications as much as possible. She informed me in a wistful tone that if it had mattered to me, I would have breached our clearly-negotiated boundaries.

I felt a piece of my soul die. And I said that out loud, but not anything else. The unravelling of a central knot of trust left my hopes totally adrift. If all those carefully-held conversations about how to navigate our vulnerabilities were so easily discarded - or even necessarily bypassed - what did that mean for the rest of the array of our connections? It hurt, and was terrifying. That was the last time I saw her.

A couple mornings later, she texted me to say that to take better care of herself we needed to stop spending time together or having adventures. Which, at that point, was just polite confirmation. I faced my long-held fears, and spent a few days tenderly laying down my dead hopes. And cried a lot.

When NSG wished me a happy birthday somewhat after that, I was so happy. And cried some more.

Some time after that, NSG texted another message to say hello. I was delighted, and thanked her for reaching out even though I was giving her space. She wondered if I thought she had asked for "space", and I responded: no - it was a thing I was doing for myself. To be mindful of our new boundaries.

The contradictory nature of unspoken needs and desires, when faced with the explicitly stated hopes and offers of another, is not something that I can hold in a healthy way. Even though I might want to try, for someone as brilliant and lovely as NSG.