I really feel for you, TAS. It IS terrible timing before a vacation! I understand some of what you are coping with. I have a very hard time with misunderstandings and disappointments, myself. I feel like they make me lose faith that the relationship was ever real or if it was ever the way I read it to be. So then I want to remind myself that it doesn't matter and I don't need anyone anyway, and whatever, and I want to walk away from it and start over with someone else who is not so stupid. I also know what it is like to feel like you try very hard to prevent something from happening or to make sure something is taken care of and then even so, as you say, things happen or fall apart. It is especially hard when I feel like "This time I was SO careful,though! How could it happen again?" The frustration and the futility are killers.

But, slowly, I have felt a change inside. I am a little bit more likely to see things from a different perspective. It has been very difficult to get even this far from my old perspective. I still have a long way to go with relationships, too.

The only thing constructive I can think of is that since you can't seem to prevent things from happening, even when you work so hard, maybe you do have a little control over how you respond to it. The therapist I left said that things like this didn't have to crush me or devastate me, but he never said how to accomplish that. I don't know how to keep these kinds of disappointments from crushing or devastating me. I am still working on it and making a tiny bit of progress.

Anyway, you say that when people fail you, you don't give them a second chance. But, you have definitely given the Therapist second chances before. This is one part of the same old story that isn't the same old story. You can give him a second chance again if you want to. Even though you really needed him and he really let you down. It would be hard to get back up and go again, but you have done it before. And you are probably right when you said that you felt that you are truly making progress. You really are, it's just so complicated and frustrating and painful sometimes.

Hang in there. I know this really hurts.

You wanted him to write that he wouldn't change his mind about seeing you while he is away. I think that after you have survived his vacation, which will be tough, you will discover that he has not changed his mind while he was away, just as you hoped. I know it is not the same as having it in his writing given to you to hang on to, but it does matter that you might give him another chance and that he will keep seeing you for as many chances as you need.