A Tender Date, A Little Ghosting, Part Two

 

Rainbow Pal and I have decided that all weird dating things require a romantic French term!

There was a moment. I was toying with Thoughtful Guy’s dick through his underwear, just kind of nuzzling around down there, when he placed his arms around my shoulders in a soft embrace. A breeze of kindness blew all through me, an almost supernatural affection. Stillness. Peace.

He couldn’t stay late, he had to get home to his kiddo. As he started to get dressed, I wrapped up in my aqua-blue summer robe, feeling flushed and decadent and beautiful. “You look so good,” he said, with a little growl in his voice. He backed me up against the pillar on the pony wall of my loft, and kissed and kissed and kissed me.

He picked up his phone and said absently “Annnddd one of my partners is texting about making a date…” then went back to kissing me. When I finally, reluctantly got him out the door, I felt happy and hopeful, like my life might actually make sense! I’ll never stop believing in that feeling.

The next day, instead of feeling lonely and insecure, I felt grounded in my own life, sure I was cared for. But when I told him as much, he abruptly cut off the conversation and said he didn’t want to be keeping me up. I was up! I was working on my 2000-piece puzzle! It’s an intricate undersea scene! It was only like 10.

Oh, the little ghosting. When I texted in the morning to start planning our next date, his tone had changed. He said laughing emoji to the time I suggested, not whether it was too late or too early. He suggested a better night for our date, and I said sure. Then he left me on heart-reaction and disappeared.

By the time it was ten again, I hadn’t heard from him all day, and plans hung in the thread unfinished. The internet, always the most toxic, let me know he’d had time to change to an even-sexier profile picture while he was busy not texting me.

So I texted to suggest that we might not be a good match because our rhythms were off. I didn’t want to say goodbye, but I hate le petite fantôme. You liked me the day before yesterday, I wanted to say, then radio silence.

He texted back ALL the paragraphs (OH, the self-justifying man-paragraphs of polyamory. May I never again read them.) including “Do you know your attachment style? You seem insecure.”

First of all, I find attachment theory to be the most unhelpful therapy thing of all time, like oh, you weren’t loved properly as a baby and now you’re fucked up forever. What is anybody supposed to DO with this?!

I mean, misnamed Thoughtful Guy was probably right, but you don’t get to psychoanalyze me after ONE date, if ever! And you don’t get to make it my deep personal flaw when you mini-ghost instead of finishing a conversation.

I’m grateful to Summer Therapist and a lifetime of self esteem work that I got mad instead of accepting his assessment of me, instead of accommodating and building something new and cute and misery-making.

It was a fantasy that he could be boyfriend material while already having five partners. Like, who do I think I am, hoping that I wouldn’t slip his mind among all that beauty and tumult and day-to-day? Like so many precious darlings before him, he just wasn’t the right match. I miss him, but onward.

From The Museum of Bad Advice to The Library of Love (And Knots.)

Before I head-argue with BetterHelp lady any more, I just want to stop and celebrate the creative surge and series of breakthroughs I’ve been experiencing during and following my Quarantine Crush adventure! I’m never sure if its super-ethical to consider people muses, (Past and present muses, feel free to weigh in! Not here because the comments are turned off.) but QC is a powerful one anyway. Since Zooming with his poetry reading, I’ve written poetry I’m excited about for the first time in years, revived an old poetry series, made however many drawings and paintings, tried new drawing styles, gotten a new perspective on my business life, and written like a jillion paragraphs here.

I even signed up to read from the Kitten Calendar at an old-fave local reading so I’d have a way to re-experience rope adventures!

Miracle of miracles, I’ve even learned to love dressing up for Zoom events, including pretty shoes for no reason!

Whether or not I can justify the tears to a narrow-minded therapist, crushes fucking WORK for me, and they often lead to more friendships as well! (Angel Face is still one of my main inspirations—he invited me to Online Goth Night on Friday and I am TOTALLY going!)

Romantic lovewise, though. I know I can’t control if I ever find the requited version again. If I don’t, I think I can probably handle it, because I almost always feel completely full of all the kinds of love in my life: friend-love, family-love, work-love, talking-about-Gilmore-Girls-love, art love, book love, nature love, and of course good old fashioned self-love. Actually, I think I’m pretty amazing at love, even as I’m still missing a person or people.

