An Open Letter

I’m journaling this mostly to try to just partially get it out of my system, but also to I guess digest my own emotions and understand a little bit more why I am feeling the way I am. Yesterday an and I spent almost the whole day, baking stuff, and I had started to get a crush on her again. We had also had a talking phase for a while when we first met, but the timing wasn’t right and so we did not end up dating, even though she was interested in me. But I wanted to kind of rekindle the situation because we were both kind of dating and I thought I saw a side of her that made me feel like she might be a really good match with me. But I also feel like it’s a little bit unfair for me to pass the judgment and so definitively say that that side of her that I saw was not genuine because I think it is heavily tainted by this frustration from my perceived rejection. She talked about how she dreamed of this guy that she had talked to before her last relationship and asked him out, and later she also talked about how she would think about what her future partner potentially was doing right now, and I guess I could’ve taken that as an invitation to say something like oh maybe baking for some joke about that because we were doing it together, but I think by then I pretty strongly had the gut reaction that she is not interested in me. And so I no longer really feel like I have a crush on her. And I find myself both pointing out reasons why I don’t necessarily want to be in a relationship with her, like certain icks, but at the same time, I also recognize that part of that for sure has to be me perceiving rejection, and then wanting to put the other person down in my mind as a defense mechanism the same way I think everyone does. And that’s why I’m not really trying to give too much weight to these thoughts before I have a chance to talk it out with friends or my therapist and also let it settle a little bit. But I do find that I kind of had a hit to my self-esteem in a way. And it’s this thought that I am kind of everything she wants, and also likely way more than that. I apologize for the arrogance, but I kind of want to butter myself up a bit here to protect my self-esteem. I think I am incredibly successful, I am incredibly smart, funny, attractive, I think kind and progressive in a lot of ways that she doesn’t even necessarily want, which is one of the incompatibilities, but for a lack of a better word, I guess I kind of feel like even as a provider I find it hard to think of someone else realistically being able to offer the same things that I currently do while also being kind, developed, mature, I like the other things that I take pride in myself. And I guess it’s this feeling of if I am all of these amazing things why does she not ask me on the date or something like that rather than another person. And so it feels like that must mean that in the direct comparison or competitive sense, I am less desirable. And I understand that there is so much more nuance to that and I am not being compared in any of that sense, but I think that’s kind of what leads to this gut reaction from me. And I have a feeling it would probably be smartest if I do this, so explicitly stating why that might not be true, first of all, there’s always a thing about you can be the sweetest peach on the tree, and someone just might not like peaches. But also there are our incompatibilities that also might indicate that she is looking for something different than me, and also potentially it is just one of those things where someone wants attention from people which I can also kind of understand. And there’s also the whole thing about us being friends for a while and so that makes it difficult to understand when the boundary of platonic is being pushed. And also potentially she just doesn’t want to cause drama within mutual friends or stuff like that. These are all just a couple of the reasons why she did not ask me on a date.

I think I also find myself having this feeling of betrayal or loyalty, being broken, in the same way that I originally felt when she seemed to be flirting with R, and it made me feel like we did not have something special, and that she is actively searching for this kind of connection with other people at the same time. And I feel like this is just an indicator in my mind for if we do get into a relationship, if I will be kind of constantly doubting the thing about loyalty or her interactions with other people. And I recognize that this makes me upset at her, even though we are not even dating at all. And I think that this is a bit of an extreme reaction for me because as I said, we are not dating or even going on any dates at all. I think this is just one of the cases where I potentially just have to have that self-respect of understanding that I am a catch, and I do not need to lose sleep or feel desperate towards someone who doesn’t want to pursue me either.