Autistic Euphoria and The Guy Next Door, Part One

 Around the time I was processing the Summer of Trauma and writing my Summer Princess posts, my next-door neighbor and I started talking. I'd noticed he was cute when he moved in back in spring, but I'd said hello to him and his pretty girlfriend as they were walking down our shared driveway in dating finery, looking so beautifully Love on the Spectrum. (I don't know if that was me clocking them or just seeing what I wanted to see.) and I was all obsessed with Summer Princess, so I hadn't given his cuteness much thought.

(Holy moly! I just stopped typing to see if Autistic Euphoria is a thing other people noticed! And! This Psychology Today Article! )

The Guy Next Door uncannily resembles the guy I'd have imagined for myself in my 20s and 30s--a sweet-faced and vaguely hippie-ish white guy with longish curly hair and a beard. He's all-but-dissertation at an Ivy. He looks exactly like he has the taste in music that he has--dreamy indie rock. The perfect Death Cab for Cutie cutie of my dreams. I told him I could have written him, which doesn't sound like a compliment, but is. This story ends with us high and me swoony, sitting at my painting table listening to The National.

Anyway, I was in the one-chance-out-between-two-worlds state between summer and fall, trauma work and quiet healing, when he stepped out his door and handed me a clear mug of bright red hibiscus tea. We chatted for a while, and then he bought out another tea for Other Side Neighbor. The three of us stood around talking, looking for all the world like people who'd figured out how to gently share our lives with others.

There was something so attentive about him, something that made me feel profoundly seen. I felt giddily like I didn't have to mask around this person!!! I let my weird self out a little more, even letting out my David Lynch impression, which I usually only do in front of BFF-Formerly Sweetie and the cats.

WHAT A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE IF YOU LOVE THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD!

The next time he came out the door with tea (I cannot emphasize enough how close his door is to mine!) it was just for me. I'd mentioned that I thought the hibiscus tea would make good iced tea, so he brought it chilled this time. Same clear mug, same brilliant red color, but he'd made it this way just for me.

Some people just have such a delightful way of inspiring oversharing! Between regular what-we'd-like-to-do-with-the-yard talk, we shared about our respective mental health stuff and our different twelve-step adventures. (Alcohol for him, codependency for me.) 

I mentioned that the guys in my apps seemed to be a little unhinged lately, maybe due to "cuffing season." He let me know he and Girlfriend Next Door had broken up but he wasn't on the apps. I maaaayyyyy have let slip that he didn't have to look further than my door. Instant karma from those app guys I was complaining about--I out-un-hinged them for sure.

"Aw!" he said to that. Maybe it was an "aw" like "Aw, that's sweet" or like "Aw, it's kind of sad that you said something so open and strange."

The hardest thing about getting obsessed with a person is the way I'll avidly look for Signs and Wonders from them, the littlest things that might mean they like me, but also turn the most blinkered eye to any and all red flags on both sides.

Other Side Neighbor helped facilitate the exchange of numbers and, from my now perspective, my fate was sealed. My new OCD and Mindfulness Workbook says I should tell myself "Magic is silly" in response to ideas like fate, but I can't quite get there--in matters of the heart, magic happens all the time.

An Absolutely Beautiful Mess, Part Two

 

After the snuggle-fog wore off a little, I started to wonder whether The Good Boy had ever been in a poly situation in the first place. Maybe I’ve just been bingeing Inventing Anna too hard, but I’m not sure which parts of this story are real, especially the shifting, slippery feelings. Is this just how young millennials cheat? Still, I’ll try to take him at face value for now, the story is fraught enough without anxiety-embellishments.

When we got home from the street art walk, we got into bed to warm up our frozen limbs and he…checked his phone. I want to be a Sweet Ma’am and not a scold, and this might be a generational thing. Except, it’s not. Most of my co-adventurers, partnered or not, have been able to stay present with me for all-or-most of a date. Even the ones with Apple Watches. (Which are handy (ha) if we need to change the music and it’s one of those rare occasions when his music is playing!) There are both some rotten and some sweet exceptions, and this one is kind of both.

