It's a Texlahoma Story

You don't swivel your neck to do it anymore than you would turn your head to look at someone sitting in the passenger seat. You basically turn around in your seat, like shifting your butt to the right so it's easy to face the back of the vehicle, right through the middle. Left hand is on the wheel and right elbow/arm is over the back of your seat. You're basically turning in a chair. If I can do it, being overweight with a short, stiff neck and two herniated discs in my lower spine, anyone can.
 
Yeah, I can't turn in a chair safely either. It's tricky to turn my head enough to check blind spots properly, but I do. That motion specifically causes my upper back and neck to seize up, and cause me agony for a week or more. If that happens, I can't turn my head more than about 2 inches.

It sucks. So I rely on mirrors and slow cautious backing up. And not parallel parking, if I can possibly help it.
 
I can turn my neck and spine into ridiculous poses, thank you years of yoga, but I still park like ... A soccer mom. One who took too much Valium. And is also blind. Oh well. I have other talents ;)

So, I had a really good first date!!! He's cute. And sweet, and funny, and SMART. Quiet. Not in the doesn't talk much sense, but in the calm, restful, not boisterous sense. I get the sense there is some ... dark stuff... in his past. Just a couple things he said that tripped my "fellow survivor of shitty stuff" radar. But that's not first date chit chat, even for weird me.

Oh - and he and the ex are still married, I guess? But not romantically together. The distinction doesn't matter to me, but I imagine it makes dating single mono women quite tricky.

We hung out for 3 hours, but it flew by. We met at the hipster place, had a beer, then went and got pizza for dinner. After that we stopped at a local cider brewery (cidery:confused:) and did a tasting for dessert. I have had some of their ciders at local bars but I got to try some new ones. Soooo yummy.

Also yummy was the good bye kiss. I could have gone for more than one quick kiss, because I'm slutty like that, but... Gives me something to look forward to if I see him again. I hope I do :eek:
 
Feeling really weepy and whiny today. Hormones. Or lack thereof. It's the placebo week of pills that rolls around every 3 months. I can't even call it a period because it isn't one, it's just a week of spotting and estrogen withdrawal, and I only bother with it because I drop 4 lbs of water weight. Vanity knows no limits ;)

WORM: Anything less than til death do us part is a failure

Also known as Love Never Dies!!!

Breaking up is bad, and breaking up with someone makes you a bad person. Once you commit to someone, you don't give up on them, or the relationship. If you do, you deserve to be miserable and unhappy forever as punishment.

I don't even know where to start with this one. Every time I try to isolate this program I get sidetracked. It bumps up against so many other worms and then kind of gets lost in the shuffle, but it's there.

One of the confusing things is that I AM proud of how Andy and I have made our relationship last, and I DO hope our marriage lasts the rest of our lives. So when I try to remind myself, hey, that doesn't mean ALL romantic relationships have to endure forever, I get tripped up on "double standard" and "couple privilege" and such.

The other problem is that telling myself, it's ok to end relationships!, usually leads me down the path of analyzing WHY they ended. And then I start trying to problem solve how I could have avoided those breakups, which is, like, the exact opposite of accepting that breakups are ok. Ugh.

So, I am working on kind of... Separating the "never give up on love!!" mentality from the other stuff. Yes, it's worth thinking about why I see my marriage so differently from other relationships. Yes, it's worth understanding why I struggle with the end of NRE and the lack of the relationship escalator. But those are separate issues.

This breakup worm is really just a whole shitload of unnecessary guilt and misery. I am STILL feeling guilt over breaking up with Dag. And I'm letting that guilt keep me from being happy. Voice in my head saying, you threw away a perfectly good relationship, you don't deserve another one. And, you hurt someone, so you deserve to hurt, too.

I'm trying to talk back to it. It's hard though.
 
I am STILL feeling guilt over breaking up with Dag. And I'm letting that guilt keep me from being happy. Voice in my head saying, you threw away a perfectly good relationship, you don't deserve another one.
But it wasn't a perfectly good relationship. I wonder why you think of it as having been perfectly good? Or do you mean adequately okay?

He didn't quite understand your needs when you expressed them, and you felt like a piece on the side. You were miserable for months on end! How is that a perfectly good relationship?