It has really struck me in the past few days how simple, how ordinary, my romantic wishes/fantasies/hopes are. I don’t think it’s crazy or demanding to hope that someday before too long a masculine person will be sending me songs for smitten reasons, not for just-friendly reasons like QC or for opportunistic predatory reasons like Bill. And maybe, just maybe, that song-sender will know all the knots.

Because of my age and other particulars, it’s easy to see my romantic hopes as lightning-strike bonkers. I sure thought of it that way while I was divorcing, but I had to make room for that imaginary guy anyway, I had to try. Such an ordinary wish, to be like-liked. It happens to people all the time. I know that I deserve it as much as anybody, that no amount of self-as-project can make it come along any faster or slower. It comes when it comes. Until I get there, I fall, I get giddy, I cry, I make art. It’s a pretty good plan.

I am WILDLY underemployed this summer, so I need some CDC-friendly adventures. I need to be always writing paragraphs. So!

1.      Learn one knot a week. Think about how much the Republicans would resent me using stimulus (ha) money on a new set of shiny peacock-blue ropes.

2.      High Fidelity without the visits. I feel pretty resolved about all of my past loves, but it would be fun to visit them in my mind and heart. Since I already lavishly paid tribute to The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, I’ll start with the guy after that. The guy who sang Rage Against the Machine on amusement park rides. The guy who looked like Eddie Vedder at just the right moment. The guy who was my first sex/love combination. Ohhhhh Full Name Guy, you’ll be a summer treat.

That way, until I find my next human true love(s) I’ll have all the rope-love and paragraph-love to keep me company. Thanks for reading, wish me luck!

For the Museum of Bad Advice, Part One (Hang Up)

Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to have paid someone to say exactly what depression itself would say, so I could hang up on them both.

Toward the beginning of quarantine, constant family contact, fear about my job, and general everyone-might-die-ness was making me worry that I might lose any of the mental health ground I’ve gained in the past few years. Insurance was in flux as I filled out every disaster relief form, so I took some of the extra money my brother had sent (He felt lucky to be able to work full time from home.) and subscribed to BetterHelp.

The first therapist I tried seemed insufficiently invested in science, letting slip some Trumpesque complaints about CDC guidelines. The second one was better, but I think she was mixing me up with another of her clients. Suffering from Quarantine Brain myself, I felt compassion for her, but didn’t think she would help with my growing sense of nonexistence.

The third one, I liked. She seemed sensible, grown-up, and (I’ve seldom in my life found this appealing, but in-these-times etc.) like she knew what I should do next.  She recommended The Four Agreements, one of the worst, victim-blamiest self-help books I’ve encountered, (By the Book sums it up pretty well: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/by-the-book/e/59267477#/) but I decided to overlook that red flag. She sent me a so-detailed-as-to-be-sleep-PREVENTING Sleep Hygiene Diary, but she also seemed fine when I disregarded some of her advice and took other aspects to heart.

Last Tuesday during an early morning phone session, still weepy and off-balance from saying bye-sort-of to Quarantine Crush, I was sharing my pretty boilerplate 45-year-old-single-bi-woman worries when I heard (not for the first time in my may therapist lifetime.)  third therapist lady become audibly annoyed:

“Well, you have this air of desperation,” she said, and that can be really off-putting. If you really do what you need to do to love yourself, they’ll be more attracted.”

A.    Desperation seems like a TOTALLY REASONABLE EMOTION TO HAVE when:

1.      Tens of thousands of people are dying.

2.      My work life is fairly decimated.

AND

3.      I was relearning how to write poems with a friend I missed so, SO much.

B.     What did attracting anybody even have to do with it when I had:

1.      Fallen for someone who was both taken and

2.      A dear, important friend and

3.      2,500 miles away?!

“I just think you need to adjust what you’re looking for.” She said.

(Connection? Poetry? A creative spark? A window into meaning from the past? Hope? Songs? I know what she meant but it seems like she was oversimplifying.)

“What am I looking for?” I asked, joining her in irritated-voiceness.

“Well, romance might seem really nice in books, but in real life, you might be too sensitive for it.”

(Note: The Highly Sensitive Person book suggests this too, but it also suggests that communities with a lot of immigrants have fewer sensitive people, so I put it in the garbage. Not even good enough for the recycle bin.)

I tried a little bit to tell her how many different kinds of relationships I’d tried, certainly more than the average person.

