Friday, lite and I talked on the phone for maybe an hour, and it was extremely non-constructive. I was stressing over the idea that lite might end up moving away, which was especially worrying to me because I felt like we'd pretty much identified the lack of much quality couple-time as a big issue. Not to mention, I KNOW I am horrible at distance relationships. I've put a lot of effort into this, but I know that if I don't actually spend time with someone on at least a semi-regular basis, it's very easy for more immediate, local stuff to distract me from paying attention to everyone else. Knowing that I struggle with just long-distance friendships, my reaction after this phone call was basically "How the hell am I supposed to maintain a relationship when I've never even really successfully maintained a long-distance friendship?" Somewhere in here was also when I started realizing that I felt like lite had spent all week analyzing me. I know he meant well, but well, he's my boyfriend, not my shrink.

Once I got to work, and admittedly influenced by dawnstar, I posted suggesting trying to get together Sunday afternoon or evening. I was thinking something along the lines of an actual date -- movie, maybe dinner, and probably talking things over too, but mostly just trying to find some time for us to actually enjoy each other's company. Neither of us can really do much about my past, but I felt like this was something right now that we could work on. I also got the impression somewhere along the line that the chores he had to do were only going to be on Saturday, which is why I was thinking primarily of time away from his house on Sunday. This suggestion was met by "I can't promise you anything in terms of time together, I've got a lot of stuff that needs doing," which was actually well-intentioned (trying to not make a promise he couldn't keep). Not knowing that's what he meant, though, this would be the bit I interpreted as "Working on fixing things is going to take a backseat to everything else and I can't promise much in the way of time together, you'll just have to make do with phone calls until everything else is taken care of."

I don't think of myself as a physically violent person, but reading this at work and interpreting it as I did, I got so upset I tried to beat up the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom because the only other thing I could think of was screaming and crying and well, that wasn't really possible just then.

This was bad on both our sides.

So, because lite had mentioned talking to kareila, I decided it was time I talked to her myself. E-mailed her from work, went home, slept, woke up to all of it coming right back, and within 15 minutes was on the phone with her for the next two hours. Until lite called to explain what he'd posted that morning, except that since he used pretty much the same exact words (rather than telling me he was actually trying to make the time to get together tomorrow, but it would depend on how fast things got done), I heard them the exact same way ("I don't have time for us, suck up & deal") and hung up on him.

Side-note: I did not, realistically, expect big dramatic FU-type gestures from lite towards his mom. I just needed some sort of indication that either myself and/or the relationship wasn't taking a backseat, because I do tend to believe that accepting such things sets a bad precident. Although from what I was saying at the time, I can see how it seemed that way. My only excuse is that I was angry and feeling ignored.

[continued in a second comment so as not to exceed LJ comment length limits]