First Poly Partner had asked him earlier to come over, since he’d ended up getting the night off. He’d said no, but without telling her we had a (rescheduled) date. He felt guilty for saying no and I felt hurt and kind of horrified he hadn’t told her where he was. (I HATE typing this part because it seems like the most dealbreakery part of the story, I don’t know where trust would come from again.) They had a few more text-back-and-forths before he coughed up the information.

Annoyed as I was, I felt tenderly toward them both, so I went into (gentle, I think) How to Poly 101 teaching mode.

To wildly paraphrase Rumi, somewhere between fuckboy and new-at-poly is a field, and we kind of got stuck there.

But also! He’s 29! Squarely in the prime fuckboy timeframe! Should I have let him go already, to run and play and figure out how to be a person with other twenty-somethings? Has he already made that choice for me? I feel naïve and a million years old, all at once.

If The Good Boy was supposed to be in a poly relationship, he was in a very pre-coming-out part of the process, and that was hard for me to take. As generous as he was being (SO GENEROUS) with the faceless pictures, he wouldn’t let me post regular pictures of us on my regular Instagram. He even made FPP hide pictures of her other boyfriend from his friends.

“I don’t know how to explain this.” He kept saying.

I know I shouldn’t take his learning curve or his shame personally. Most of the time I know that the hiding and obfuscating weren’t (necessarily) because I was too fat or too old or too kinky. I felt so sure that he liked me in a similar way to the way I liked him—under the skittishness I felt some kind of a…faith. A seedling of wholeheartedness just very tentatively approaching sunlight. Maybe it was just my own faith. Maybe it was the D/s vibes and a glitter-tornado of chemistry.

I got the ropes ready and tried to help him shift gears, tried to keep myself from emotionally (and maybe also physically) fleeing. Maybe I should have sent him on his way but this was my night, dammit. I hadn’t done anything to wreck it, I didn’t deserve to lose him to his own mess.

I tied a square knot between the dear, dear magenta ropes and placed them around his neck like a scarf. I took a deep breath and started to tie. As I wound the ropes around his jittery, half-here frame, the ropes wound us back together, at least for a little while.

A (Naked and Sexed-Up) Rare Occasion Wherein I Enjoy Getting Advice

Almost as soon as I got to the Big Poly Conference, this conversation happened:

Mr. Shiny Eyes: “What are you doing at lunch?”

Me: “You?”

After a night and morning of snuggles with the Sweethearts, I couldn’t believe my luck was still this lavish. I felt like Wonder Woman for asking him and had an inner fireworks display when he said yes.

As I say every time I have it, I never get enough PIV sex, and even though a timer was set so he wouldn’t miss the next workshop, this was fantastic enough to hold me for a WHILE. (Okay, ‘til the next morning. But still.)  He has such a very very nice penis and he knows all the best ways to bend a girl around. It was so easy and bright and unselfconscious and special-occasiony. This was sex that made me feel like life wants to give me absolutely everything.

After we were spent, as the timer was snooze-alarming, we had a conversation that ended up being a bigbig breakthrough.

I mentioned an unspecified conference attender with whom I’d recently broken off a flirtation because he triggered some yucky feelings, which of course is a reasonable and necessary thing to do, but Mr. Shiny Eyes, having some insight into what it’s like to be told by me that he’d not a match, had this to say:

“You get really upset when you feel like someone might be seeing you out of a sense of obligation rather than desire. People jump to “not a match” sometimes when they could just share their emotions about the thing that triggered them.”

This was partly what I’d done in this recent situation, but I couldn’t quite get past the stomachache with the person, probably because it reminded me of the Steampunks among other things.

He continued: “And I notice that you tend to come from a place of self-deprecation, like whatever the person is doing is confirming the fear that they couldn’t possibly have wanted you in the first place.”

