Dating Disasters: Every Rose Has a Thorn, Part II

I wanted to share this experience with him. I wanted to look back on this trip and say I survived almost two weeks across the world with the man I love. The flights there, despite its length, were a breeze. We slept, watched movies, ate food, and read. I brought two travel guides and a journal. My goal was to create a travel journal, experience everything Thailand had to offer and each night write about it. For Christmas, he had given me a leather bound journal, knowing I loved to write, it meant a lot to me. He listens.

We started out in Bangkok at a beautiful residence that would cost a resident of Thailand a lot of money, but fairly cheap for us. We rode in a tuk tuk to our residence which was thrilling. It's a fast two wheel motorized car that's open in the back. As we sped to our destination, I kept thinking about how lucky I was to be here. A chance of lifetime to experience a place like this and to do it with him. I had begun to let my guard down. It took awhile. When we had first met, I knew he was going to cause me pain. He was only a few years younger than me, but knowing how I was at his age and what pain I caused my ex, I knew this was a bad idea, but I had fallen hard. Throughout our days in Bangkok, we visited museums and the Grand Palace. Grand doesn't describe how amazing this place was. We watched a Muay Thai match which I can only describe in terrible fashion as Boxing meets Martial Arts, took a beautiful night river tour at the floating markets, shopped, ate delicious food, and drank on top of expensive hotels over looking the grandeur of Bangkok that is breathtaking. Things were going splendid, except for the occasional upset stomach, I couldn't have been happier. floating market/river tour was my favorite leg of that part of the trip. It's just a long market on a river with small shops along both sides. The people are friendly and despite having little, they are happy. Their happiness comes from things that matter not material things us Americans have to have. It's grounding.

By the second leg of our trip, Phuket, things started to change. My fears of being with him began once again with no cause but my own. Five of us were relaxing at the pool with a swim up bar when my friend and I noticed two beautiful Australian guys close by. We began making sexual comments about them to each other which caused my bf to get angry. My heart dropped. I was buzzed and feeling good, but I was wrong and I apologized profusely. I thought he would just chime in with us, but he made me feel like a god awful bf. It was one of the first times I had seen him angry so I was taken back. We let it go.

Thai New Year (Songkran) was upon us. I didn't know much about the festivities, but part of the celebration involves a water festival. It's a time where people roam the streets with anything they can carry water in, buckets, water guns, cups, whatever and everyone gets soaked. SOOOO much fun. With it being as hot and humid as it was, I didn't mind. We couldn't leave the resort without getting wet. How much fun to carry a super soaker around and be able to go up to random people and just spray them down. The best were just the random groups of beautiful Thai women trying to coax men inside for massages, meanwhile holding pales of water, sneaking up behind you, and dumping it over your head. One night we found a gay bar and the Thai boys that worked there went to great lengths to get you to buy drinks. They were feminine and friendly, sitting on your lap, flirting, all the while just trying to obviously get you to buy more. As it got darker, the streets became more crowded. My friends seemed less enthusiastic to join in on the fun as they had been here multiple times, but for me I felt like I was back in Yonkers playing Manhunt with my super soaker, hunting down my friends in the neighborhood. My bf and I met a few very hot and very friendly foreigners, some from Britain, Australia, Brazil, all over the world and we all just drank, made friends, and acted like kids.

"I have to use the bathroom," my boyfriend said to me as I was hiding behind a wall about to sneak up on someone and get them wet. By now we were drenched anyway, my t-shirt and shorts sticking to me. All I said to him was, "Ok" and get playing. Soon, I started to worry. He hadn't comeback. My friends didn't know where he was, at least they didn't seem to know where he was. I began to panic. I went into the bathroom, he wasn't there. I looked all over the bar, the street, he was nowhere. I walked a few blocks down to our resort thinking maybe the bathrooms were so gross he went back to our room. He wasn't there. I started to get visions of me having to talk to police, calling his mom, and telling her he's gone. I was buzzed and maybe was over-reacting, but I was legitimately scared. On my way back to the bar, he was walking towards me with a look of concern and frustration. At me? I don't know. I hugged him and began to cry. "Where the hell were you?" I asked him. "I told you I was in the bathroom, " he said. "I was sick, was in a stall."

