I’m having a quiet reflective day. That’s often kind of dangerous. My mood remains pretty low and I have definitely been overthinking everything. But in particular my relationship with the current bloke. To refresh readers’ memories, this is the gentleman I was seeing back in April / May time, who I rather unceremoniously dumped via WhatsApp because he was unpredictable (he would go off the radar for days at a time), emotionally stunted and was constantly trying to push my boundaries in the bedroom. As I consider those very valid reasons for splitting with him then, I find myself wondering how the heck I even considered giving him a second chance when he started messaging me again in August. But I was on holiday at the time, I was relaxed, my defences were down, and given his difficult life circumstances I felt maybe I had been a bit harsh on him. And I totally believed I was in a different place to when we’d been together in the Spring. My mood was fairly stable at that point. This was before my meds were reduced in an attempt to alleviate the side effects I was experiencing and my confidence was better. I felt in a stronger position to maintain my boundaries. I agreed to meet him, but on my terms.

Well circumstances overtook us, and we still haven’t met. He’s now in Iraq (via Germany) and has no idea when he will be leaving (short version). I have no reason to doubt what he says, but I’m struggling. We weren’t seeing each other when he left, things are still up in the air, and my anxiety and insecurity are making it very difficult to cope with a long distance, maybe on / maybe not relationship. He says he wants me and wants to be close to me, but when I try to pin him down to how he envisages our relationship on his return, it seems a bit hit and miss whether he’s actually looking for anything other than sex. He knows I want more than that and I suspect he’s just saying the odd things I need to hear to keep me interested. He still goes underground when things are difficult and when I challenge him on the lack of communication, he just tells me again how difficult his life is right now. I don’t doubt that, but things here are hardly a bed of roses, and I’m tired of it.

My trouble is this, as my mood has slipped again, I don’t really believe I deserve someone better. Someone who will actually trust me with their stuff instead of running away. Someone who cares about my stuff. Someone who calls me beautiful without being prompted. Someone who actually wants to spend time with me, and isn’t commitment phobic. A part of me knows I deserve those things, but the other part is still telling me that being with the wrong man is better than being alone. My rational head knows that after years years of abuse, a man who fantasises about bondage, anal, rape and pissing on me is probably not the best way ahead. And I take responsibility for this totally. Never once have I had the strength to tell him that isn’t for me. Because when you’ve been through what I’ve been through it’s not unusual to believe that is all you’re worthy of. And being the ‘dirty little bitch’ I see myself as, I have a nasty depraved reputation to maintain. I’m aware that makes me sound really crazy and pretty vulnerable. And I know I should ditch him. But the wonderful traits of Unstable Personality Disorder that I display mean that I’ve fallen for him. Hard. Look how long it took me to shake the feelings I had for Andy, even after I knew what he’d done to me was assault. If I’m still caught up on this guy when he returns to the UK I can see history repeating itself, and that scares me.

But I want to believe he’s the nice, genuine man he keeps telling me he is. I want to believe that given time he will trust me more. I want to believe that one day he’ll care about me the way I care about him. I want to look after him and I guess deep down a part of me wants to fix him, even though I know that’s unrealistic. And I know I’ll probably do nothing, because finishing with him would leave me utterly alone, and that’s scary too.

Thanks for reading. No judgement please.

👼🏻