Uh, okay dude, thanks for workshopping my emotions while I’m still naked and tingling, but dangit if he didn’t have a point.

I ended up doing a lot of thinking on this trip about why I tend to break up with (and then unbreak up with) people I like, and he definitely had his finger on part of it. When somebody likes me, there’s still a big part of me that feels like it must be a trick, and I’m always kinda waiting for that trick to reveal itself. But the fact that so many of these breakups didn’t take is proof that the liking is genuine.

I have to stop and appreciate the characters who stuck with me as snuggle friends even as I went through such an ugly and harrowing year, even after they had to deal with rejections and (sometimes) overreactions. Sometimes someone isn’t a match (like when they use the “R” word while sexting and it’s not “ravish”) or isn’t a match right now, but it’s very good advice to slow down time, breathe and reflect when an alarm gets tripped, not just automatically run.

Almost immediately upon returning home, I had an opportunity to try this, and I like the results so far. So high five, Mr. Shiny Eyes, and thanks for being such an excellent 

Ex-Whatever as Benchmark: A+ for Improved Standards and Good Instincts

I was pissed before I even got into Mister Hazel Eyes’s car. He got lost on the way over and when I called to see if I could help, he yammered for like 20 minutes without telling me his cross-streets or asking a single thing about me. I think this is a thing that I do when I’m nervous, too, though, especially if it’s somebody I really like. Nonetheless, I went from heels to flats before he got here.

I remember him picking me up for that last date last August and seeming put-upon, like his life was way too hard and I was making it harder by being his date. All of the anger I felt about him ditching me last year came out, I had no idea I was still mad!

As we drove and talked, he told me I’d been right about him having a secret-someone at home when we were dating—he says she was his ex-wife then and that they are still living together now. I’d always wondered if I’d been being paranoid thinking he had a secret-lady, but I guess I really was reading the clues right—go me!

He’s still living with his (he says she’s his ex, anyway) wife after all this time!? If that doesn’t remind me to get my still-too-dependent-on-Sweetie ass in gear, I don’t know what will!

So here’s what I realized as we drove along and everything he said was making me more and more aggravated, every story showing him to be petty, immature, and needlessly harsh—I felt the same way then. I didn’t like him, plain and simple. There was no reason to have tortured either one of us about it. Back then it felt like every guy was a rare chance, my only way towards happiness because if I didn’t learn to like this one, if I didn’t somehow adapt myself to whatever mess he was, then I would never be flexible enough to find love.

I know I was doing that that trying-to-make-myself-like-someone-who-doesn’t-fit thing with The Man, too, and to a lesser degree with some others, but hopefully that nasty habit is behind me now. Part of the reason I thought that way was because that’s just how I saw my marriage—I thought that if I didn’t force myself to love Sweetie for the rest of my life, then I was failing at love and would never be mature or responsible enough to have real relationships. It’s one of the ways I was convincing myself to stay with her and I am so, so thankful that I don’t have to feel that way anymore, that hopefully now I have a chance to find loves that actually work.

Mister Hazel Eyes pulled the car over so we could be face to face (A relief, his driving gives me the jitters.) and I started to cry.

“You treated me like shit, like I was an imposition, and I didn’t deserve that. I was afraid to say anything because I thought you’d leave. I didn’t really have any self esteem back then.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I treated you badly. I disappeared because I knew I wasn’t good enough for you.”

Which sounds like a really bullshit thing to say, but in this case it really rang true. It’s never really seemed fair to me, seemed undemocratic somehow, to say that someone’s not good enough, but if you look at the guys I’ve liked lately, there’s absolutely no comparison at all. I wonder if I’ll say the same thing about these guys in a year—I hope not ‘cause I heart having them as pals.

“You just left me like I wasn’t there, like I wasn’t anything. I just wanted to say goodbye! I thought it was because of something wrong with me all this time, but it wasn’t.” I was still crying lightly into my wasted makeup.