Sure, Dag is a good person, but that doesn't mean he was good for you, nor that the relationship was working - it was obvious to most everyone here that it wasn't working and probably the only reason you didn't see it sooner is because you were too busy trying to make it work. I mean, you really worked hard at it! Yet, the relationship still didn't have you feeling good. So I think you can cut yourself some slack about ending something that had you feeling quite shitty, disappointed, and unhappy for a long time!
 
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Breaking up is bad, and breaking up with someone makes you a bad person. Once you commit to someone, you don't give up on them, or the relationship.
I certainly had this one, thankfully without the forever punishment. Yeah. It helps to be a little selfish.
 
Still chatting with Crush every day, but the squee-omg-crush feelings have faded a bit. The whole thing with listing himself as single on okc, when he's still married, is bugging me. There have been a couple of other things like that, too. Things he said on his profile that I just assumed were true, and then when I asked point blank, different story.

I dunno, I get trying to present yourself in the best light, but... There's a big difference between single (profile), divorced but still sharing a house (initial chat), and legally married, sharing a home, bank accounts, life plans, etc, but not romantic (came out on date). Nothing wrong with any of those situations, but shady to hedge and avoid the topic for as long as possible. Makes me wonder what else is hidden, what important questions I haven't thought to ask!

He's cute and fun and sweet, and I'll probably see him again, but it's definitely not a jump into bed right away situation. Which kinda sucks, because I could really use someone to jump into bed with these days!

God, I wish I could do casual sex. It has never worked for me, though. Mediocre at best in the moment, leaves me feeling crappy the next day. I don't get it, because I don't see it as wrong or bad. I just don't enjoy it.

Oddly it's nothing to do with a fear of being "used"... The one time I genuinely liked a guy and felt he was taking advantage of that to get laid, I was able to go "huh, what an asshole" and move on without getting worked up about it.

It's more that I need the relationship-y feelings in order to get turned on and excited about sex. When my brain knows it's going to be just a fling, my body kind of freezes up and doesn't want to be touched. Weird.

Is this a WORM? Some idea about sex and relationships that I internalized long ago?
 
Still chatting with Crush every day, but the squee-omg-crush feelings have faded a bit. The whole thing with listing himself as single on okc, when he's still married, is bugging me. There have been a couple of other things like that, too. Things he said on his profile that I just assumed were true, and then when I asked point blank, different story.

I dunno, I get trying to present yourself in the best light, but... There's a big difference between single (profile), divorced but still sharing a house (initial chat), and legally married, sharing a home, bank accounts, life plans, etc, but not romantic (came out on date). Nothing wrong with any of those situations, but shady to hedge and avoid the topic for as long as possible. Makes me wonder what else is hidden, what important questions I haven't thought to ask!
Hmmm, yellow flag? Maybe a red flag!

Trust that your intuition is telling you something isn't right with this one. Don't get caught up in "oh, here's my chance" kind of thinking. There are other great guys who are honest out there.
 
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Yep, that prevarication about his marital status would be a big ol dealbreaker for me.
 
Yeah there's some huge red flags here.
 
Yeah, I got some serious side-eye from Andy when I mentioned it.

We may not have anything resembling official veto power, but we have both perfected the art of side eye ;) That expression communicates better than any words. "You know dating this person is a bad idea, go ahead and do it if you want, but I'm totally going to say I-told-you-so when it blows up in your face." At least we love each other enough to do a good bit of comforting and hand holding before we start in with the I-told-you-so stuff!

Ugh, though, all of you are right, if I wasn't completely sexually frustrated, I'd just bail on any guy who was less than upfront about his relationship status. Seriously, how can it be this damn hard to find somebody worth fucking???
 
I think I'm going to have to get over my fear of messaging guys first ...

Usually (like, 90 percent of the time) viewing a guy's profile is enough to get his attention. But I have a growing list - maybe ten guys now? - of people who never even visited my profile after I looked at their pages.

It's not that I think women shouldn't message men, it's that I have a weird mini-worm about messaging single people as a married person. I mean, it's the punchline of every online dating joke there is... "And it turns out she was married!!!" Despite having answered like 400 okc questions, I do not quite trust their match algorithm to predict which single dudes are open to dating married chicks.

