Have you ever been in an “almost relationship”?
You just don’t know what your place in the relationship is exactly. You don’t know where you stand and what role you’re supposed to play in his life. You don’t know how much you mean to him if you mean anything at all. There will be some times where he will seem like he’s actually opening up to you; wherein he will tell you all the things that you’ve wanted to hear from him all along. But then the next day, he goes back to acting distant, cold, and nonchalant about ever being with you in the first place. You can never really feel secure when it comes to him. You can never be made to feel comfortable in this relationship that you’re supposedly in. It’s always hot and cold. It’s there and then it isn’t. You’re sure and then you aren’t. It’s dynamic. It’s volatile but not in the ways that you would want it to be.
You get happy whenever you hear your phone ring, look down, and you see his name on the caller ID. A huge smile plasters across your face as you wake up in the mornings and you discover that he has a good morning text waiting for you. You feel all giddy inside as he tells you that he wants you to come over because he misses spending time with you and he wants to be with you in an intimate setting. You see a glimmer of hope in your relationship when he tells you that you have a certain connection that he wants to build on the best that he can.
And then suddenly, the phone stops ringing and you don’t hear from him for days. Suddenly, the text messages stop coming, and he doesn’t even reply when you send him the first text. He doesn’t invite you out to spend time with him anymore; and when you happen to invite him out, it’s either he will shut you down or he will cancel on the last minute. He is going to distance himself from you. He’s going to act as if you don’t matter much to him. He lured you in and he made you commit; but it seems like he’s not so keen on committing to this himself. And so you are devastated. You hate yourself for playing the fool. You are upset that you allowed him to play you and break your heart like that.
And your relationship seesaws like this for a long duration. You think that things are going great and you’re both going to be just fine. And then just when things start to stabilize, something happens that sends you into a whirlpool of uncertainty. You try so hard to claw your way to consistency, but then you lose your footing and you spiral into a relationship twilight zone. You don’t know if you’re really together, but you can’t say that you aren’t either.
He doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s so inconsistent. He’s so sporadic and unpredictable. One minute, he’s telling you that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. And on the next, he doesn’t even act like he wants anything to do with you anymore. It’s so emotionally exhausting having to bear with that kind of treatment for a prolonged period of time. It’s heart-wrenching and it’s confusing. It’s disappointing and it’s unsettling.
And on your part, your feelings all end up being jumbled as well. It’s like an emotional coaster that speeds up and slows down with a few twists and turns along the way. You end up feeling so many things with this man that you’re not even sure of how you feel as a whole anymore. For one, you love it whenever he starts to show signs of life. It makes you feel hopeful and optimistic. And you love the positivity that ignites within you whenever he’s good to you. And then you end up hating him. You end up feeling a sort of resentment for him. You are furious at how he can never seem to give you that stability that you need from him. You are disappointed that you can never be made to feel at ease.
And you know that you can’t be too aggressive either because you think that that would just scare him away. And you don’t want to act as if you’re playing it cool as well because you don’t want him to think that you’re really disinterested and uninvested in the relationship. And so you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. You don’t know what to do. You are clamoring for any signs of life. You want so desperately to find something that you can hold on to. Because at the moment, it’s like you’re suspended in mid-air and you don’t know where you’re going.
