Dear Rlkki:

You shared that you are in a casual, long term, “more than sex” relationship without a label (including the label “relationship”) with an emotionally unavailable man. You “don’t want judgments about emotionally unavailable men”, and you are not asking if you should continue to see him. You think that you are emotionally unavailable yourself. The two of you are not monogamous, don’t plan to be monogamous, and marriage is not in the plans.

He works two jobs 4-5 days and 7 nights per week. You are have kids living at home (schools are closed because of the pandemic), and one of your kids is too young to be  left alone. You work 5 days a week (from home, I am guessing?) Problem is that you don’t get to see him because he texts you about getting together too soon before proposed get-together so you don’t have the time to arrange for a babysitter, get your kids dinner etc. You told him you need an earlier notice, a few hours notice, so to prepare, but he keeps texting you to get together without the earlier notice you requested, “him never changing how/when he asks me, also not being available when I ask him out because of his schedule”.

You wrote that the Buddhist side of you says you should stick to your limits and not “cave in”- I don’t understand what you mean by caving in (I don’t think you mean to leave your children alone so to see him.. or have him in your home with your children)?

anita

Dear Rlkii:

Of the two plans: A) Continue to say No when it doesn’t work for you and not contact him when it does work for you/ say no when he contacts you and it does work for you, and B) Continue to say No and contact him when it does work for you-

– if you really have no motivation to change him and/or the casual, no expectations nature of the relationship, then choose B.

Problem is, it is reasonable to expect him to give you a notice before getting together so that you can get a babysitter. It is not decent on his part, to not give you such notice. Maybe he is lacking understanding of your situation and maybe he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t care- is that a problem for you, that he may not care to inconvenience you, to cause you to “scramble to figure out a way to get a  babysitter, etc.”?

(I will be back to the computer in about 10 hours from now).

anita

Dear Rlkki:

You are welcome. Interesting, as I read the first paragraph of your recent post, I thought to myself: what a shame for him, all he had to do was make the effort to call you a few hours earlier (that’s not a lot to ask for), and your last words were “What a shame”.

You mentioned “irritation” which is a mild form of anger, but even a  mild form of anger at a person is enough to kill the desire for that person (“I just find him less attractive”), at least for a while- you may forget the anger when lonely or otherwise distracted, but unless he changes and respects you, your understandable anger is likely to pop up again and again.

The title of your thread is “Stand Your Ground or Chill Out?”- always, whenever possible stand your ground. Plus, chilling out is about feeling cool, and anger is a hot-and-uncomfortable feeling.

anita

Another thought or two. Sometimes this kind of stuff feels like disrespect. We have told the other person and they continue to disregard our needs, wants, life perimeters, call it whatever we want. If we can look at this person and see who they really are, we can then decide if their personality issues work for us. Sometimes we have to give in a little and sometimes yes, we have to stand our ground. Some things are a deal breaker. A disrespectful, self absorbed person is not a good life partner. Maybe we feel that the behavior of the other person is something we need permission to stand our ground about. Sometimes we doubt ourselves. Sometimes maybe we want to deny behaviors that stare us in the face. I have done all of this and found the other person doesn’t change just because I find their behaviors problematic. I have a female friend who does odd stuff like tell several of us we are going to lunch with just her and then a bunch of us show up to find the group, and no one knew the group was attending. We all like each other but all of us looked at each other stunned, and no one laughed at the “joke”. My friend finds this amusing, I find it creepy. This is who she is but the last time she pulled a bait and switch, I said I didn’t like that place to eat at and would catch them another time. It felt right to do what was best for me but it doesn’t make me happy to have to set boundaries like this. I like my friend but she isn’t trustworthy. Many people will give in to us when we need giving in to about various things as perhaps they are “other centered”, but some people just don’t have the bandwidth or capability to do this as perhaps they are “self centered”. Doesn’t mean we can’t like them to a certain degree, doesn’t mean they are bad people. But the stuff that feels disrespectful has a way of becoming a pretty big issue in any relationship.