Separate Ways

I’m going to do something soon that I’ve only done a handful of times in my life, and it’s something that I absolutely hate to do and feel like such a heel when I do it.

I’m going to dump someone.  God, that’s such an ugly word, but unfortunately it’s an accurate one.

This blog is only two months old, and I think I’ve only mentioned Therese once, in passing.  She’s not exactly at the front and centre of things in my life, which is probably why I’m going to have to say my goodbyes.  We met six months ago, and while I enjoyed her company and thought her a good friend, it never got beyond that stage for me.  Unfortunately for her, I think she fell head over heels in love with me on our first date.  She acted like she didn’t, but she didn’t hide it very well.

When we met, she lived in another town, about an hour’s drive away.  She would come to Winnipeg on the bus every other weekend, spending the weekend at my apartment.  It was cool to have a companion here when the kids weren’t around, and frankly it was good again to have a steady sexual partner, even if it was only bi-weekly.  The sex was okay.  Not bad and not earth-shattering, but generally satisfying. 

But frankly, we are two ridiculously different people.  I feel like she is attempting to force herself into my world and my interests, hoping I will end up liking her as much as she likes me. For her it’s like taking a gulp of really awful medicine, because I know she doesn’t like much of what I like.

I like indie music and movies, vintage crap, books, science documentaries, art, soccer and a liberal dose of nerdy and/or mainstream pop stuff.  I’m a hipster without the ridiculous clothes or the pretentious bullshit (I hope, anyway).  She mostly likes professional wrestling, NASCAR, rodeos, Danielle Steele and Jeff Dunham, things I can barely muster an interest for, or just can’t stand.  I hope I’m not looking down on her or judging her, and I take great care not to, but sometimes I feel as if I am anyway.

This fall she confessed to being in love with me.  I told her that she was a good friend and was fond of her, but I did not love her back.  She didn’t take that particularly well, and I told her it was probably best if we went our separate ways.  After much cajoling, she convinced me for us to remain in contact and see each other because ‘she didn’t want to lose what we have’. 

In other words, she hoped I would come around to what she wanted.  I should have been insistent, but I gave in.  I do genuinely like her as a person.  She is fun-loving, kind, earnest and unpretentious.  I like spending time with her – but increasingly just as a friend.

But then she did something that really, really bothered me a few months ago.  It was Thanksgiving weekend (in Canada, Thanksgiving is on the second Monday in October).  It was not my weekend to have the kids, but the ex and I agreed I would take the kids Saturday night until Sunday evening so we could have a Thanksgiving dinner with our family on Sunday, and then she’d have the boys for their Thanksgiving dinner on Monday.

Therese texted me that Friday telling me she was coming into the city, and if we could spend time together.  I told her that would be fine until Saturday night, by which she’d have to be out because the boys are coming over.  She said she had friends in the city she could crash with until the bus ran back on Monday morning.

My policy since I left was that the boys would not meet any of the women I was seeing unless our relationship reached a certain serious and committed step.  Therese was well aware of my policy and had respected it up until now.  She got in on Friday evening, spent Friday and all day Saturday with me.  It didn’t seem like she was making too much of an effort to leave, so I casually asked her when she was leaving.  She looked up at me with a guilty face. 

“I’ve got no where to go.”

What do you mean, you’ve got nowhere to go?”

“None of my friends have gotten back to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.  I’m trying to get a hold of them.”

Then I saw her on her smartphone, trying to get a hold of people.  I don’t believe she had any plan to get a hold of her friends.  I believe she came here, hoping she could just wrangle herself into staying here with the boys and perhaps getting herself invited over to my mom and dad’s for Thanksgiving to boot.  She knew my boundaries, and she decided to try and sneak around them.  Not a good sign.  It actually reminds me a lot of my ex.

Long story short, she stayed over Saturday night with my kids over.  Jesus, I wasn’t about to kick her out into the street.  But I was not happy.  Yes, sooner or later, the boys are going to see daddy dating.  But I want to ease them into it, not see daddy sleeping in bed with a woman who isn’t mom right off the bat.  I’m already deeply suspicious that Nick is already putting two and two together as to why I left mom, and the guy the ex was seeing, and I don’t want to muddy those waters further right now.  But I did not invite her over to Thanksgiving dinner.  That may have been harsh, but I wasn’t in the mood to be cordial.  She left the apartment Monday morning and I’ve been keeping her at an arms distance ever since.  She’s been over since, but not as often.  We still text, but not as much.  To be frank, ever since Thanksgiving, I’ve pretty much lost most of my desire for her.

