Tag Archives: monogamy

Non-Monogamy?

Posted on by learning to live like water

Another weirdly warm December day today. Yesterday it was in the mid-60’s, today will be similar, but cloudy not sunny.  We are all loving it.  Our heat doesn’t go on, we don’t have to wear 5 layers of clothes to stay warm, my winter coat has not come out of the closet yet this year!

Awesome, just awesome.

I don’t know what’s going on with A, he was acting weird last night.  He did finally text me, and quickly said “goodnight sweetie” then began to talk about his date Friday night.  How she’s nicer than the last woman he dated, and how she’d invited him and his son to Christmas.  I said, “Wow, on the first date….”  because that actually seems a little weird to me, to ask someone on the first date to come to your home for Christmas.  I will say he exudes kindness and love, but still…just seems a little needy on her part or something to me.  And on his, to accept that quickly.  To me, coming to someone’s home on Christmas speaks to a closer level of connection than a single date.

But then I began to think how he’s going to meet the Michigan woman in a month…and this one wants him for Christmas, and I wondered…and asked… “Did you tell her about Michigan?”   Because, really…someone who is asking you to Christmas on the first date obviously likes you and I would guess she’s not thinking about being one of many partners.

He didn’t answer.  At all.  I have not heard since I asked the question.

Maybe he feels it’s none of my business, but we are close friends, I can ask him anything, I thought, or tell him anything.  And if he’s going to get chummy with this new woman, she should know his plans.  I will always advocate having the truth on the table.  Anything else is just self-serving.

I’m thinking I don’t really like this new thing he’s doing, deciding that he doesn’t want to be monogamous.  He said he wants to learn to share better. ??? I think it’s an idea he picked up from the Michigan woman, who last week, was “off with her other boyfriend.”   Speaking from experience, it’s a recipe for disaster.  When he told me that a week or so ago, I said,  “I can’t do that, Addie.  Scott would have loved it if I could, but I can’t.”  Reminding him of the pain it caused me.   It is incongruous with the man I have known for the better part of a year, for him to not be monogamous, for him not to be forthcoming about his intentions with others.  I’m not jealous, I’d love for him to find someone who loves him madly.   I can’t love him that way, and lord knows I tried, but it wasn’t there.

I’m afraid he’s a mess.  And I still know if I wanted to be in a relationship with him, he’d give it all up….  I don’t know if he’s more hurt than he will admit by my not wanting him to come here, by my not wanting to have an intimate relationship with him and is trying to fill the hole.  I’m not tuned into him like I am/was (hopefully was) to Scott. So I can’t read it that well from 2000 miles.

Well, I’m not going to obsess over it.  Things change, and it seems he is too.  If this path continues, we won’t be so close anymore, because I can’t admire what he’s doing at the moment.  I’ll miss him, but it is what it is. I’m still grateful to have him, to have had him in my life, he’s never treated me with anything but love and respect, except for his little anomaly yesterday asking to come see me after he’s been with the MI woman.  But it does show where he’s headed….not a good thing.

 

Choices

Posted on by learning to live like water

I had an unusual conversation with A last night.  He had taken a “good morning” pic of himself in his bathrobe, and said something like “Good morning sweet Deb” or something, but sent it to the woman who he’s been seeing in Santa Fe by mistake.  It was not risque, it’s something he does every day.  But, of course, it did not make her happy…..

I felt bad for her, really, and for him.  He likes her, and I’m sure it would be hard for her to understand our intimate but non-sexual relationship.  I asked him about the other woman up in Michigan, and he said she was off with her “other” boyfriend.   He’s thinking he’s not going to try to be monogamous.   The woman in Michigan is obviously not, the woman in Santa Fe obviously wants to be, but apparently that picture ended it between them.

I told A I could never NOT be monogamous, I can’t do casual sex.  I said, “S would have been happy if I could have done it.”  LOL.  Personally, I don’t see A as the casual sex type, and in fact, I’m pretty sure if I agreed to have a relationship with him that way, he would be completely faithful to me.  I think if he falls in love again, he will be monogamous.  I think he’s just craving affection right now, reacting to the fact that I had to shut down the plans to get together over Christmas.  I know I broke his tender heart again.  I had to be honest.  Maybe it was too soon for me, but I think it was just chemistry.  I have tried before to feel passion for him, and I sometimes feel it but it never lasts.  I want to feel it for someone like I did for S, every day, every moment.  I want to be enough for the person I feel like that about, and he will be enough for me.

I don’t want to share, I don’t do it.  Don’t want to even know how to do it.  S once told me I can change myself so I’m not so jealous.  I said, I don’t want to…..I see no benefit in it.  S felt every relationship was different, what he had with one person he could never have with another, so he wasn’t sharing.   No, except his body.  His intimacy.  Probably his thoughts and feelings.  The things that make a relationship special, and wonderful, to have one person who knows you and cares for you, and has your back.

Nope, not interested in multiple partners.

But the difference between A and S is that A will tell a woman up front, that she is not the only one.  He won’t pretend to two women that they are the only ones, and then do what he wants, the way S did.  A will give a woman a choice first, if she wants to be with him when he might be with someone else.  Neither me or Betty was given that choice, we were taken by deception.

A can stand in his truth and be himself, and own his story.  S cannot.

A has never been anything but monogamous.  I don’t think this choice will last for him anyway.  I think he’s just looking for affection til he finds love.

Interesting, though.  To compare A’s telling me this, honestly, and S playing me (and Betty) for the same end.  I wish he’d been honest with me.  That’s all.  So I could have chosen to have done what I did with  him, knowing the truth, or chosen not to.  But he took my choice away with lies and deception.  We cannot even be friends now, the truth would have at least salvaged a friendship.  It’s too bad that he chose that road.  It’s too bad that he still has not owned it, at least with me.

He will say he has.  He said he will pay 5 lifetimes for what he did to me.  But that statement is about him….how it affects him.  It has nothing to do with acknowledging how it affected me.  It is about how he will pay, not about how I already paid the price for loving him so much.  He’s sorry because he will have to pay.  He’s not sorry that I had to deal with lies and betrayal by someone I completely adored.  He can’t feel my pain, he can only feel his own.  I would guess he feels his own pain with Betty too, but I doubt that he can feel the real pain that he caused her with is lies and deception too.

I have managed to pick myself up, on my own.  To take the hand of the universe, and my friends, and stand back up, dust myself off, bandage and care for my own wounds.  S caused utter devastation and walked away from it, uncaring, unfeeling.  Truth be told he did that with Betty too.  He called her on the phone to tell her, he couldn’t go to her house and face her pain. I told him to go sit with her while she read the hard truths in my letter to her, and face her pain, and deal with it. To let her see him deal with it.  But he didn’t.  He left her alone, to deal with it by herself, as he did me once the truth came out.

At least he treated us equally.

Any way, my feeling is when you choose not to be monogamous, especially physically, you open the door to pain and hurt.  At least, you have to be like A and say it up front, and let someone have free will and choice in whether or not they wish to be with you.  I would always choose not to be with someone who was with other women.  Always.  I should have been given that choice with S.