Caveat: This is going to get personal

So if it seems creepy that you are reading this, stop.

So this is over a month of spending time with this man. He's gone to great lengths to encourage me to care for him...I think I've met my match as far as bottomless pits of need go. I've listed and relisted all the ways he's wrong: drinks way too much, smokes, has too much history, baggage, is unhealthy in a dozen ways, no job / career, student, is self centred in a lot of ways. Oh, I know there's more, including the absolutely uncanny way I have automatically reverted to a childhood codependent enabling pattern that I only vaguely remember.

So why am I here? I admit, at first, it was partly curiosity about what it would be like to hang out with one of the "bad boys" I knew growing up. I have only a few memories of him from that time, but they are all good. Unlike Ben and Jennifer, I never remember him being mean to me or bullying me.

He's absolutely magnetic. I believe his outrageous claims of all the women who've fallen for him, because he has that kind of appeal, the mix of tough and vulnerable. He is completely wrapped in a self-developed mythology that is heady, intoxicating.

I know that there is part of me resting in this comfort of childhood patterns, the relief of dealing with the self-involved addict. You don't have to try hard, you only have to keep providing what they want. And, of course, you need to accept that they aren't interested really at all in you as a person. You are a presence, a mirror, a sounding board.

I want, with my entire being, to be in love again. I'm happiest when I'm in love. And he is easy to love. Too easy...so easy to again ignore my needs. So easy to make do. I only want to be in love. Again. Another wrong tree to bark up. Just my luck.

All I want are arms around me, tender kisses, a tiny bit of support. I want last Friday...and that is too intimate to explain here, just I want that strength and guidance and trust all the time. I can make do with so little. But I can't put my faith here.I know that. This is beyond my trust issues and into 'listen to your gut' territory. I'm so afraid to let myself feel anything, and so unable to help it. But this... he is shifting sand. It would be a huge mistake to give in and try and set up a homestead here.

I need. That's all I am... need.