Jerren
Jerren was a volunteer who came to help with the EQI program in Peru. Here he is with three kids trying to cliimb onto him at the same time! This was a common scene in South America.
We travelled together for a few weeks then I realized I felt too depended on by him, too responsible etc. I told him I needed to be on my own and he felt resentful about that. Later I wrote this about his resentment.
This is how Jerren referred to Laura in an email he sent to Kel.
He was telling Kel that there wasn't really a program to help the teens. He wrote, it was "just him traveling with his newly-found girlfriend."
Here is what I wrote about that comment.
There are a couple things I want to say about this. First, by him saying "newly-found girlfriend" it is obvious to me that Jerren feels resentful about me spending so much time with Laura and putting him second almost all of the time. He told me about a time when he got in a similar situation with a friend of his who was spending more time with this gf than with Jerren once when they went to the guy's vacation house or something. So it seems there is unresolved resentment from that which was stirred up by Laura and I.
Before Jerren came down I had explained to Jerren that I created the work exchange program page before I met Laura, and things were different for me than when I posted the page. I also told him that Laura and I were traveling around looking for a place to live, so he knew this before he came. Looking back, it might have been wiser to just have taken the page down. Or to have changed it to say "You must have your own funds and be be self-sufficient in Spanish." Probably it would be better to actually ask for a contribution from the volunteers to cover some of the costs like the Internet time. I felt a little bothered by me paying for Jerren's time to download music, read philosophy sites, and chat on a more personal level than on a helping level. If he had been paying for his own time, this wouldn't have bothered me as much. Although it still would have a little because there was so much more he could have been doing.
The other thing about him saying "newly-found girlfriend" is that I feel a little hurt/offended by this considering Jerren didn't even refer to Laura by her name. And Kel knows who Laura is because Kel reads my site. It would be pretty hard for someone who reads my site not to know about Laura. To me Jerren is de-valuing Laura by calling her my "newly-found girlfriend", and now with the way things have worked out with Laura and I, this hurts even more. I really think Jerren will feel bad when the thinks about this. He might want to apologize and I might accept. But I don't think I would trust him again or want to help him in the future. And I feel sad about this because Jerren has no friends in real life and no one in his family who accepts him as he is or gives him much of any emotional support. I was the one who probably gave him the most he ever got in his life, and he has pretty much destroyed our relationship. I feel sad to see him doing this. And he has told me he has done similar things before in relationships by judging people. So I really hope he learns something helpful out of this whole experience.