Before, I was talking about connections that we hang on to, and wondering why we do that. Sometimes it's not needed anymore but we continue to hold on. Well, I needed time to figure that one out. And the universe gave me my chance to figure it out. With two examples:
For the first one, I will tell you about a man. Someone who is older and was very sweet from the get go. He was full of compliments and seemed genuinely all right with his stuff. Something that seemed so nice about him was that he was helping this younger Queer boy get on his feet. Considerably younger but it was nice of him to offer some help. I should have seen some of the red flags from the beginning. I slowly learned that this man had issues with emotional connections. He was what some like to call, a "psychic vampire". Someone who sucks the emotional energies from others and drains them. Most of the time, they do not know they are doing this, but it still happens.
He needed a lot of reassurance. He was having problems, not only with the boy but within himself. The man couldn't find his own emotional barrings and was trying to latch onto other people to hold him up. At first I thought I was up for the challenge. I am a giving person and have a strong enough will most of the time to help people out. This man proved me wrong on all those fronts and tested the strength of my powers quickly. No matter what I did or what advice I gave, he would need more. It was as if what I was doing or saying was going in one ear and out the other. I didn't think my words were wrong or my advice not delivered sweetly enough. He just wasn't in a place to receive the help.
I finally was not going to be able to do it anymore and started to distance myself. Well, that only made things worse. When I wouldn't respond or wouldn't be available, the man would go into a depression and be very passive aggressive in what he would say. He would send long text messages about how hurt he was feeling but wouldn't "think to ask for my help, because I was such a caring person and had done so much for him already". For the first couple times, this would bring me back in but then I would start to distance myself again because I realized that too was a unintentional ploy for affection that would not help.
The last straw, and why I am cutting off this man, was when he disappeared for 2 weeks. He had texted me saying he was feeling absolutely horrible and that he was going to leave. I assumed the worse and tried to communicate with him to no avail. I thought he was dead. Fast forward two weeks and he was just out of town and needed a road trip "without his phone". I definitely let him know how I felt about this and that he was wrong for being so drastic in action and message. To which he responded with more passive aggression. I was done. And I am done.
Person two, and this one is a lot lighter in tone. He was a man I met online. Really sweet, funny and quite cute. We met and played games and flirted in his hotel room. I was really enjoying his company. But I had also been seeing someone else new as well. We'll call him "Vancouver Nurse Student or VNS". Equally as fun and attractive as well as a lot of fun in and out of bed. Where the issue comes in, is that I was beginning to go somewhere with VNS and was starting to have that feeling to distance myself from person two. I couldn't tell him though. It was hard enough as it is that he took me out for dinner and a movie and we had a grand time. I decided to let it slide for now and continue. Well, I recently saw VNS again and we hit it off even more, which solidified what I needed to decide. I was going to being seeing person two again and this time I was going to tell him that we needed to be seeing each other as friends only. That I was seeing someone else that I wanted to get more romantic with and call off other engagements.
I got together with him and we were hanging out, but instead I let myself slip and we ended up in bed. We didn't do a lot, there was not real sex involved. Just hands and kissing, but still. I was just going to have fun that night, nothing romantic but I failed with that. He took me home and I felt bad for not saying anything to him about how I was feeling. But I figured that I need to do it now, before I see him again. In some form other than in person. At least as a means to lighten the load. I have not done it yet but I am going to do it soon. I guess the thing here is, if you don't do what you know is right, you'll just keep doing what you know is wrong.
Hanging on prevents us from moving forward and we might hinder things that could be coming down the pipeline for us. Worse even, we may make things fail in succession, like dominoes. I've let go of one connection, now I need to work on the other. And have an interesting, learning time, with it.