My friends were acting strange as if they knew something I didn't. I had that awful feeling you get when you know everyone is not telling you something. I let it pass. People were dancing and I joined in and then I turned my head to this Brazilian guy and he was grinning at me. Not a "You're cute" grin, it was as if he had done something behind my back, like he was an enemy of mine and he had one up on me. When we got back to our room, things felt different between us. I knew something had happened. I have very good intuitions when I'm in a relationship with someone. I know when things are wrong. Then it hit me and I didn't want ask him for fear I was wrong, but I didn't think I was. Was that grin saying, "Ha ha, I just hooked up with your bf?" "Did you mess around with that Brazilian guy?" I blurted out. He looked at me with anger and concern, but behind his "How dare you think I would do that" face, was guilt. I apologized for even thinking it, because I wanted it out of my mind. I was in Thailand and despite the despair I started to feel, I didn't want my accusation to ruin our trip whether I was right or not. By the last leg of our trip in Koh Phi Phi, I felt more and more distant from him. I put on a façade of being happy but inside I knew that when we got home something was going to change. He was trying to hard and that's how I knew he had done something with that guy even if he denied it. He even kept singing that Kelly Clarkson song, "I Don't Hook Up," all the time, which the psychology minor in me was a sign right there he felt guilty FOR hooking up.

On our plane ride home, I replayed that guy's grin over and over in my head. maybe he did think I was cute and maybe I was being that overprotective jealous guy I vowed I'd never be. He went to great lengths to prove his innocence. Even telling his parents. "Craig, tell them how you thought I cheated on you while we were there?" I was mortified. But as spring was leaving the weather got warmer things got worse and we began to fight. We were at the beach with his friends and he got hammered and began spouting how I had more experience with men and he didn't. Made me feel like a terrible guy because all I got him was a card for his birthday, even though I had just spent thousands on our trip. Each time, that night or the next morning he would sob and apologize and I would forgive him because I loved him so much. But he stopped telling me he loved me when I would drive him home and I knew it was only time. Then one night after having dinner with friends, gushing over how wonderful my bf was, I invited him over and he declined. He never did before. I did what any paranoid, love sick, crazy bf would do and I went through great lengths to catch him trying to hook up with someone on Manhunt. The same site he messaged me on to say hello. The site he had blocked me from seeing his profile to make me believe he had deleted his.

My world was over. We spoke that night and he broke up with me. I was stupidly trying to fix us, but he no longer seemed to want or need me. A day or two after, we had remained friends on Facebook and I saw his number of friends had increased greatly. All men. All men, including the Brazilian and finally he had come clean about hooking up with him that night. Not just hooking up but actually exchanging information to keep in touch.

Love makes you do crazy things and I learned a lot about myself and the man I wanted to be. I had never been more hurt. I became depressed. Left work early because I couldn't function, stopped eating, cried all the time, and became to him, a crazy ex who he had no use for. Looking back I laugh at how stupid I was. Using every excuse to see him again only to beg my cheating bf to take me back. I went from sad to angry in an instant. One minute wanting him to be mine again and the next plotting devious things to do to him like taking naked pics he had sent me and printing them and placing them where he worked...to contacting his mother and telling her own manipulative her precious son was and letting her know all the shocked things he had done to me. I went CRAZY.

It was on my trip to DC to visit a friend, attempting to recover from this heartbreak that I found out that within two weeks of him breaking up with me, he had a new bf. I sobbed in the street, dumbfounded. What?! I felt useless, unworthy of being loved, and alone. I never had experienced heartbreak before and that is how I knew I really had loved him and yet now I hated him and didn't think it was fair he was happy and I was devastated. I told my ex, who I had still lived with at the time, just how sorry I was for all the terrible things I had done to him, because if he had felt anything like I was feeling at that time, I deserved so much more shame and punishment. To add insult to injury, everywhere I went, even in Yonkers to escape my life in Boston, I ran into people who knew him and thought he was such a wonderful adorable guy. It was comical in a way, like WTF.

All those friends I had made. All the men I thought I was so close to, I began to hear little from anymore. It was to the point that they were just acquaintances to me. Nothing more. I was dying inside. I started seeing a therapist, as I began sleeping with men just to feel something. It didn't matter whether I thought they were attractive, they thought I was attractive and so just to feel wanted I slept with them only to hate the person I was after. It was one of the darkest times in my life and yet now when I put it in prospective, I realized all it was, was giving too much power to another individual. I let another person dictate my happiness. It took while to trust again, but it happened. Years have past and although there has still been more heartbreak I've learned to make wiser decisions and the payoff has been amazing. It was an experience I needed to have to make me learn about trusting others, patience, and above all knowing what it means to be a friend and that I am capable of loving someone completely, but within that love learning to not lose myself in the process.

Dating Disasters: Every Rose Has a Thorn

                                                                Part I

I sat in the middle of the Boston Common with my laptop out staring at a blank page trying to find words that would change his mind. I looked around at the crowds of people enjoying the weather and I hated their smiles. I resented them for being happy and yet desperately hoped a stranger would see how empty inside I was and just let me cry on their shoulder. I desperately needed to find the right words, as if, as he read my letter, something would strike him so powerful he would come back to me, crying and apologizing and I'd forgive him as I had before, because at the time having him falsely love me was better than watching him move on without me....

