So uhhhh my ex, Puppy, updated his bondage.com profile. I think it is really funny because when he had access to the things he advertised wanting, he didn’t want them.

ok. I had to get that out.

No do overs. No take backs this time. I’m not enough. He doesn’t love me enough. I need to move on. Jesus Christ this hurts so much.

What is the point of having hope when he is behaving as if he is already gone? This HUUUUUURTS. I can’t have a totally one sided relationship again. I just can’t. But leaving somehow seems worse. I feel stupid and confused and so very desperate.

The train to fantasy land that is.  The last few days have been a roller coaster ride that I really want to get off.  I am mixing my metaphors!  Can I just leave the amusement park instead?  Ok.  To get into reality…

I don’t know what is happening.  We are talking and talking and trying to figure out what is good and what is bad about our relationship, whether it is actually a good fit for us.  In the past few days we both wrote our concerns about the relationship and the pieces that make us happy.  This morning we talked for a few hours about the whole situation.

We aren’t broken up and I am not moving.  Does that mean that we will actually end up together?  I don’t know.  It is really hard to know what the “best” decision is.  I love him.  He loves me.  There are things that we have in common and there are things that are difficult, but that is always true.  I am not willing to walk away from what we have.

In the first rush of thinking it was over I talked to a lot of people about it.  I heard some interesting things that people had not been willing to tell me up to then about their opinions about the relationship.  I sat there and agreed because I was so angry and some of them are still true.

I have compromised for this relationship in ways that would be complete dealbreakers for many of my friends.  I stopped being poly, I am not playing with other people, and I don’t spend much time at sex parties anymore.  I don’t actually think I miss any of these things though.  I am not sad about not having sex or playing with anyone else.  Puppy stressed repeatedly that if I wanted to play with anyone at Folsom I just had to let him know–I even had people ask.  I didn’t want to.  I wasn’t even super thrilled with playing in public.  We did so briefly on Friday night and I skipped the experience on Saturday because I felt very icki about it.

The past five years or so have been remarkable for me.  I have been through so many changes.  It is interesting now to look back at the “growing up” process and I wonder what is going to happen in the next five years.  Hopefully the rate of change slows down some cause this has been dizzy making.  I’ve been aware for a while that there are things that I want that necessitate giving up things that have been big parts of my life.  I think I am at a place where those choices need to start happening.

I have had a number of people ask me out in the past week.  People that have been in my life and people who are somewhat new to me and I find it remarkable that they all popped out of the woodwork just now.  It gave me the ability to take note of the fact that I am incredibly unlikely to be lonely, even if things don’t work out with Puppy.  I don’t care.  I want him and I want only him.  I’m scared and nervous and struggling to find my path.  I hope things get easier sometime soon.

Once again: thanks Chris.  Your words are in my brain and I am working on processing them.

It is 7am and my thought is: why isn’t today over yet? I have to teach a rather intensive lesson on grammar with my juniors. (They are going to be thrilled to learn about verb types.) At least the seniors are no effort today. (Thank god for movie days.)

I have trouble going more than a few minutes without crying. Puppy said last night that I know this has to end because he and I both want to get married and have kids and it wouldn’t work for us to do together. Not long after that he initiated sex and through the whole event I was sitting there thinking, “You are already looking forward to doing this with someone else.”

I have my ticket to fantasy land. Let’s see if I can actually get on the train.

I made him cry at dinner. I told him very quietly, after he thanked me for bringing him to the restaurant, “I told you that I wanted to bring you to places like this. Now I have to hurry or I won’t get the chance to.” Tears appeared and he had trouble holding it together. This is so hard. On one hand I want to find a way to make him see that I really am worth the effort, but on the other hand I want to just walk away because if he doesn’t want me I deserve more.

This fucking hurts.

The next book I am teaching is called Man’s Search for Meaning and it is a philosophy book speculating on what is the purpose of life and such. The person who wrote it was a psychiatrist who practiced before and after surviving Auschwitz. The first question he asks his depressive patients is: why don’t you commit suicide? After spending quite a while talking about this book with my master teacher on Friday this question has been in the back of my mind all weekend. I can’t come up with a good answer though. (This does not mean I am suicidal.) But… why don’t I? I don’t know. I just don’t. Because people have told me not to? It’s not even that people that I love, who love me, have told me not to. Just people. I do as I am told. It doesn’t matter who tells me. I kind of shared this thought process with Puppy because it came up and now he is freaked out and worried. He has spent a bunch of time telling me how upset he would be if I did. Uhm… so what? I won’t be affected by that so why should I let that upset direct whether or not I do something? He really didn’t like that response. heh

Disclaimer: No. I am not contemplating suicide. I am, however, not seeing much of a point to me or to my life. There is a vast gulf between that and killing myself so I better not start getting fucking phone calls trying to talk me down. If I suspect that is the motivation for a phone call I will hang up on you.

it’s over

But this week:
Writing in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reported that the media has been as guilty of ignoring the ongoing genocide in Darfur as the Bush administration has been. In June, he said, the main TV news programs collectively ran 55 times more stories about the Michael Jackson trial than they did about East Africa’s crisis. CBS gave three minutes of coverage to Darfur in all of 2004, and NBC five minutes. As soon as you finish reading this horoscope, Virgo, I hope you will take aggressive action to avoid falling victim to equally misplaced priorities in your personal life. Don’t you dare let trivial spectacles divert you from healing the sorest spot in your world.

I feel like this actually means something to me. I ignore Rob most of the time, but I kind of feel like there is stuff I need to do to heal right now.

