Confused

Bec Asks:

23 years ago I fell in love for the first time. He was a pisces boy. We became best friends. (I’m a cancerian girl – we should be compatible) there was certainly feelings from both sides. The signs and signals were all there. Then he told me about another girl who was trying to seduce him. She was a little bit older than us and didn’t go to our school. Our friendship continued. Our long profound phone conversations continued. Then I was quiet for about a week because I was ill. My folks gave permission for me to invite him to come interstate with us for ten days over the summer break. I called him to ask and was greeted with “my girlfriend is here. We’re having lots and lots of sex!” Devestated, I walked away. It gutted me because I had not been the only person to see how much he liked me. I felt very jealous and decided it was better for him if I didn’t interact with him for a while because i knew I might say or do the wrong thing and the jealous talons might come out and it would have been bad for all parties… so to preserve what we had i walked away.

I lost contact with him for 18 years. Then I found him on facebook. He’d had two kids with that girl that I always felt stole him from me. Their marriage had failed. He’d moved onto wife two and had two more kids but at the time their marriage was rocky too.. during our years without contact my first spouse was heavily abusive. I had two children with him. He was an aries. My second partner was addicted to sex and pornography and totally self absorbed so although we had three kids together I felt drained because I was picking up after him as well. He was a taurus. When my second relationship ended I met my online saggitarian friend face to face and after my Tauren ex decided to push me into a wall my sag friend helped me get free from him. My bag friend was well aware that I still had feelings for my pisces friend that I hadn’t spoken to for a long time…

Anyway pisces man and I reconnected on facebook 2011. Around that time his second marriage ended and mine with my sag friend was on rocky ground. Pisces man and I chatted from time to time on facebook and feelings were definitely still there. Last year (2015) he and I reconnected properly to the point of coffee dates and constant chatting. But I was going through a lot of heavy stuff in my own life. My marriage had ended but my ex still wanted us to be best mates. I was readjusting to a very limiting diet a specialist had put me on where I couldn’t consume anything containing carbohydrates sugar or fructose. Two friends passed away.

Some issues with extended family members arose and caused a lot of stress. All six of my kids have various health problems and disabilities (20 yr old son has chronic errythrodermal psoriasis, mild asthma, psoriatic arthritis, and Aspergers syndrome. 17 yr old daughter has mild asthma, femoral anteversion, ocd, and Aspergers syndrome. 14 yr old son is autistic and has eczema, dermatitis of the scalp and mild asthma. 12 yr old son has chronic asthma and benign idiopathic joints. 10 yr old son has chronic asthma, Aspergers syndrome and severe sensory issues. 8 yr old daughter has mild asthma.) So I was dealing with all that as well. And a number of other things. But above all else my feelings for pisces man resurfaced and hit me like a derailed freight train being hurtled through the air at ten thousand miles per hour.

And he told me he liked me too. But then came to some assumption that I wanted to be more than friends and told me he wasn’t in a position to be more than friends because he has baggage. The truth of the matter was i wasn’t in a position to be more than friends at that time either and was just enjoying his friendship after 22 years of it being absent from my life. He continued to believe I wanted more than friendship. He continued to tell my ex (whom he had become mates with) that I needed to stop chasing him.

But i wasn’t. It ticked me off that I wasn’t being believed when I said I had too much on my plate for a relationship, wasn’t looking for one, and was still getting over my ex as it had only been a matter of months since our marriage ended and my ex was still living in my house (sleeping on the couch) for the sake of my kids so they had two parents. Pisces man has always been a bit of a jointer and loves his sarcasm.. so have/do I. So my response to his constant belief that I was “chasing” was to write songs declaring my love for him and write poetry that did the same… and at one point when he had told me his intuition was seldom wrong and I’d apparently hate if I knew what he had figured… i told him i was going to take him away for a week.. which he knew from the start would not be possible. It was so far fetched I seriously thought he would realise the joke. But no.

He took it seriously and bluntly informed me he could not go away with me. I informed him it had been a joke. My best attempt at a light hearted way of coping with the fact that he kept believing I wanted to be with him simply because he was aware I had feelings. After a while he just stopped speaking to me. I don’t know if it was because he realised his perception was wrong and he was embarrassed about that or if he still stubbornly believed he was right and distance was the only way to make it go away… no idea. Anyway… after months of silence from him my ex started hanging out with him more and because ex still lives at my house that meant a good chance pisces man would see me too.

Pisces man had the option of meeting ex on neutral ground away from my house so he could continue avoiding me… but pisces man chose to meet him at my house and ever since has slowly been warming to the friendship again… albeit far and few between messages and face to face meetings. But every time we are in the same room his eyes hone in on me. I wasn’t the first person to pick up on it. But i have also seen it many times now. His body language suggests he really likes me and his outward nervousness when he is around me is blatantly obvious to everyone around him.