After my car accident and one last attempt at a relationship with my ex that still didn't work out, I decided it was time I stopped searching for a bf and try to meet some gay men in Boston to be friends with, rather than hookup with or date. I had received a very large settlement that changed my life. I was able to pay off debt, live comfortably, and buy a car. I felt like I was able to actually have a real life and not be confined to my home which with my current salary I could hardly afford. Up until that point, I had no gay friends and I felt alone. Everyone I knew had busy schedules and families and lived far away and I was envious seeing crowds of gay men together enjoying "the scene" and envious that I felt like I was still an outsider in a community I belonged to and fought so hard to get to. It wasn't long before I met some wonderful guys who I became close to and I had finally realized how stupid I was for letting my fascination with having a bf dictate my happiness. Time went by where I was the happiest. Going out drinking, taking trips, gossiping, finally feeling free and for the most part complete. Then it happened. I had received a message on manhunt, a site I had stopped using but never closed completely for those late night urges... There he was, this beautiful young guy with charm and intelligence from what I could gather by is non-sexual, unforceful yet direct message to me that I was unfamiliar to receiving. We chatted for a bit and despite my better judgment I decided to go on a date with him. He, like an unpredicted storm, moved in fast and furious and clouded all of my clarity and I thought, it's just a date.

He was late. I stood outside in the cold, waiting for him to arrive. Fall was leaving us and the unwelcoming chill of winter had made its approach. Typically, I'd say screw this and leave, but he finally showed and had valid excuses and looked even more beautiful in person with an "I'm sorry" face that could make you believe somehow whatever it was that he did wrong could be forgiven. That night, he invited me back to his place and we laid on his bed and talked and fooled around and I thought to myself, "slow down...he's younger, probably doesn't want what you want, and you know he's going to break you." I swept those thoughts under the rug because there was no chance my mind and my gut were going to catch up to the way my heart felt for him just from that first night. We decided I should go, because although we both wanted each other, we knew if I spent the night, it may just end up being a one night stand. It was a first for me.

We were walking through Boston Common when the first snow fall began. It was heavy and we were freezing yet we were on a Santa bar crawl I had agreed to participate in with him and his friends and so the heat between us and the alcohol made me stop us dead in our tracks. That is where I asked him to be mine and from that point on I felt like there was nothing that could tear the complete and utter happiness I was feeling inside of me. "He's a keeper, do not fuck this up," one of my friends said to me the night I decided he should meet them. "There is no way I'm letting him go," I thought to myself. I knew at that point that this was what true love feels like. All those clichés, all those sappy love stories we all love to watch, every all consuming, vomit worthy, "walking on air" moment I was feeling it for him. I would do anything for him. I feared meeting his family, his friends, anyone or thing that might have influence over him to make him decide I wasn't the right one for him. His friends and I, thankfully got along and I had one of the best New Years ever with them and him. By Christmas, he met my family and It wasn't long after I met his family and became so envious of his family life. The good relationship he had with his sister, whom despite her friendliness made me feel inadequate financially. His well off parents, who also were very nice, but yet I always felt I was under a microscope. His mother especially made me feel as though I wasn't good enough for her son, yet still offered me kindness and I could tell she knew I was trying. My brother and I did not get along, my parents were separated and both broke, and I was envious of his family to be able to support him. But despite all of that, I was his and I would earn their trust, because I needed to. To them, their cherished son and to me his starry-eyed boyfriend, he was perfect.

He began to call me his husband, it was a joke of course, but he made me believe that he was so in love with me that I was the man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. I, of course, DID want to spend the rest of my life with him. I spent every waking moment trying to find ways to make him happy, because one thing he made me learn about real love is, you know you truly love someone when you put their happiness above yours. He made me learn a lot about real love and I am thankful for that. One night he said to me as he began to choke up, "You have done things no one has ever done for me" and I could have died happy in that moment. In my mind, I thought "No, I wish I could do more." But he seemed satisfied with "us" and I was elated that he chose me.

One day I received a message from two of my friends telling me they were taking a trip to Thailand and they wanted me to come and to invite my bf as well. Before my accident, I couldn't go to a cheap B&B let alone to another part of the world, but I had the money too and although that settlement was quickly shrinking I wasn't about to let an opportunity like this pass me by and there was no way I was going to leave without having him by my side. He agreed.

Little did I know that was when the storm began to move in and my world was about to be destroyed....