What was supposed to be a really nice, chill long weekend at my place with Sudo (he stayed Thurs-Sun evening and we both had Fri off work), was actually quite stressful and emotional. This is probably going to sound all angry and ranty, but it's been talked through pretty well, and my writing style tends to reflect the way I thought in the moment. Others on these blogs do the whole "thoughtful introspection" thing way better than I do. I tend to just spew words!
Anyway.... Thurs was actually a great night since we did dinner with a friend of mine and then hung out at her place with her adorable dog (though she did play really rough and chomped on my hand when we were wrestling and I STILL have a really bad bruise!), but Fri he mentioned that he'd been talking to the Ex and they wanted to try and get together for lunch or dinner or something over the weekend. They ended up doing dinner on Fri night to get it out of the way so that he and I could have the rest of the weekend to ourselves, but for me, that was very much just the beginning of an emotional spiral. Since they first emailed and decided to have a conversation to try and get past the awkward ignoring of each other, it's just been constant messaging and making plans. Not at all what I had imagined when I first thought this was a good idea. In my mind, I was thinking.... ok, a quick conversation so that they can both just agree to let the past be the past, move on, and be cordial, or at least fake it if they happen to run into each other in public. Simple right? Not, ok, let's actually try to be friends and talk and hang out all the time.
That probably sounds like I'm being a jealous, emo, bitch, but for me, it's not that he's talking to someone else, it's that he's choosing to re-involve himself (supposedly as friends, but it's clear there are still feelings on both sides) with someone else who has already caused so much drama in our polycule. But also, we've been having ongoing issues with him constantly being depressed about Mr. Hyde and he either can't or won't communicate with me about his feelings. So I find it really hurtful that he's all about having these talks with the Ex and settling their emotional drama from the past and "fixing things" but yet he can't seem to express his emotional turmoil with me? So after Fri night, they were continuing to message Sat and he and I ended up having a long, emotional conversation about all sorts of stuff. The possibility of therapy, for him to work on coping with stress and improving communication came up, because I think he needs it but he's always been pretty against therapy. Anyway, it was full of tears and stuff, but it felt good to get it all out and have a conversation about it. And I finally felt like I was getting real information out of him about the Mr. Hyde situation in a level of detail that got to the heart of the issue vs just some vague statements.
So it seemed like things were then looking up. We lounged on Sunday, had good sexy times.... and then it was about time for him to head home and lo and behold, the Ex had been in touch and was in the city in a part of town he'd have to go through on his way home, so she'd asked if he wanted to meet up. He wanted to get home to have dinner with Peach, so I got the impression they weren't meeting, but it took him sooo long to get home, that I was kind of wondering if they did end up meeting up, which he eventually did say that in addition to just crappy train times on the weekend, he'd talked to the Ex for a while at one of the stops.
As innocent as that sounds, I just.... I dunno, I saw red. First of all, it felt like he was trying to avoid telling me (I think not because he wanted it to be a secret, but I'm guessing subconsciously he knew I wouldn't have reacted well). As much as I have reiterated that he can talk to and date whoever he wants, and I continue to say that, I just can't understand why anyone would even want to be friends with someone who treated them so poorly when they broke up, but then also continued to act childish YEARS later, to both him and his partner. Hell, he can go date a jobless mooch who is rude and obnoxious... and that's his choice, but I'm definitely going to think it's a really stupid choice and say so. For me, a HUGE part of this is also that the Ex and Peach HATE each other. That is really the primary reason that the Ex ended it (she demanded more inclusion but Peach wanted nothing to do with her and the Ex thought Sudo "shouldn't put up with her"), and it caused a huge amount of strain on Sudo and Peach's relationship. And sure, they're separating, but that's legalities. They still consider each other partners, even if that is in a non-sexual way, and she will still be a big part of his life (and my life as friends). So why the fuck would he want to re-start anything with the Ex when that is just a disaster waiting to happen with Peach? It just felt so disrespectful and inconsiderate to me! And sure, his relationship with Peach is his relationship, but Peach is my friend, and I consider us all to be family. Bringing the Ex's drama back into the fold to me, just felt like zero foresight. He could make ANY other friend or date ANY other person in the area and none of us would give a shit, and yet he felt the need to actively try to reconnect with one of the few people that would generate a strong reaction?
At the same time, expressing all of this makes me feel HORRIBLE because Sudo ends up feeling so bad about how negatively I react that he basically said he would find a way to back things off. ARGH! My point was not to give an ultimatum! I hate ultimatums! I would be soooo angry if he put me in that situation with Mr. Hyde! I said as much and he at least clarified that he wasn't interpreting all of this as an ultimatum at least. What I wanted was for him to actually SEE what he was doing and that his actions don't line up with the words of what he says he wants. He kept saying that he was being cautious and said he didn't want to date her and just wanted to be friendly again, and then said that even that needed to be taken slow. Umm, what? Since when does talking throughout the day every day and getting together 3 times in about a week equate to taking things slow? How does openly admitting still having feelings and saying "we're not trying to date, but things might change in the future" equate to taking things slow and not looking to date? To me, that's more like lying to yourself about what you're doing and getting caught up in old feelings and completely forgetting the shit storm of drama and hurt that he and Peach went through during and after that break-up. Plus there's that whole, why would you want to be friends with someone who treated you poorly thing. And for me, I have SUCH a hard time watching someone I love make horrible decisions when they are smart enough to know that what they're doing has a much better chance of blowing up than going well. That's the thing that probably makes me so angry/frustrated in this. My mind is just screaming "HOW DO YOU NOT EVEN SEE THIS?!" I'm sure my reaction in general was pretty overblown, but it's hard to not get worked up when you see someone keep going back and repeatedly making what you think is a bad decision.
Ultimately, we messaged about it a ton last night after he was home, and me saying that at the end of the day, it's his decision and he can talk to and see whoever he likes, but that I'd like him to really take into consideration what he thinks "taking things slow" means and actually do what he says (or say what he's doing I guess, I don't care, but having your actions and words actually match is a big deal to me). I'm a big girl, and ultimately if he wants to reconnect with the Ex and hang out more, that's his decision and it's for me to deal with. At the moment I'm just having a whole lot of trouble respecting it.
Of course, I can't help but see a little of my own hypocrisy in all of this since I've been so frustrated by Sudo's reaction to me dating Mr. Hyde. So the whole time I'm feeling furious about the situation with the Ex, I'm also feeling shitty about basically doing something similar! The only excuse that I can really make for myself is that the difference between our positions is that Sudo doesn't have any issue with Mr. Hyde specifically. His issue is more that he's frustrated that he's wanted a strong D/s dynamic with a partner for a long time but hasn't been able to find it (I wouldn't say ours is strong, it's still a work in progress) and yet the moment I decide to venture out looking I find someone great. But also that he's consistently been by himself on nights when I have those dates stuck in his own thoughts because he hasn't been able to get anyone to make plans with him. Either Peach is out, the other people he's talking to are busy, RCT is on travel, etc. so he feels like he can't even find a good way to distract himself from stressing. That sucks, and it's part of what we talked about on Sat. But that's very different than if he were to tell me that he has a very specific concern about Mr. Hyde. If he did, I'd want to talk it out and see if it was something we could work through, or if his concerns actually caused me to re-think if Mr. Hyde was the best choice for me. I certainly don't believe in Veto power, but I definitely care about and value my partner's opinion and would want to listen and think about that. So in one sense, I'm sorta doing the same thing of reacting really poorly to someone in his life, but at the same time, I feel like they're very different circumstances. Still a shitty feeling though.