But because he has been severely burnt by both of his ex wives, it’s as though he views everything I say in text to him through the kelidoscope they created in his brain as if I’m something like them, even though I am nothing like either one of them which my ex can also attest to. I have often started a conversation with him… because he never instigated them anymore, and in the course of the conversation I have given facts, minus any judgement or emotion, pertaining to my exs antics (since he’s still one of my best mates I dont see a problem in talking about him especially since he is well aware of everything I say about him because I never speak about him without his approval) and on Saturday just passed, pisces man suddenly comes out with “why are you always ragging on him? Seriously unflattering!”

Taken aback by this outburst because I wasn’t actually ragging on anybody and what I had told him had actually come out of my exs mouth before I relayed it to pisces man, I was quite hurt. Normally I dont let other people’s misjudgment of what I say get under my skin. But this accusation really hurt. I informed him i wasnt ragging on anyone. I was just stating the facts in the order they occurred. He hasn’t spoken to me since. The night on the day this happened, my ex and Pisces man went out to a social club function together.

My ex politely confronted him, because my ex, being a firey sagitarian was miffed by the accusation as well since they were his own words I had relayed. And Pisces man dismissed what he was saying and stated that im to hard on my ex and im silly. My ex came home in an alcohol affected bad mood and bluntly informed me pisces man is a list cause; damaged goods. Been mistreated too many times by his ex wives and can’t see reality for what it is. I just want my pisces friend back. I’d be more than a willing friend to help him heal from all the trauma he has been through. But he still holds me at arms length.

Any advice you may offer me would be greatly appreciated. I love my pisces friend with every part of my being. I’ve had two separate psychics tell me we have a soul connection. I miss him. Help?

Bec,

Based on what you wrote, it sounds like he is trying to constantly gain confidence in the form of superiority and control. The complex way to put it I think is why does a bully pick on other people? Like there, usually that can be like a substitute for all the people who pick on them. While I wouldn’t call him a “bully” here to you of course I feel the essence is the same.

I would be inclined to say he picks up and reads your giving personality in a sense. By rubbing things in your face or calling you out it makes him feel better about himself. In many ways I feel it is absolutely no different than say a person who knows you say won a smaller prize than them at an event but they feel the need still to ask you “How much did you win?” as a way to “rub it in” for their own ego.

Or a more light-hearted way to think about it is imagine the stereotypical TV pairing of the best friends where you have one “cool” kid and one “nerd” where the cool guy keeps treating the “nerd” guy really bad. In a sense, the “cool” guy is using that “nerd” to maintain his need to in a sense to be or look superior to others. In some cases like that the relationship can work as maybe the nerd wants “protection” which this “cool” guy gives. So it’s a trade-off.

So moving this back more related to your situation, in my view it seems like he is trying to get this control on you to make himself feel better by bringing you down to his level per se in the sense of a depression of sorts. To me that makes perfect sense in terms of why he would insist that you are chasing him or condemning you for stuff you didn’t do as you mentioned.

In some ways it feels like a toxic relationship where your compassion and possible need for someone to reciprocate it back in general may be causing you unnecessary stress in life. That’s not really for me to decide of course, but I would seriously think about that if I were you based on everything you wrote.

The other thing that made me really think is how you said you want your Pisces friend back. Now obviously you know way more than I do and I can only go by what you wrote. But even from the beginning of you saying how he said “my girlfriend is here. We’re having lots and lots of sex” has a lot of potential personality details. Now under the assumption that all the signals and such were accurate as you say to me this would imply the current Pisces friend you see is the same old Pisces friend you met years ago. The only difference is the circumstances are different where you are seeing how his personality deals with it.

Even that line implies the need to boast in a sense with a high possibility that it’s like a way to feed that confidence in himself. It’s way easier to rely on others and external factors to make you happy as opposed to truly learning about yourself and being happy with that first. For him it doesn’t sound like he has the motivation to do that self-discovery and reflection as they say.

What should you do? In my opinion, if you are truly serious in trying to help this person my first advice would be do not try this alone. To me it just sounds like you will drain yourself as in my mind this isn’t about getting your “old friend” back. Deep inside it seems like he has always been like that and now you want to change him in a way. I would imagine these kinds of behaviours are more about one’s lifestyle and environment overall. Hence, the whole thing needs to be changed and evaluated for him to go on a different path. I don’t feel you can do that alone. Because at this point it would sound like if he doesn’t want to deal with your assistance because he would rather not put in the effort he will just jump elsewhere. There has to be consistency with everyone that he surrounds himself with on a daily basis I feel.

Your ex confronting him politely and him still being dismal about it again kind of highlights to me that it takes his whole environment to be consistent to adjust his attitude and way of thinking. I suppose it comes down to your personal health and well-being to decide what to do as this isn’t like a one day event to a miracle. Again though, if you go that route I would suggest to do it with the help of others as well.