“It’s just that I’m mostly happy being alone,” I said, “So I’d rather not keep trying casual stuff and then getting mad at partners for being too casual.” (Basically the theme for years of this blog.)

It really irked my soul that she was reading me as a commitment-hungry stereotype when I was willing to love someone I’m unlikely to even see any time soon—seems like maybe it was the opposite problem. I’m still arguing with this lady I unsubscribed to a week ago.

She told me that AT MY AGE (caps mine, she wasn’t yelling) I needed to start changing my expectations.

“Men don’t want commitment after they’re divorced, so you’re probably going to have to go with it and be grateful for the couple of weeks you might get.”

“Well, that is really…grim. I’m hanging up now.” And I did.

I called Sweetie and cried out the hurt and shock that someone who was supposed to be on my side, and also someone who was basically a stranger, could be that cruel.

All in One Saturday: A Valentine Car, a New Therapy Goal, and an Excellent Date

Most Saturdays I do little more than read and maybe wash the dishes, but last weekend, a lot of moving forward happened.

A few weeks ago I decided that I couldn’t live with the sadness and shame that came over me every time I drove Sweetie’s car, so I started looking for one of my own. Being capable of having my own car doesn’t really fit with my lingering self-image of being broke and just kind of incompetent, but I made myself absorb the realities of a salary and (!) a good credit score. Somewhere along the line, I became able to take care of myself, and honestly I owe some of that to Sweetie’s support.

It only took a couple of Googlings to find the car I wanted, a bright shiny red compact with, sweet merciful wonder, an automatic transmission. I put off driving it until I knew I wanted to buy it, because I knew once I drove it I’d be attached. I was right. I tried to be cool in the dealership until the bargaining was done, but my insides were just bursting with joy. It was a triumph of self-control that I didn’t do the Snoopy dance right there in the dealership. The divorce is over. I’m free.

I had to go back and pick up the blue car from the dealership, (I almost mistyped “healership”) which gave me some nice impromptu catch-up time with my favorite neighbor, Gold Star Winggirl, but felt like a complete nightmare to be behind that wheel again. All of the anger and frustration and fear of the Sweetie relationship is in that car, and if I could reasonably push it off a cliff, I would. Will settle for having dropped it off.

As I think I’ve bragged about before, my lovely therapist makes housecalls and we had an appointment soon after I finished the car-errands. After telling her all of the things that were making me happy and moving me forward, I admitted that I was still concerned about how big my anger gets sometimes, how personal and consuming. She very, very rarely gives advice or directives, but she said that it’s time to confront The Big Thing, the real scary party from high school, that it put bad things in me that aren’t me and it’s time to start making those repairs.

I’m ready. Lord knows I’ve had enough practice confronting it. We’ll start talking about it on Sunday the 16^th at 11:00 AM, on a three day weekend so there’s a margin from the school week. (Hey, that reminds me of something…) She said to give myself as much love and kindness as I can until then, in every single way I can think of—luckily that was my plan anyway.

Even though I know she’s right and that nothing bad is going to happen, when she left I felt like I’d gotten caught, like she’d discovered after all that understanding that I really am a bad person. I’ve felt so many variations on that feeling over the years; I wonder what it’ll be like after it loses its power?

It’s taken too many paragraphs to get to the BEST part of Saturday—the Mystery Man. On Friday, one of the Mystery Ladies had let me know he’d be available all weekend for my attentions, so I asked him if he’d be my reward after I turned in my report card grades. Since I was awesome and did interim reports last month, work didn’t take long at all.

Another of the Ladies sent a few tweets handing him over to me and sending compersion, and then I invited him over to the direct messages to negotiate a little. Since I was fragile the last time from not being able to physically snuggle after, I proposed some Twitter aftercare: after we were done playing, in addition to cute chatting, we would lavish each other with praise, since we’re awesome at that anyway. And it worked! The next day, I felt healthy, horny, and warm, like I’d just been to the nude beach.

It didn’t feel out-of-body this time. For the first 45 minutes, I mostly didn’t touch myself at all, just sat here drawing him a Valentine in my cute bra and lace undies, letting the warmth of his words move through me and put me at ease. It really did feel like sitting in the sun, my hair soft on my back, my shoulders warm, my cheeks flushed.

By the time I started getting handsy with myself, (around when he told me he was pulling me onto his lap and I said we’d have to stay there and make out like teenagers for a while…) everything was turned up and tingly and my pretty lavender lace panties (which would soon end up on the floor) were soaking wet.

