^ iamnormal... thanks for your candor. But do remember that you are talking about the person I love, and I would not be with someone who is consistently immature and out of line (I know that when I see that, since I made that mistake w/a different guy).
I will defend ktspktsp here and say that he does not always make rash decisions, at least no more than is to be expected at this stage in his life. We are both in different learning stages in that sense: for him, he has had major changes in the last 12 months of his life (first girlfriend + first sexual experience + first serious relationship, finishing MS thesis, first job + first serious job, first apartment alone, first car--which was a lemon and ended up being VERY stressful, and also doing all this in a foreign country and in his 3rd language), and I think he is bound to make some errors during all that change. That's a lot for one person to handle, and I think he has done it with relative grace (and especially with me watching/commenting on it all!).
For me, my changes are not "life" ones, since I've already been through much of what he's going through for the first time, but they are emotional ones; this is my first
stable, long-term relationship (his too, but he is emotionally-stable by nature and had a good model of his parents to work from, which is the opposite of me), and he is helping me to grow in a healthy relational sense of trust and stability (hence why this camping issue became a big deal, because I was trying so hard to trust him but just couldn't get past the situation itself). Before we got together, I had become very cynical about relationships and felt that I might never meet someone whom I could grow with and trust. He is helping to transform my ability to love and be loved, which is no small feat.
The only thing is that once he makes a decision, ktspktsp is usually quite stubborn about defending it under fire (usually
my fire, since I have already lived through a bit of life that he is now experiencing for the first time, and I am trying to save him some of the stress/mistakes that I went through). I can be stubborn too, but it is a slow process of learning to listen to each other and trust that the other person may see or feel something that we as individuals are blind to. If either of us makes rash decisions, we are learning to communicate about them and be as honest as possible in reaction... and while the reception may at first be negative, usually we come to a positive end, learn more about the other, and grow onward.
That's what happened over the last 2-3 days. We talked further tonight after both of us read this thread, and his irritation finally began to fade away as I explained some of my own boundary-crossings in the past, and the actions I took to reign myself/others in from temptation. I really feel that he did come to understand my feelings and concerns (you TFP'ers really helped, with your own reactions and experiences), and that he no longer resents me for feeling so strongly about this. We are beginning to really communicate about boundaries and where our differences are, and how to compromise for each other.
He only wished, in a way, that instead of being told what to do by others, that he had experienced himself firsthand the "mistake" of going camping, and then decided on his own that it was a bad idea. I don't have an answer for this... it's fair enough, and I'm a learn-by-experience person too, but I also think it's even wiser to learn from others' mistakes and save yourself the heartache and stress from the aftereffect.
To me, that's what makes a person different from the crowd... they are smart enough to listen and learn from others, not to screw it up themselves the first time. It takes real humility to do that, and humility is something I put at the very top of my list of things that I find downright sexy.
So I think we're on the right road again, and I'm so very grateful to have resolved this issue. Not to say there won't be others in the future! But this one seems to have played out well. Thank you again, TFP'ers.