In the meantime, she moved into the city, renting a room from a friend of hers.  We’ve gotten together for coffee a couple of times a week, but she’s only been over a couple of times since moving to the city.  I haven’t been avoiding her; if I hit the point where I was going to avoid her, I’d end it, but I’m not going out of my way to see her either.

Things came to a head a couple of days after Christmas.  I’d had the week off work, and after Christmas and having the kids over and everything else, just wanted a couple of days off by myself to bum around, catch up on some reading, blogs and vlogs, take the camera out and take some shots of the neighbourhood, maybe even play some video games.  Be a total and complete time-waster for a couple of days.

After those couple of days, the door was open for Nick to come over on his own until I got Gerry on Friday.  Nick and I don’t get a lot of one-on-one time together, and with Gerry still under 2, sometimes things are tough for him if he wants some selfish dad time as Gerry can and will monopolize it.  I wasn’t going to force him to come over if he didn’t want to, but I wanted him to know I really wanted him to come. 

Therese texted me the same day, asking what my plans were, and if she could come over.  I told her it was iffy, that she could, only if Nick wasn’t coming over.  She said no problem, that she would like to come, but she understood that my son came first.

So anyway, Nick enthusiastically agreed to come over, overjoyed little Gerry wouldn’t be there to steal all my time away.  I texted her back telling her sorry, but the rest of my holidays are sewn up with the boys, and she got ridiculously  pouty about it.  Okay, I get that she wanted to see me and we haven’t seen each other in a while… well, okay, we haven’t had sex in a while, but I told her that the boys will leave on New Years Day and she can come right over then.

‘No, don’t you understand?  I won’t be able to get there!’

Okay, here’s the deal with Therese, and I’m going to try to be as open-minded about it as possible.  Therese is on government disability.  She has an injury that is almost identical to mine.  She shattered her ankle and broke her fibula when she slipped on a patch of ice.  This happened a few years ago when she was living in Alberta.  For reasons she never quite explained, she hastily moved to Manitoba about 2 years ago.  She alluded to something about an ex-boyfriend stalking her but didn’t elaborate.  She left behind two kids in the care of her dad and her stepmom, and from what she’s told me, she loves her dad, but cannot stand her stepmom.  Apparently, all but one of her brothers and one of her sisters in her family have stopped talking to her.  I don’t pry, but she claims it’s because her stepmom was spreading lies about her.  She didn’t give specifics.

It’s really none of my business, but she wants me to know all of this and she especially wants me to know that whenever something happens to her that’s bad, it’s someone else’s fault, or someone is out to get her.  And she’s always very vague about the circumstances surrounding her kids and leaving home.  I don’t necessarily think she’s lying, but there’s a buttload of truth she’s leaving out.  You just get that sense about her.  I mean, I don’t want to give the impression she isn’t a good person.  She is.  But just not a stable person.  Not someone to take up to the next level.

That and I think she’s become quite accustomed to disability cheques, and I think she’s not looking forward to having to go back to work.  She keeps complaining that she can’t work, that her ankle is still too bad because her surgeon botched two surgeries.  She still has a pronounced limp, but gets around easy enough.  I don’t know.  I can’t judge, but my gut just tells me that she just doesn’t want to work.

Anyway, she doesn’t drive and neither do I, so she’s been buying a bus pass since moving to the city.  Now, apparently social assistance is withholding money until they can sort out the last place she was living at.  Apparently, she skipped out owing her landlady 3 months rent, but I had thought social assistance paid a case’s rent directly.  I don’t know.  But I know enough to find everything about this to be really dodgy.  So long story short, she has no money because the government is against her, her leg is still bothering her because her surgeon is incompetent, she can’t see her kids because she is broke and her stepmother is a bitch, and if we’re going to see each other, it had to be that day, because she won’t be able to afford a bus pass for the next month.

I’m sorry, I told her, but my time with my kids will NOT be compromised and Nick and I are spending the day together.  Just the two of us.  Like I promised him.  Period.

Then she started going on about how things are changing, how she feels differently, she loves me and I don’t, and everything about her life is just horrible, but it’s okay, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter.  Hmm.  I’ve lived most of my life around women who guilt the people around them and no more.  We need to have a talk.

But I’m still going to feel like a heel.