“I’m sorry. You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman and you didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I can never really make it up to you. You can totally punch me in the arm if you want to.”

I laughed and said “Can I smack you right across the face?”

“I respectfully ask that you don’t.”

He told me some more off-putting things about his life, all the proof I needed that I’m now officially in the post-schlub phase of my existence.

“I’d like to go home now, please.”

We hadn’t been driving that long, but the way home seemed to take forever, full of tentative wrong turns. To lighten the mood I did punch him on the arm, and it made me laugh. He said I could beat him up some more when we got out of the car, and I’d been kind of spoiling for a fight all day, but this isn’t that kind of story. Without the respect and joy that I feel for my playpals, it would have just been sad.

On my street, he pulled onto the same spot where we’d car-cuddled after our last scene.

“Sure you don’t want to hit me?”

“No, there’s no reason to hit you. It just wasn’t a match and I can’t believe I made such a big deal out of it. I should’ve been able to just scroll past. Let’s have a high-five for closure.”

It was a very sad high-five, and he is a very sad guy. Where my present pals wake me up and make me feel more vital, he dulled my senses and made all the good things seem far away. That’s what looking to the past does, and even though I’m up-in-the-air with my living situation and still kinda aching ‘cause I can’t smooch CBATP, I love the present so much, and I want to just stop and revel in how far I’ve come.

My Dinner With Jealousy

Even though it’s a moot point after he turned out to be such a jerk, the dinner where I met The Man’s wife still haunts me, like a test I didn’t pass. Sweetie called it self-sabotage then, and I’m still not 100% sure that it wasn’t.

The Man and The Wife asked us to dinner after my first (very happy) scene with him, and I was delighted. Here was a guy on the up-and-up, inviting me into his life. We exchanged our spouses’ phone numbers and it really felt like we were all on the way to a real something.

But as the time neared, I felt dread and sadness. As we got ready for the dinner, I chose a dress, blew out my hair, put on lipstick, all the while saying to Sweetie “I don’t want to do this.” We let them know we were on our way and he did his nice manly thing of telling us where the parking was good near the restaurant they’d chosen.

Now, I knew The Wife wasn’t easygoing, just from the way that he’d characterized her—nearly every time he picked me up for something, they were in the middle of a phone-snit of some kind. So that could have been a reason I was feeling dread. There was also the fact that she did have veto power, so if I failed to impress her, that would be it for me and him. I was thisclose to my dreams coming true, as long as I didn’t fuck up this dinner. In retrospect, there was no way that I could have fucked it up—all I had to do was be myself. Which is, I guess, what happened.

When Sweetie and I got to the restaurant, only The Man was waiting for us. “(The Wife) is off pouting somewhere, I’ll go get her.” he said and inside I was like Whaaaaaaat? How do I deal with this? I went to the restroom and breathed and fixed my face and hoped for the best. When I came out, they were all seated at the table together waiting for me. I wanted to ask her what the pouting had been about—that really threw me off.

When I saw them together, my dread got so, so much worse. He looked at her and smiled, put her arm around her, rubbed her leg the way he’d lovingly rubbed mine the week before. Here’s where I feel like I failed every poly test, because instead of enjoying the love he clearly felt for her, I felt stabbed in the stomach. I couldn’t feel my connection to him and everything in me said RUN. I made a very good try at disappearing into the wall, and when it turned out someone had run to the store for wine, I literally jumped at the chance.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me mid-relationship! I’ve only ever felt jealousy like that when I knew something was already over. I’ve adored many a partner’s spouse and happily played with wives upstairs. Before we got to the day of this dinner, I’d been so excited about having The Wife as a new friend. I was so, so disappointed in my feelings at that moment.

But in a nice, simple world without judgment and guilt, I’d say, I just didn’t like her. I didn’t like THEM. They were nasty to each other, George-and-Marthaing their way through dinner. She said that she doesn’t play with women because she respects them too much, she can only look down on men that way. (Um, huh?) He complained about her asshole ex and his huge schlong. (I do believe that is the first time I’ve ever typed that word.)

