Update:
I feel so drained, and my chest still feels tight, like my airway has been constricted - might need to use an inhaler... My whole body feels like I put it through an intensive work out and has now gone limp with exhaustion. And all just from my attempts to communicate with this guy today and clear the air.
I had a church activity this morning, and he attempted to call me three times while I was there. I ignored the first two attempts, and then put my phone on silent, so didn't know about the third until I checked my phone after. I was busy, didn't want to answer while I was at church, and had told him yesterday I'd let him know when I was done, so his attempts to call irritated me. I felt like ignoring him completely, but was determined to get with him and clear everything up.
So, when I was done, I sent him a text to let him know I was done and on my way to the park - they were having a Mexican Independence Day celebration there, which was what he'd invited me to. He then replied with a text asking if I was going to pick him up. I'd thought he was planning on being there for the whole celebration and would have already been there while I was at church, so I was confused, and a bit angry that he'd assumed I'd be giving him a ride when he was only a five minute walk from the park (he has no car- bikes and walks everywhere he goes).
Considering my panic attack over the texting Tuesday, and his continuous attempts to text and call me, I also felt immensely uncomfortable with the idea of being in the car with him. I texted no I was not going to pick him up, I had expected him to already be at the park and I was uncomfortable with giving him a ride. He replied with a simple "why?".
At this point, I was already at the park, watching my son play in a bounce house, and even if I had been comfortable with the idea of picking him up, I wasn't about to tell my son we had to leave when we'd only just arrived. I was starting to feel pressured again and ready to just ignore him altogether - turn my phone off, let my son play, and then tell him when I got home that my phone had died.
But I mustered up the courage to explain, so he'd walk to the park, meet with me, and I could explain in a way that would help him understand that I needed him to stop pestering me. The texting turned into an entire ordeal - he attempted to call me, but I ignored it - unwilling to talk on the phone while I was feeling so tense.
I told him his pushiness had made me uncomfortable, and that discomfort meant I didn't want to be with him in private, but I was at the park and could explain better in person if he was still coming. He replied that he was confused and didn't understand why I'd suddenly become so uncomfortable and that he wasn't meaning to be pushy. He thought I was changing my mind - since I'd said I was willing to go to the park with him yesterday and now I was telling him no. He wasn't understanding what had caused the sudden change.
I reiterated that I was perfectly alright with meeting him at the park, as it was a big public event and I just didn't want to be alone with him. He then asked again if I was coming to pick him up, that he was waiting for me - he was home with his mother and brother so we wouldn't be alone. I replied, no. If he was coming to the park we could talk, I could explain, but I was not going to get him. He asked if I wanted him to come to my house. I said NO. I was at the park. Come to the park, or stop bothering me and forget it.
Finally, he said he'd be there in five minutes, and I used those few moments to focus on my breathing and try to get myself calm. The whole texting process had taken two hours, and I was feeling a desire to tell my son it was time to go and just get out of there. The difficulty making myself clear about something so simple had exhausted my energies and upped my heart rate. I had to keep telling myself that if I just waited it out, took the time here and now to lay everything out and make it all perfectly clear, I could be done with it and stop fretting.
When he arrived, I explained to him about PTSD and that the more he pestered and pushed the more it exacerbated my symptoms and made me feel like running the other direction. I explained that he wasn't necessarily doing anything wrong, but that he was trying to move the relationship extremely quickly and needed to turn on the brakes.
I further explained that I likely wouldn't want to be anything more than friends, and that if things ever did progress further it would depend entirely on my ability to feel comfortable around him, and there was no way I was going to feel comfortable if he kept triggering my PTSD with frequent texts - that my ex had been extremely controlling and used texting/calling as a way to keep tabs on everything I was doing every moment of every day, and if I hadn't responded to him fast enough or with a response he considered adequate, he'd become angry - and anger equaled pain.
This process was just as much of an ordeal as the texting, because he kept reiterating his lack of understanding. He couldn't make the connection from my trauma to the present, and couldn't understand why I'd be feeling so tense and afraid when he hadn't done anything to hurt me and wasn't going to do anything to hurt me. I had to explain that PTSD wasn't rational- that I understood he wasn't my ex and most likely wouldn't react the same way to things or treat me the same way, but my trauma had affected my instinctive reactions to things and my body was responding to his texts as if they were warnings of a potential life threatening situation from which I'd have to run or defend myself.
Once I managed to get that through to him, he was wanting me to put some kind of timeline on how long it would take before I was able to get past that and feel comfortable around him. I told him I couldn't do that because I had no way of knowing how long it would take. It depended on how frequently he hit my triggers, how intense my reactions were, and his ability to give me the space I needed to work through it. And, I reiterated that it was quite likely I'd never be ready to be in a relationship with him and would only ever just want to be friends, and if that was the case it wasn't because I was hiding from him to avoid my PTSD - because I want to overcome it - but because if it was too much work for me to get comfortable around him it was because our personalities just made us incompatible and we wouldn't be a good match for each other.
He still insists that he thinks I'm "the one" and that he wants things to work out between us, but he's agreed to give me my space and let me call the shots. He will not pester me with calls or texts and will just see me at church and let me let him know if/when I ever feel comfortable with taking things another step forward.
Based on how much of an ordeal this turned into today, I'm fairly certain I will never feel comfortable moving forward with this guy, but that was something I couldn't seem to get through to him. He's still hoping for a relationship and I couldn't kill that hope without giving him a firm "Leave me alone, I don't want anything to do with you" speech. So at this point I guess I just have to wait and see if he'll really stop pestering me, so I know if I'm going to have to give him that speech, or if today's meeting will have proven successfully sufficient.