Last night I cornered Puppy and told him how very upset I am about his inability to compromise. He just doesn’t seem to be able to. He either entirely gives in to appease me or he gets his back up and won’t move. I told him I don’t want either end of this crap. I really really don’t want to deal with him vascilating between the two extremes. I don’t know how I can make this situation any better or any easier for either of us. I am trying to think of the issues that exist in our relationship. We are both very sensitive to being teased and yet we both spend a lot of time teasing. This isn’t a great situation. We are trying to figure out how to understand the teasing as non-hurtful. Every time I am in any kind of a bad mood he is convinced it is all his fault and that I am about to walk out and this escalates any irritability on my end because he gets somewhat dramatic. And I get into bad moods pretty easily: sleep deprivation, hunger, being too hot, not feeling well…. Any can cause me to be really pissy and grumpy. ARGH! I think we need to work on the expression, “Are you mad at me or near me.” Because as soon as someone says this to me (and I have a few friends trained) I realize what I am doing and mellow out conisderably almost instantly.

Compromises we have to work on:
I am moody. It is just kind of unavoidable. I have tried and tried and tried meds to deal with this and I haven’t been successful yet. I will probably try again when I have insurance again because I would like to be less psycho. I get unreasonably angry about simple things and I am very demanding and attention needy. I know these things aren’t easy for him.
He is forgetful and lazy. To the degree that both cause actual problems in my life. If he was only influencing himself it would be a different story. He is very unyielding about difficult issues and continues to push far past where it is ok with me to do so.

I really don’t think either side is any easier or harder than the other, just very different. *sigh* Everything in this relationship is kind of on turbo drive. I kind of feel like we skipped the honeymoon phase (or at least had a very short one) because we are both very conscious of wanting long-term stuff and we want to get started on that sooner than later. The next six months are going to be very telling. We are almost at six months. He commented that he has never had this much trouble learning to communicate with a partner before. I counter that he has never really learned to communicate with a partner before. He believed he knew what was necessary to keep his wife happy, but he also threw down about things and wouldn’t compromise and she left him because of it. I wonder what he has learned from this? He told me last night that there are going to be things that he won’t ever compromise about but he couldn’t come up with examples. That scares the hell out of me.

He says lots of things to me that make me think. He gives me possibilities and ideas about meeting in the middle on issues that I don’t think up on my own. Then I tell my Puppy. This leads to really good conversations. Really, really, really good conversations.

Then there is massively hot sex.

Noah. I love you.

So Puppy and I had one of those meta converations last night. A communication about communication. We cleared up what exactly had each of us been arguing over the previous few days, cause we really weren’t on the same topics. We talked about things that we both want to work on and things that both of us need to agree to. For example:
-I need my cool down time or I am inclined to get violent and/or shut down during arguments. Instead of just walking away like I have always done I am going to ask for a timeout for a specific period of time so that I am a)getting the space I need to have and I am commiting to coming back and solving the problem so he doesn’t feel like I am just avoiding the issue and ignoring his needs.
-Puppy has a bit better of an idea of exactly how and why I need space now and he has commited to actually letting me have the time I need. He also thinks he will feel a lot better about giving me the space I need when he feels more certain I am going to come back.
-We talked about needing to have “What are we arguing about” check-in’s as the fight is raging because we end up doing apples and oranges and that is utterly useless and frustrating.
-He feels that he wants to learn how to communicate with me differently because the way he talks to me isn’t making it through. (I think this is more of a two way street than he kind of commited to.) He thinks a counselor would be a really good idea to help us figure out how to speak the same language.

We talked about how his behavior during the big fight was a perfect example of his fathers behavior and how I cannot and will not live with a replica of that man. That wasn’t easy to talk about. We talked about the difference between slamming his friend and me setting a boundary in my life. With him (yeah, I know I am doing it with my friends and in my journal but he isn’t influenced by that) I am not saying much negative about his ex other than I don’t want her in my life because she isn’t stable. I am stressing repeatedly that I want him to continue his friendship with her because he needs to have friends and a support network that doesn’t involve me. I just don’t want to be friends with her and I don’t want her in my house. I don’t think that those boundaries for me should end his relationship and I also don’t want to spend a lot of time with him telling me I am wrong about her. He finally conceded that feelings don’t have to be rational and it’s ok for me to have my squicks. For the record, he is totally supportive of her not coming into the house if I don’t want her here. He just wishes that I would actually get to know her and make my evaluation of any potential friendship based on my personal interactions instead of based on something she did in the past to him. I feel this is a very reasonable wish for him to have and I don’t blame him. I also know that she happened to stomp on one of the things I am most sensitive to in the world and it is pretty much a deal breaker for me from the get-go. There are no take-backs of that action. I tolerate a whole shit-load of stuff from people, not that.

We talked more about birth control methods and comfort and sex and what we both need and how our squicks and needs are not matching up entirely. (He has a serious thing against getting menstrual blood on himself and that leads to me feeling dirty and unwanted. It’s a thing. It needs to be worked on.) We talked about how basically unfair it is that birth control in this relationship is 100% my responsibility and he is asking me to do even more things because he is really paranoid about an accidental pregnancy. We talked about the negative effects on my body and psyche that some of what he wants causes and how basically, I am not going to put myself at risk for any more shit. He is being flat paranoid and I am not going to pander to it because it is actually going to hurt me to do so. (I am not fond of constant UTI’s and if I used spermicidal jelly as much as he would like me to [one more preventative] I would never stop being in pain. Ever.) So yeah. There are now a bunch of websites about ovulation and fertility cycles up on his computer and he is going to read them and find out that actually no, I can’t get pregnant 30-1 days out of the month and he can stop trying to insist that I do four forms of birth control at all times cause it is kind of silly. (Starting with the premise that I am on the pill and not ovulating anyway. Oy.) And for the record, cause some people feel envy: yeah, we are up to five days without sex. Poor me. 🙁