Conversationally, The Wife was like a pitbull, especially on the topic of the horror-themed play party she was planning. I said I thought that really wouldn’t be for me, but she really, REALLY wanted to convince me, to the point where I yes, almost started to cry.

When everyone was all “WHAT’S WRONG?” I admitted to being really nervous that she wouldn’t like me, and said that I really couldn’t figure out how to be. (It’s worth noting that I was a bottom sitting at a table trying to figure out how to please three tops. At the time Sweetie joked that she would just have to be in charge of me next time.) The Man reached across the table and held my hand, but I still couldn’t feel anything of the connection we’d had before. Sweetie tried to soothe me too, but I knew it was over, I knew I’d been this close to my dream and wrecked it.

Toward the end of the dinner, I asked if I could take a little walk with The Man, just to touch base, and it was a whole awkward mess convincing The Wife not to come along. (Sweetie, of course, was ready to give us the five minutes of space that I felt like we needed.)

We did go for a little walk. He said he knew that the jealousy just meant I liked him, and I thanked him for being one of the few guys I’d been with who were okay with emotion. That’s when he made the first of a series of weird references to stalking: “Well, as long as you don’t show up at my work, or (The Wife’s) work.” (WTF? How did it go from nervous-at-dinner to stalkertime? I never so much as overtexted the dude.)

Nonetheless, he said that what was between us was still real, that it wasn’t just scene chemistry, and I wanted to believe him. He kissed me goodnight and everything, but I couldn’t shake the idea that it was over. I stayed up all night feeling really, really lost, but Sweetie convinced me that it was okay, that I should keep giving him a chance.

A couple of days later, we had a date at my house—I couldn’t wait to put on my cute cupcake apron and make him dinner. He was an hour late, but I wasn’t upset about that because the busses around here can be glacial sometimes. But as he sat at the table texting with The Wife for about 20 minutes, eating the dinner I’d cooked for him, I started to feel hurt and I said so.

“Well, do you just want me to leave? Because I won’t be talked to this way.” (Doms always say they’ll keep that kind of nonsense to scenes, but I’ve noticed it tends to creep in.)

Of course I didn’t want him to leave; I just thought it was something we could talk about.

“I’m helping her with something. I would do the same for you as long as I wasn’t with (The Wife) or friends.”

I failed to see the hierarchy in that statement and we went to the couch to snuggle. About an hour in, his wife texted to say this “I’m bored, tell me what you’re doing.” By then I was too happily riled up to mind the boundary-breaking, so I was like sure, tell her! He sent her a picture of our happy faces with the caption “Naked stuff.”

By the end of the night, I’d let him downplay my concerns about ignoring me during dinner with “Oh, I know you’re bratty sometimes.” Ugh. The things I’ll apparently put up with when someone smells good!

So I wonder still if the jealousy at the dinner was my intuition telling me it just wouldn’t work, that he only really did have eyes for her, or at least that he and I were not on the same page. I still don’t know. It felt like once he knew I was jealous once, I never had a chance to carve out any space for myself—any objection to her constant presence was characterized as possessiveness. The last day, he made a reference to Fatal Attraction! Why bring me into your marriage if you were so afraid I’d destroy it, if you were so afraid of ME?

I honestly don’t know what comes next. Probably a lot of time and paragraphs, maybe some casual scenes and a lot of healing rope time with Sweetie. For all that he let me down, I do miss him so much, and I’m sad about losing the chance to know her too—I still keep thinking that if I’d just been stronger, more openhearted…

When he blamed my “emotional problems” for the trouble between us, I knew it was bullshit, just a story he was telling himself for when the venue owners called, but I still want to be a better, stronger me the next time a chance for connection comes along.

Worries, Wishes, and Resolutions, Post-Heartbreak

Sweetie says it’s not always the same story, but the last year is really looking like a pattern to me—girl meets dom, dom breaks limits, girl panics and feels unplaywithable. It takes so much to rebuild myself after each breach of trust, and it’s very hard to live with the fact that these kinds of things are happening all the time, that he’s out there ready to dehumanize the next girl.

