Archive of Our Own ^beta

r/relationship_advice · Posted by u/GingerAle_MTL 1 day ago.

UPDATE: I (26M) broke up with my girlfriend, I saw him, and then I almost died. Everything’s fine now.

Relationships

I know it’s been a while. A lot has happened. I’m going to try to get through this without writing another novel, but I am apparently incapable of being brief when it comes to this man, so bear with me.

I went to the work thing in Florida, and yes, he was there. It was awkward at first, especially in the beginning, but it got easier after I let him know that I’d broken up with my girlfriend.

We were incredible together for the work thing too! I know that sounds arrogant, and I promise I am not an arrogant person in general, but there is no other word for what happened when we were the same side instead of against each other. It was like we’d been a team forever, no one else even mattered. I knew where he was going to be before he got there. He knew what I was going to do before I did it. I can’t really go into details but at one point we were doing so well that he grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek in front of people. I almost passed out I was so happy.

Later, I went to his hotel room and I told him I was gay. I’d never said that out loud before to anyone except my ex-girlfriend. He laughed at me, which was annoying, but then he got us both a drink from his mini-fridge—a Coke for himself and a ginger ale for me, because apparently he keeps my drink everywhere, not only at his apartment—and we talked and I was finally, awkwardly, able to tell him that I was sorry for running and that I can’t keep pretending that he doesn’t mean something to me. I asked if he would ever want to be more and…

… he said we couldn’t be more. 

Which wasn’t what I asked, but he continued because to him it didn’t matter what he wanted, even if we could. He told me about his family back home, and both the country and his family wouldn’t be accepting of him being with another man. I can’t share more than that, but I will say that I understood for the first time why he was so afraid of letting anyone close. And… okay, yes, we did hook up. It was cathartic. He said my name again and I said it back and the world din’t end.

After that, we started texting again. We talked on the phone. He called me once from overseas when he was dealing with a family situation—a relative had passed—and he was so upset that his English was falling apart, so I told him to talk in his own language and I’d listen even though I don’t speak it. I don’t speak his language. I understood maybe two or three words out of ten minutes. It’s the closest I have ever felt to another person, and I don’t fully understand why, but I think it’s because he trusted me to hear him even when I couldn’t understand him.

I think I fell more love with him during that phone call, and how is that even possible? Or fair?

A few weeks later in April, I got badly injured at work, which I can’t go into too much detail about, it’s a setback. It was scary, but I am okay! He visited me in the hospital the next morning. I was on a lot of medication and my memory of it is patchy, but I remember his hand in my hair and how scared he looked. I remember being so happy to see him that I almost blew our cover in front of the nurse.

I asked him to come spend the summer with me. I have a place outside the city, very private, on a lake. I’ve always wanted to bring him there. I was pretty out of it when I asked, and I remember him saying “maybe,” but I don’t know if I imagined that or if he actually said it or if I dreamed the whole conversation. The medication was very strong. For a few weeks afterward I kept trying to remember if he’d said yes or no or maybe, and I couldn’t, and that uncertainty was almost worse than a flat rejection because at least a no is an answer you can grieve. 

A “maybe” is a door you keep checking.

I was sad for a while. I didn’t hear from him as much as I wanted to, and I was starting to think “maybe” had actually meant “no” and I had scared him off the same way I’d scared him off the night I ran from his house.

Then some things happened, which, sorry, I also can’t go into details because they involve other people and their privacy, but there was a development in our field that made it feel like maybe the world was changing. Like maybe people like us could exist publicly someday without being destroyed for it.

He called me and I picked up and he said that he WOULD come for the Summer.

He’s coming. He’ll be here in a few weeks. I’ve never been this happy or this excited in my entire life. He’s staying for two weeks but really I would be okay with longer. Two weeks. A month. The whole summer, I don’t care. He’s coming to my home, my real home, the place I love most in the world, and I want it to be PERFECT.

The problem is I don’t know how to make it perfect for him. I know what I like: the lake, the quiet, kayaking, bonfires, grilling, yoga, reading on the dock. I could spend an entire summer doing nothing and be thrilled. But he’s different from me. He likes speed and excitement and expensive things and being the center of attention. He drives cars that cost more than most people’s houses. He gets bored easily. My cottage does not have a nightclub or a luxury car dealership or whatever else he normally fills his time with.

I have jet skis. I think he’ll like the jet skis? I don’t know if that competes with European sports cars but they do go fast.

But beyond the logistics: how do I make him feel at home? How do I make this feel like what he did for me—the dinner, the drink, the invitation into his real space—except that I actually recognize what he’s doing this time? I want him to walk in and know that I thought about what he likes. That I prepared for him. That this isn’t an accident or leftover hospitality from a party I didn’t have.

I’m going to stock the fridge with his favorite drink. He likes Coke. I can do that. I’m going to learn to make something he’d actually want to eat instead of just grilling the same chicken I always grill. Are burgers lame? I’m going to put clean sheets on my bed—my actual bed, in my actual room, where no one else has ever slept other than me—and I’m going to ask him to stay in it with me.

If anyone has suggestions for what else I can do to make a competitive, easily-bored, obscenely attractive man with expensive taste feel welcome at a lake house in the Canadian wilderness, I am open to ideas. I do not think he has ever been in a kayak. He will probably hate the bonfire. He is going to make fun of my car (again).

I can’t wait.

EDIT: Someone asked if I have a pool table.No, but I have some gym equipment and I have a hot tub. And before you ask, yes, I have already thought about the hot tub. Extensively.

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