Mr. Unavailable #111: The Appointment

See Could it Be?, It's Not Him, It's Me, The Recovery, We're Just Not That Into Each Other, The Continuation, The Curse is Broken, Unfortunately, The Make-Up Date, The Phone Call, The Negotiation, Dates 9 Through 12, Dates 13 Through 15, The Public Sex Talk, Bridging the Chasm, The Shut Down, All Kinds of Good, Meeting the Friends, Part 2, Hamptons Getaway, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Happy Birthday to Me, The Drunken Text, Jeckyl and Hyde, The Layoff, One-Man Show, A Boy in Man's Clothing, The Doctors Visit and Giving Him the News for the background on this one.

I met him at my appointment and when he walked into the waiting room, "strong" #111 was back. He immediately launched into a story about a man who appeared happily married, but told him the week before: "If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't." #111 had obviously liked this story very much because he was now changing his own. On a date back in July, he had referred to "whoever he ends up with..." indicating he wanted to end up with someone. Now, however, didn't sound like he so much wanted to anymore.

I was filling out paperwork and having difficulty figuring out how to work the insurance. The one that was probably "right" to use was going to not cover much and going to make things really expensive and, seeing as I was now unemployed, the one that might be "wrong" to use would have made everything free. So I asked him what he thought I should do and he snapped, "Well, why don't you try being honest for once."

I got up and walked away toward the check-in counter and gave them the expensive insurance info. I was clearly upset when I sat back down and he was like, "What's wrong with you?" I said what he'd said wasn't very nice and he said...(and there should be no surprise here), "I was just joking." And there it was, the mean streak poorly disguised as a sense of humor.

Early on in the relationship when we had the discussion about "what if I got pregnant," he asked if I'd ever been pregnant before. I said I hadn't. I thought that if he had gotten someone pregnant before then he would have told me then, but he didn't, so I assumed he hadn't. So I said to him, "So, you've never done this before, right?" And then he said he actually had. An old girlfriend years ago got pregnant but he was positive it wasn't his because they used to cheat on each other all the time. But he went through the process with her anyway (even when he said it he had a bit of a martyr air about it). And then with the 4.5-year ex--yes, there she was again--they had tried to have a baby but it didn't work out. This was the first I was hearing of it.

They brought me into a check-in room and then weighed me and put us in an examining room. The doctors came in and had me change. #111 asked if I wanted him to wait outside and I said I did. I changed and got on the examining table and a minute later, he came back in and said they told him he couldn't wait in the corridor. The whole thing was awful. I wanted him to be with me but he wasn't with me so I wasn't sure how to treat him. He didn't know how to act either. They came in to do another ultrasound and it actually hurt. #111 was standing down by the door and when he saw I was in some pain, he came over and stood by me and held my hand, which was nice but painful in a different way. Again, they couldn't find the embryo and said it might be ectopic. There was a chance it could rupture. I got dressed and he asked me if I was OK.

Standing there looking at him, I was miserable. "Can I have a hug?" I said. I buried my face in his shoulder, sobbing, and said, "This is awful. And we're not even together." We sat down and moved our chairs closer and he told me what happened with the 4.5-year ex. She got pregnant with twins but one of them died and then they had to wait for the other one to die. It was a terrible scenario.

"You tried to get pregnant even though you weren't married?" I asked.
"It was like a marriage," he said. "We had a very deep friendship."
That stung. "I knew on our first date you weren't over her," I said. "You talked about her even then."

The doctors came in and told us what the situation was. They said that if there was a chance we wanted it, they would wait to make sure, but because we didn't want to keep it, they didn't want to take any chances and would give me a shot that would end the pregnancy no matter where it was and then a pill to induce a miscarriage.

Afterward, #111 and I went outside. It had been exhausting. We'd been in there for three hours. He asked me if I was OK and hugged me. "Yes, but no," I said. "Thanks again for coming with me," I said.
"Yes, for like the 16th time," he said, because I'd thanked him a bunch of times for coming, partially because I was thankful and partially because I wanted to avoid one of his "annoyed" moods.