I think that I need more practice with blowjob-describing. Though I got no complaints, I did get a little writer’s block about it. But maybe that’s because it was at the end and it was very hard to think or type.

After we came (together, how cuuuute) we did indeed heap on the praise. I have definitely met my match in terms of verbal lovey-doveyness—a few times, I was like, whoa, I definitely can’t top that. I’ve never felt more happy or accepted.

I was sad to say goodnight but glad I was sending him into the arms of his wife, my friend who’d instigated the date in the first place. I’m so grateful to have them in my life, that they’re willing to share their time and hearts and world with me. As I told the Mystery Man while we were celebrating aftercare by listing off the things that make us nerdy, he’s like those little gold cell-fixer things on Doctor Who, changing me with love and helping me regenerate until I’m strong enough again to save planets. I can’t thank you enough, Dear.

Holy Crap, I Think I Might Have Mental Health.

Yesterday, I had a really irksome consult with a potential therapist. A few weeks ago, I crowd-sourced for depression advice and a facebook friend recommended a lady in the area who’s supposedly progressive.

It’s hard to compress 38 years into a 10 minute phone call, especially since it’s been such a complicated year. First, the lady said I couldn’t be depressed if I was having a good day—fair enough. Then she remarked that I sounded much younger than my age—maybe she thought I was pranking her? But who pranks by appointment? She was bothered by the fact that I sounded too cheerful: “You’re telling me these terrible things, but there’s laugher in your voice.” Jeez, I told you, I was having a good day and plus, what was I supposed to do, break down and cry about it to a stranger recommended by a facebook friend? Plus, in such a short conversation, I didn’t see there being time for histrionics.

Anyway, I wish this lady had just said “I don’t like you.” and left it at that, but she had to get a judgment in.  She said “I just don’t think I would be a good fit. I’ve worked with gay and lesbian clients but I don’t really work with polyamory—I think you have to be EXTREMELY mentally healthy for that.” The poly friend who recommended this lady can be proud of her squeaky-clean psyche, I guess!

I thanked the therapist for being honest, wrote her a strongly worded email (I really am becoming Greenberg…) and argued with her in my head all evening. Sweetie, being Sweetie, thought the lady was so wrong that she shouldn’t even warrant a mention, but she accidentally got me to some fantastic conclusions. Sometimes therapy happens in spite of incompetence, I guess.

First of all, having gone through a bunch of stuff doesn’t mean I’m not mentally healthy. In the past year, I’ve worked my ass off getting certified to teach, got hired right after graduation, and navigated several new relationships and breakups without major aftermath. By writing through it, I processed a lot of junk from the past on my own. My job is a nightmare sometimes but I end most days feeling happy anyway. I may need to find a better school but I know teaching is what I was meant to do.

And what The Man did was shitty, but it came nowhere close to breaking me. Yes, I cried, I freaked, I had pointless arguments on FetLife, but I also fought to change something that wasn’t right and I’m proud of that. When the fight was over, I walked, slept, read, hugged Sweetie, and went back to yoga and church.

I think that’s what mental health looks like. As I write this, I get a warm feeling in my back and shoulders that tells me it’s true. What I took for depression is just a transition, just a fucked-up breakup and a hard job.

There's nothing in my past or present that makes me unqualified for love, however I want to express it. It’s probably okay if people who don’t know me want to think I’m nuts. Yes, I have a lot of work to do. I have to practice hearing myself think, adapting to and working with jealousy, and being kind to myself in the presence of man-smell. But those things won’t be accomplished by delving into the past or by taking myself away from people. They’ll be accomplished by getting closer.

As a new teacher, people want to give me lots and LOTS of ideas to try, but I don’t need a mountain of ideas of how other people think I should be. What I need is to stop drowning out the voice inside me that knows what to do and how to get where I need to go. So thanks, mean stranger therapist-lady, for helping me realize that I had what I needed all along.

