Stuck in a Feeling

And I can't get out of it. Just yet anyway.

After nearly two weeks of not seeing each other, SCL stayed at our apartment on Thursday. He came home much earlier than I was expecting (around 5:30), and it caught me off guard. I'd made plans for later that evening and had anticipated being gone when he got there.

It was the most awkward moment we've shared since the break-up. I didn't want to talk to him. I was still feeling really furious about everything, and wanted him to know that I wasn't interested in continuing to be the understanding, compassionate dumpee I'd been in weeks past.

Eventually, I came out of my room to talk with him, see how he'd been, catch up. It was pretty surface level stuff for the most part, but then I started to tell him how angry I was about how he was disrupting my life and couldn't even give me a reason why. He said he was sorry. He looked absolutely miserable, almost in physical pain as I told him how I'd been hurting. Even though I'm pissed that he broke up with me, I do know that he hates how he has caused me such pain.

I'm still confused about how, if at all, he can be part of my life. Certainly it's easier when I don't see him for long stretches of time. And when we are together, my feelings about things shift. I still haven't gotten an answer from him about why he broke up with me, and part of me thinks that's for one of a few reasons:

1. He doesn't know, in which case why would he break-up with me if he didn't know why.
2. It's too bad for him to tell me.
3. There really was no substantive reason.

He told me that he's trying to change, but he's not sure he can. I told him, "Of course you can. You know you want to change; that's a huge step. And then you just do it everyday." Not rocket science. The fact that he recognizes that he needs to change gave me a dangerous, intoxicating little spark of hope that I hadn't felt in a while. If he sees his mistakes and he wants to change and he's really trying to change, maybe he can and maybe then he'll want to try again.

Sigh. I'm stuck in this false sense of hope, and I feel I can't get out of it.

I don't get it. Why is it easier for him to affirm me, to tell me how special I am, to tell me what a wonderful person I am now that he's not in a relationship with me? Was the relationship a barrier to him actually seeing me as I am? Or is that he now realizes that he should have been expressing it all along and finally he's committed to actually communicating both the positive and the negative?

I sense his regret, and it saddens me. Why does he think he has to work on this apart from me? Just because he has issues doesn't mean he can't work through them with me. I don't understand his need to separate himself when I'm perfectly willing to walk beside him through the process. Why would anyone throw that kind of commitment away?

I feel stuck. I want to get out, but I don't know how.