"Let's get you something to eat," he said, and we started walking toward the East Village. I felt awful. I had no idea what I was going to talk to him about. I was hurt because he'd brought up his ex--again. He held that damn relationship in such high regard--and, by his own admission, she had never even been emotionally available to him, so I don't know what this "deep friendship" bullshit was about. Maybe he was just trying to hurt me. It was all very baffling and painful at the same time because there I was completely ready, willing and able to go there and he didn't want to--because he wasn't able to. But he didn't know that.

I was quiet on our walk downtown, which, of course, meant he was nice to me, asking if I wanted to get ice cream or where I wanted to go to lunch. Finally I said, "How about Mogador?"

"Yes, let's go to Mogador," he said.

At Cafe Mogador, we made small talk and then, even though I knew I shouldn't have, I went there. "So, how come your ex was able to move on and you haven't been?" I said.

"She wasn't as sensitive as I am," he said.

And then I told him about this blog--but not the name or any other trackable details--about how I write about my dates with emotionally unavailable men and, then, in a roundabout way, I suggested how he was exhibiting classic signs of emotional unavailability--everything's great until a sudden emotional shut down.

"Look, I don't think I'm all that emotionally unavailable." He was angry now. "You just aren't hearing what you want to hear. I just don't feel that strongly about you." He was angrily yelling at this point, in a hushed-restaurant type of yell. "It's the passion thing. I just don't see it."

"What, you want me to sit here and prove to you that I'm passionate about things?"

"No, I just don't see it. What are you passionate about?"

I started a list of things and realized, as he shot each of them down, it was futile. He needed to find a reason for why he didn't want to be with me and this was what he found. My apparent lack of passion. Somewhere in the 12 hours between when I'd seen him last night and now, he had decided that, no, it wasn't that he was emotionally unavailable, it was that I just wasn't that passionate. And, by the way, he didn't really want to get married anyway.

"Well, I don't see it in you, either," I said. "Sure, you like the arts but I don't see how you like it more than anyone else." He began to defend himself, lamely.

"I think you're a hypocrite," I said. And the thing was, I was right. And he knew it. It was like Therapy 101--he was projecting.

I sat there, despondent. I had made the mistake of thinking that he was open the night before, so he would still be open now. I was wrong.

"You were so open and vulnerable last night and now you're all walls," I said, moving my hands in front of me to indicate walls going up.

"Yeah, well, it's been a trying day," he said.

I was silent for the rest of lunch, and I'd lost my appetite. When the bill came, I tried to pay--because money had been such an issue with him--and I admit it was a little passive-aggressive, but I didn't care.

"Let me just walk you home," he said. It was more like he followed me home. At my downstairs door, which is heavy and made of steel, I opened it to walk in and he said, "Here, just take this [the leftovers]. Please just eat something."

"No, you paid for it," I said.

"Just take it," he said.

I grabbed the bag and walked through the door, letting it fall on him. Yes, I was being a bit of a child, but I think on some level I was allowed. I had taken enough.

When I got up to my apartment, I got to write this email, and chuckled as I typed:
"I'm sorry I got upset and let the door fall on you. I guess there are just certain things we can't talk about." Letting the door fall on him was one of my prouder moments.

"Now there's passion for him," Nora said after I told her and Heidi about the door later that night. Neither of them were surprised by his retreat from vulnerability. "This is who he is," Heidi said.

Diagnosis: When a man is angrily yelling at you, "I don't feel that strongly about you," clearly, he feels strongly about you.

But here's the really sad thing about this whole scenario: Even though I let the door fall on him, I fully knew that I would hear from him again and that he would go with me to my appointment the next day--maybe that's even why I knew I could let the door fall on him. He had a commitment to what was going on that I completely trusted and believed in--a commitment that, for a while, he sounded like he was making but was never truly able to make to our relationship. I now know what him being committed to me feels like, only he wasn't committed to me, he was committed to my abortion.