Please be gentle. This is my first time posting in relationships and I’m hurting.
Quick background: I’ve been single for years, with a few short relationships here and there. I feel to busy to spend much time dating. I have an extremely interesting and active life, tons of hobbies, sweet kids, and a fantastic career. I also have a tendency for my mind to get obsessive over things, and sometimes this has manifested as obsession over men.
I’ve had a few extreme crushes in my life, or episodes of limerence. I hate it. The more I care, the weirder I get, which makes me feel less like myself and more tormented and unhappy. I don’t want to waste my life pining over an unattainable crush.
Now for what’s happening. For the last year, I’ve been seeing a masseuse at a place where no one speaks English except for a hired translator. It is a one-room spa with curtains, no real privacy, one translator, and everyone can hear everything, so I never really talk. The whole place is like steroids for limerence: cozy setting, dim lighting, and no words, just nudity and oil and slow music. You cannot say much, only touch and be touched. Someone comes into the curtained space and quietly and intimately touches you and occasionally checks that you’re okay. Then you whisper thanks and leave.
From the moment I first went, this male massage therapist walked in, and I felt chemistry. He came in while I was fully undressed, and I asked if that was okay. He said he did not speak any English at all. So I gestured a bunch of ways, and it turned into a comic back-and-forth. We laughed, and then he worked on me very lovingly. That broke the ice, and since then, he has been gentle and affectionate without words. Sometimes, if I have a bruise, he paused to look at it, never in a bad way, just with a little “hmm” or “ohh.” He often goes over time and always goes above and beyond.
Naturally, it was at first light fun, till it lit up my obsessive brain. I don’t like how much time I think about this man that I know nothing about. Recently, I fell off my bike and was pretty banged up. Through gestures and pointing, I told him about it. He seemed especially taken by it. Afterwards, he made a big show of not taking the tip, even jumping back to get away from me. Through the translator, he said he would not accept it because of my injury. I was touched, so next time I gave him a card with a thank you for his kindness with a little gift. On the envelope I put my phone number next to my name.
He has not contacted me. I am not sure if I freaked him out, or if my assumption is correct that he is married with a wife overseas, or something else. I do not know, but I want out of this mental merry-go-round. Do I just stop seeing him? Do I try anything more?