Various Happy Things: You Are What You Love

They don’t really fit the traditional mold of happy poly moments, but some things converged last week to make me feel like I am back on track:

1. Since I’ve known for a while that some (not all) of the troubles between us could be solved with, like, a half-hour conversation and I was having a hankering to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and be excellently fucked, I asked the Mayor of Kittentown for some snuggles. He was happy to be asked but says his new relationship doesn’t allow for extracurricular snuggles. It’s hard to let him go for real, but I’m glad to know that there’s at least one guy that I still trust enough to ask for what I want. And! I get a gold star for asking. I hope that MKT and I can keep a friendship going, even if being on his couch isn’t appropriate anymore. And! I’m really happy that his relationship is getting closer, even if it means no snuggles for me.
2. This one won’t seem happy at first, but bear with me: I’m still really sad that my therapist is on maternity leave, and the interim lady didn’t work out—I felt frustrated, confused, and panicky to the point where the interim lady asked her supervisor to intercede. The supervisor lady gave me two very nice gifts: First, she helped me understand that my bond with my regular therapist is really deep and it’s okay to not want to do therapy with anyone else. Supervisor lady asked me to imagine that my real therapist was sitting next to me and to find that sensation in my body—it was in my heart, and that made me cry my eyes out some more.

I think that experience was really important because what I’m really learning here is how to not be freaked out by attachment. Often when I try to fight attachment, it comes out as anger, resentment, fear, a real feeling of being trapped. Once I realized it was okay to have a bond, the pressure was released and I could happily take the summer off from therapy.

The other cool thing that that the supervisor lady told me was to get a pretty notebook and write letters to my therapist while she’s gone. While it makes me feel like a genuine crazy person, it really works—in fact, I decided to use it to write to other people I can’t currently talk to—it’s a relief to be able to parse out all of the emotions instead of being overwhelmed by them. Most of the letters, I won’t share or send, but it makes me feel better and like it is safer to be connected to people. It helps me to experience some of the attachments I have been fighting in a way that doesn’t force me to confront or disrupt anything—it’s another way to help myself learn love.

3. Over the weekend, I went to a couple of talks that were really helpful and inspiring. The first one was a talk on seeing kink through the lens of feminism. I looked forward to it so much that it kind of made my week. I don’t think that there’s anything inherently anti-feminist about kink, but I have wished for a while to have more friends who see BDSM from a feminist perspective. On the way there, I got caught in a romantic-comedy-level downpour—I was soaked down to my underwear and laughing my head off—I felt like I was on a very good date with myself. (Thank goodness Sweetie and I had a date for afterwards so she could bring me a change of clothes.)

While I sat there shivering, I was so happy to hear people’s questions and stories, and it was wonderful to feel safe to tell my story without fear of being seen as a bad girl. (At least, not a bad girl in a bad way!) I realized that the key to making more safety for myself in the local BDSM community is to spend more time forming friendships, so I won’t end up in the power-imbalance that automatically comes with being an outsider. So I offered to be folks’ munch-going pal, and I am so proud that the workshop’s facilitator took me up on it—she’s accomplished so many of the things that I dream about and she’s a fellow badass feminist bottom, so I think she’ll be a good influence. Wonder what her cute nickname will be!

The other talk that I liked so much was a talk on beginning polyamory. I love the way that my body relaxes itself when I am in poly company—my shoulders get warm and my heart floods with well-being—I really should do this more often.

My favorite thing that I heard in that talk was from a gentleman friend of mine, one of the most romantic souls I know. He said that one of the ways he knew that he was poly is that he just doesn’t get over people—they just stay in his heart. He knew he had room for more that one person in his heart because people just stay in there. I love that idea. It’s certainly a more positive way to look at my own never-getting–over-people, even if I do get frustrated from time to time with who takes up my heart real estate.

4. And speaking of heart real estate, in my letters-I-probably-won’t-send notebook, I sat down and wrote a letter to Fireguy. It made me realize something that will probably seem obvious to everyone else, (it sure wasn’t a surprise to Sweetie)—I loved Fireguy. I even loved Varga Girl in an aspiring-to-be-a-metamour kind of way. Though there isn’t much I can do with that love, acknowledging it is a relief and a release.

There was a moment during our public fire scene where he looked down at my face with such a look of approval that I felt like a perfect little angel. I had never felt that from a male authority figure before, and it struck me so deep. That’s why it’s so hard to stay away from him, even though we weren’t a good match. I forgive myself for the compromises I made, for all the hurt we all went through, I forgive myself for the fact that that feeling was so powerful that I couldn’t resist it. I hope to feel it again some day, in a healthier way.

We’re having a Charlie Kaufman movie marathon over here lately, and this scene from Adaptation has really been sticking with me. “I can love whoever I want.”