2:37 pm
Move in with me.
My heart skipped, as it always does when he sends me that message. We'd only been dating 3 months, and Steven was ready for me to move in with him. I smiled, and replied with my usual sarcasm.
Isn't that what the end game is? To fall madly in love, get married and live together?
I'm lonely.
I know. But we've talked about this.
Unfortunately, this conversation was not taking its usual route. Steven must be having a bad day, which is very unusual for him. Since the day we met, he's had..2? Maybe?
*****
We'd only spoken online for about 2 weeks before our first "date". I say "date" because I wasn't aware it was a date until the night had ended. Steven found my online profile through a mutual friend and we'd begun messaging each other back and forth consistently. He lives out west, and was going to be making a business trip through my town and had asked me to meet up with him. Of course I said yes. I liked his sense of humor, and he seemed like a sweet guy. It didn't hurt that he was attractive.
Now, I'm not one to have a "type". I've dated guys of different stature, ethnicity, lifestyles even. Steven looked slender, but muscular. Rugged, with his black beard sprinkled with grey hairs. Different, again.
We met up for dinner, and I didn't feel a connection. The entire time we were out, I kept wondering why THIS guy I was meeting in person wasn't computing in my brain as the guy I had spent the past 2 weeks talking to.
At the end of the night, he gave me a necklace. "Because the date went so well," he explained when he saw the expression on my face. THAT'S when I realized it was a date, and not just two strangers meeting up.
We continued to talk, and I quickly found myself falling for him.We started off the new year in a new relationship. One filled with sarcasm, laughs, minimal disagreements, and promises of a great future together.
As our relationship progressed over the next 3 months, I learned that Steven was stubborn and uncompromising. He made me feel guilty if he did not have my undivided attention, and if he felt that my commitment to him was less than his to me.
I'd considered a new position at work, which would require my relocation to another country, and he told me that our relationship would end if I took it. So I didn't.
He asked me to move in with him instead of "abandoning" him, and when I told him that I couldn't live with him because I didn't believe in living with someone before marriage, he said he understood.
But he never stopped asking.
If our relationship was going to last, I would have to move West to be with him, because he couldn't abandon his business. He's self-employed and did "not want to start over in a new town" when he already had "such an established client base" where he was.
******
5:49 pm
I think you were right about me being off. I don't feel happy. There is an emptiness in my heart.It's not fair to you that I feel this way. You deserve better than the way I am acting.
Are you breaking up with me?
