a 20+ year first date

you know the nerves and anxiety that you feel on a first date? I realize I have felt that for the last 23 years when it comes to cmh.

for those of you just joining, cmh has been a friend with benefits for 23 years. I used to be madly in love/obsessed with him. all of these years later i accepted that we would never be a couple and concentrated on the friendship. don't ask me if I am still in love with him because i don't truthfully know. i don't give it any thought because it is wasted energy until that offer is on the table. i'm not sure i want that offer to be on the table; neither of us is "good" at traditional relationships.  if one of decides to try our hand at the traditional relationship with someone else, the benefits end. don't bother trying to warn me about the relationship. i have considered all of that, but the friendship means more to me. we are confidantes; we share a dislike of loads of social interaction because we find them tedious & draining; we have a severe hatred of stupidity and we try to be very supportive of each other, especially in times of crisis/upheaval. We both can be very logical and analytical. But he is super logical where I am emotional and we balance each other that way. We have had several extended absences from each other due to bumps in the road (mainly do to my nature of pushing people away or one of us being in a relationship) but when we reconnect there is no loss of time, no period of getting back to where we were; we just resume as if the hiatus had never happened except that we usualy bring some life changing knowledge that makes the friendship strengthen and allows us to reveal more of ourselves to each other.

Each time I see him it is like that 1st date where you worry about whether you look ok, smell ok, will say the right things, etc. Then for me, heap on the unrealistic anxieties like "is he a serial killer? what's wrong with him that he likes me? he must only be interested in sex." blah blah blah. Then heap on the cmh specific anxieties like "he only likes me because he wants to have a cheerleader. he only likes me for the sex. he doesn't really care about me. he always chooses to DATE some ratchet girl but never me." blah blah blah.

I think it is why sometimes i have to take a hiatus from him. it is just too overwhelming to constantly be in that state. I just pull away and don't contact him very much. I avoid his phone calls and keep things short in texts and emails if i send those at all.  He is good about them. if he is just calling to talk in a general sense his messages leave me an out to not call/contact. If he needs me, he says that and I pull myself out of whatever I am going through to be there for him. He doesn't play that card unnecessarily for which I am grateful.

This last pull back lasted almost a year rather than the typical few months and was more severe than the others. He is slowly getting the depths of my mental illness. I am slowly feeling comfortable enough to share with him a bit.

The problem is his supportiveness this time around is coming with bits of his expressing his feelings for me and that is ruining how i have compartmentalized our relationship and my life. and it is triggering my borderline reactions. and that scares me. i have walled myself of from relationships a that level to keep the monster at bay. i told him once i had borderline personality disorder. i don't think he ever looked it up or perhaps because he had never seen that side of me he dismissed it as an inaccurate diagnosis.

I am too tired to sort this out right now. typing this has drained my energy in the few hours I have been up so back to bed I go.