Today, I am broken-hearted. It’s not because i’ve broken up with a romantic partner. Nobody died (thank God). Marcus is very much alive. He hasn’t left me. He hasn’t rejected me in any way. Quite the opposite.  But circumstances are keeping us from meeting.

His family is so protective of him that he would get in real trouble for revealing the slightest piece of information about himself.  If they knew I knew what city Marcus lives in, there would be hell to pay.  This, in my mind, rules out ever going to visit him in his town.  He also couldn’t meet me anywhere else in the country, because his family wouldn’t let him.  Don’t worry, i’m not sobbing. But I do have a funny feeling in my chest, so that’s why I say i’m broken-hearted right now.

I haven’t lost him. But I definitely need to revise my expectations of this relationship. I was hoping that I could meet him face to face someday, and get to know him and his family better. I was hoping that if they liked me, and I liked them (and him), I could continue to visit him, and maybe even become his platonic life partner (if he agreed, of course).

The silver lining is that this shows his family cares about him. It’s better to have extremely protective parents than negligent ones, especially for an autistic person like him.  He is socially unskilled enough that he could get into a lot of trouble without guidance, and he has. So it makes sense that his family guards him fiercely.

I just can’t see a way forward from here. I have come to care for him deeply in the month or two that i’ve known him. I don’t know if our relationship has room to grow from here. I guess what I have to do is keep doing what I have been, and hope some answer presents itself. But what? What will happen to our relationship?

Thank you for listening.

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