I don’t want to be using words like “dehumanizing.” I want to have fun. I want to be the brave naked girl with a well-spanked behind and ropes in various shades of Hello Kitty, but that girl seems really far away. So I’ll start with the worries:

--I am worried that there isn’t a dominant guy in the world who doesn’t secretly want me to just shut the fuck up. No matter how clear I’ve made it that messing with my voice is a hard limit, I always seem to end up with a hand across my throat, literally or metaphorically.

--I’m worried that I’ll never be able to tell the difference between red flags and just fears. Since I’m a fairly anxious person anyway, I tend to dismiss intuitions and deal-breakers until it’s too late. In the case of the last guy, so much of my psyche was like a horror movie audience hollering DON’T GO IN THERE but somehow I always end up in there. It would save me a lot of trouble if, as Sweetie suggests, my intuition could please speak in complete sentences.

--I’m worried that I’m just someone who can’t gain respect for some reason. I worry about this a lot in my classroom, as well, on the days when the first graders won’t simmer down long enough for me to finish a sentence.

--I worry that submission is just something that I try to exchange for love, but I don’t think so. After a good, connected scene, I feel clearheaded and centered, closer to my better self. It’s only when I play without connection that things go off the rails.

Now for the wishes:

--I wish for a man who’ll be happy to belong to me, no matter who else he belongs to, no matter who else is at the table. I would love to sit there and know that he loves me, even as he gazes lovingly at his wife. I want to feel cared for and secure enough to enjoy the love between him and his other partner(s). I don’t mean belonging to each other in a M/s sense, only in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s buy-some-furniture-and-give-the-cat-a-name sense. This is the hardest thing to believe in.

--I’m trying to figure out a non-hurtful way to say I wish for a guy with a regular-sized penis that works most of the time. But it’s not really about the size or hardness; it’s more about having the depth of character to handle mishaps and insecurity with aplomb. In my somewhat limited experience, there seems to be a connection between frustrations in that department and misogynist tendencies.

--Speaking of depth of character, I wish for a man who is as good and careful with knots as my wife is. Learning ropes takes discipline, practice, and patience, all things that I need to be looking for in a partner.

--I wish to be able to make mistakes, talk things through, ask for compromise. It keeps getting to a point where I’m afraid to ask questions, and by then it is certainly too late.

--I am not a unicorn, and I do not want to date or bottom to his wife, girlfriend, friend, other sub, or anybody else, unless I expressly say so. I wish for a man who can have healthy boundaries between relationships and who can even (Do I dare wish for this in modern times?) PUT THE FUCKING PHONE AWAY on date nights. (Except for check-ins and emergencies, of course.) It’s not that I don’t want to know his people; I just would like a chance to know him first.

--I wish for a man who can see me broken and sobbing, who can see me at my ugliest and still think I’m beautiful. I know this is a possible thing because my wife has been doing it since 2001.

And the resolutions:

--I will not ignore red flags. If something in me says “RUN!” I will run as if Matt Smith himself were telling me to.

--I will not do things I don’t like. Even if other people seem to like them. This seems obvious but I need to tell it to myself.

--I will not date men whose other partners have “Veto power.” I will gladly meet folks but I won’t be vetted. I want to be treated like a potential friend, not a potential employee.

--I will not date anyone who makes me feel secondary or tertiary. I have room in my heart for a real second partner, and I want a man who does as well. This doesn’t mean I would need equal time, but if I see him once a week, I want the time to mean something.

--I have friends with whom I will happily play casually, but when I am on a date and someone asks me what I am looking for, I will not give some wishy-washy answer about “Oh, well, I’m open to however things turn out…” I will say “I’m looking for someone at whose house I could eventually leave a toothbrush.” and if he seems toothbrush-averse, I’ll move on.