Life In Indiana, Part 3

There were other issues. I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to keep things like they had been when we went away for the weekend. That’s an impossible task. I know that. Yet I still felt the pressure. The funny part is he was always the one who was so quick to say, “Oh, the puppy love stage is over. It’s ok though. It’s not designed to last forever. You end up with real love.” Yet here I was feeling like I had somehow failed if we weren’t going and doing all the time. Again, it’s funny because he could spend hours playing video games. He did not need to be running to wineries, driving up to the lake, going on walks or bike rides, or anything else if he was playing video games.

He blindsided me with going back home for Thanksgiving. That was fun. I was all excited to finally spend a holiday with him and about three days beforehand he announces he’s going back to Virginia to spend the holiday with his family.

Oh, okay. That was me, always playing the part of the understanding, sympathetic girlfriend. Whatever you want, Matt. Whatever makes you happy. I understand. I know you miss them. Maybe this will make you happy.

He spent Christmas with me. I’m pretty sure he was miserable. And then he returned to Virginia for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

I asked him if he was going to spend every holiday back in Virginia. His response was, “Probably.” But he was willing to spend New Year’s with me. How thoughtful. I fucking hate New Year’s Eve.

When he originally talked about moving up here it was always with the idea that he would buy a house up here. Only he didn’t. Because he didn’t sell his house in Virginia. Because he didn’t want to displace his daughter. Again, my kid needs to learn to sink or swim; he basically gives his kid a house and in doing so ruins any chance he may have to buy a house up here.

It was never the two of us. We’ll talk about the whole sex thing later but I freely admit it slowed way down when he moved up here. My bedroom wall is right up against my son’s bedroom wall. My mother is downstairs. I know damn well if it was his kid whose bedroom was right next to ours we wouldn’t be going at it for hours because he wouldn’t want his kid to know he was having sex.  Hell, the first time I went down to his house he snuck back out to the couch around 6 in the morning so his daughter wouldn’t know we had slept in the same bed. Well guess what? I didn’t want to advertise my sex life either. So there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of it. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it when we did have it.

The fact that we were never alone also inhibited us from doing a lot of things that we might do if we lived alone. I don’t know… like maybe having sex in the living room. Spur of the moment. Fooling around in the middle of the day. Fooling around while we’re cooking. Not having to worry about how much noise you’re making. All of those things I could think of weren’t going to be done because we were never alone. Why?

Because he didn’t buy a fucking house or get his own apartment.

Why was that again? 

Because he failed to plan. The whole move was a haphazard mess despite being in the works for four years. He didn’t put aside extra money while he was working. I think he figured he would live off of some of the money he got by selling his route. But he sold his route in June. He worked on the Air BnB until August, with a small break when he came up to go out to Utah on vacation with us. The renovations went over by $10,000. I think he ended up putting most of it on a credit card. Then he came up here in August but didn’t actually start running the route until October instead of September like he had hoped and didn’t get paid for the first time until November, I think. Maybe late October. He did have income from the Air BnB but that wasn’t a huge amount. He borrowed money from me and his daughter to finish purchasing his new route and he even paid for the final $10,000 by purchasing flooring on his credit card for the seller instead of giving him cash.

I think that perhaps the first time he started to think we had different versions of the future was when it was becoming time for him to get a place. He wanted to know if it was going to be “our” place. Basically it was almost like, “Are you going to be moving in with me?” I was willing to help him pay utilities and I would be over 4 or 5 nights a week but no, it wouldn’t be our place. It would be his with me over there a lot. It didn’t help that he wasn’t planning on living in my city. He was looking at places 30-45 minutes away, if not a full hour.

I never lied to him. I was always very clear that we could not live together. I was willing to push the boundaries. Quite honestly, from the way my lawyer acted at times simply being over there more than 2 or 3 nights a week was pushing the boundaries. I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. I wanted to sleep next to him every night. I wanted a place that we could calls ours. Unfortunately, I was limited in how much I could do. We’ll never know because he moved back before he ever got a place. And he dumped me before I could ever move down there.

The decision to move back was never discussed. That was a huge slap in the face. I wrote a blog post about my fears that he was going to up and return to Virginia. He told me we would discuss something like that; it wouldn’t just be an announcement out of the blue.

How strange because that’s exactly what happened. Not even two months later he comes storming out of the bedroom. “That’s it! They haven’t paid me again. They say I’m still upside down. I’m selling this goddamn route and moving back to Virginia. I’m done.”

That was it. I was left sitting there, stunned. Of course, it was also like him to spout off when he was angry so I thought that perhaps it might blow over. 

Not this time.

I remember suggesting to him that he get a regular job, maybe at a factory or something. If he had steady money coming in then he could afford to buy a plane ticket and fly down to see his kids every 2 or 3 months.

As other people suggested on my blog when I wrote about him returning, surely there were other jobs in the area that he could do. He didn’t have to return to Virginia. My mom even said recently, “Why on earth did him selling the route mean he had to move back? He could have sold the route and done something else.”

Yeah, well, kinda like how he got pissed off and put his house up for sale and sold his business in New Hampshire in order to move down to Virginia only to recognize a decade later that he might have been better off just selling his house and buying something more affordable and ditching his wife, he didn’t think things through.

Or more than likely, he did think things through. He wanted to go back home and this was the excuse to do so.

He spent four years telling me the plan was for him to move up here and build a life with me. It took him three months to realize he had made a mistake. He even told me one time he shouldn’t have done it. I will acknowledge he moved up here; however, his follow through sucks. Many people said he didn’t give it a chance. I tend to agree. I’m tired of making excuses for him.

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