His Phoenix

People are generally a disappointment. I don’t mean to me, because I am no better. What I mean is that we have all disappointed people that are important to us. For example, I am not the best father than I can be. This may not seem like much to everyone else, but my children are more important to me than life itself, and I feel terrible that I have let them down over the years.
More specifically, however, I talk about lies and disappointed expectations. This comes from some situations that I have been in, and they all involve women.

I have, over the years, gone into a few relationships with the understanding that “it isn’t serious.” I have gone into those same relationships with the understanding that we (meaning both people) are willing to talk about things and be honest with each other. Well, I must say that I have been disappointed in both cases in the past.

The first occurred about nine or ten years back. I liked her, quite a bit, and I told her from day one that this wasn’t a serious relationship, at least not to me. Unfortunately, she started to get clingy and possessive. Now, I have to admit, I tend to be a nice guy, and I don’t like to see anyone get hurt, but I had to tell this lady that it was over, and she was crushed. I was disappointed that she couldn’t tell me that she wanted a more serious relationship. We would have talked, but, eventually, I think, it would have ended the same way. I was a disappointment in the same way, recently. You see, I was seeing a lady that I liked, and I wanted to push our relationship to a more serious level, however, she did not; that led to me being disappointed in the second case.

You see, we both went into the relationship (such as it was) knowing (1) it wasn’t that serious; (2) we could talk about anything. I have stated that I broke rule (1), but she decided to not tell me that it was over and she just stopped calling me. I have to say that I have learned over the years, however, because it only took me about two weeks to figure out that she wanted it ended. Of course, this could easily devolve into a rant about the lies that my most recent ex-wife told me, however, if you want that, see my previous posts on that topic.

The irony here is that my two best friends are both women. They are both married and I can (and often do) talk with them about anything. I mean ANY-FREAKING-THING. Nothing is off-limits, and I love and respect them immensely for their honesty and caring and acceptance. Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t agree on everything, but we can agree to disagree, and that is a big deal to me.

What does it say about me that the only women that I have good relationships with are both married and living in other states?

To use Phoenix’ words, “Oh, me. I’m a mess.”

Carlo