I ~think~ some of them would be. I mean, I get plenty of messages from single guys. I would also assume that lots of guys who maybe aren't interested would still be flattered that a reasonably attractive woman approached them online. But I have also been at plenty of social events where the singles, men and women alike, talked about receiving online messages from married folks like it was genuinely the worst thing that had ever happened to them.

Cute boys vs not becoming a cliched punch line .... Hmmm.
 
When I was married and dating on OKC, I didn't encounter one man who was uneasy about my being married. "Married" is kryptonite to the vast majority of women, but it's catnip to the vast majority of men. A generalization, but that was my experience.
 
I haven't talked to Dag since that night a few weeks ago I sent him the feelingsvomit email. I've thought about texting him, like almost every day, but I have been the one initiating chats since we broke up... So I figured I'd wait until he reached out to me. Aaaand not a word. Fuck that hurts. So much for all his promises that we'd stay friends no matter what.

I don't get it. I just Do. Not. Get. It. If you liked hanging out with me and talking to me when we were dating, why did you suddenly stop liking those things when we stopped sleeping together???

It makes me doubt every damn thing he ever said. All that talk about how he'd never felt so close to anyone, how much I mattered, how he cared so deeply... What, that just turned off when I didn't want sex? Who knows, maybe it did. Maybe he's somewhere wondering how I could lose romantic feelings and still feel love and friendship. Maybe we're that different.

I'm hurt and I'm angry... And I'm scared. Scared to care about anyone new who comes along. This is THREE TIMES that some dude has told me our friendship was the most important thing, and then blown me off when the sexual relationship ended. Fuck that. I am sick and tired of investing in people emotionally just to have them vanish from my life.

This is just... Not what I expected from polyamory. I thought I'd make awesome new friends, some would become friends with benefits, but the ~friends~ part would last even if the benefits ended. Instead I'm getting a lot of practice losing people I love :( I really don't know if I can keep doing this without becoming cynical and emotionally closed off.

The thing is, maintaining a romantic and sexual connection without living together is hard for me. I need a lot of contact, a lot of in person time, a lot of ... everything... to feel that attraction. I need way more than is really sustainable in a relationship where moving in together isn't going to happen. I get that. I do. My attraction to people can be really fragile and fickle. It's not just that I get mopey and miserable when I don't feel prioritized. I can completely see myself losing interest in a sexual relationship because I didn't like someone's new partner or their new kink.

And I'm ok with that. I'm ok with knowing that most of my relationships will only be sexual for a year or two. But, I'm ok with that BECAUSE I can still love someone and keep them in my life if that aspect ends. Except, it never happens that way.

:cool:
 
Hey, Claire. I don't think it's necessarily a sign that Dag doesn't care. Could be quite the opposite. It could be that he still loves you in a romantic way and can't separate that enough to maintain a friendship at this point. That's how it works for many of us. I know if Blue & I suddenly stopped the romantic/sexual part of our relationship, I'd need time and space to heal before I could consider maintaining the friendship part. It would be too painful to be 'just friends' in the beginning. Honestly, I think more people are like that than not. That's why you hear the recommendation of no contact for 40 days or so.

I know that doesn't lessen your craving for the friendship...but maybe changing how you view it will make it less painful on your end?
 
Andy said something similar... It's just hard for me to see a "no contact" period as anything other than a punishment. Or someone completely not giving a shit. When we were texting every few days, I still felt a craving for his friendship. At this point, I'm kind of like, well fuck you too then.

I'm supposed to go out on a date with some random okc dude tonight, and I think I'm going to blow it off. Just not in the mood. Also I don't think he has any experience with open relationships or poly, and... I really don't feel like explaining shit to someone.

Sometimes I think I'm dating just for the sake of dating... Chatting and meeting with guys who don't really interest me that much, because I feel like I'm supposed to go out on dates. To prove I'm over Dag. But I'm not. I'm not grieving the romantic relationship - it didn't take long to realize that everything I'd wanted and hoped for was just a fantasy, and the reality wasn't anything worth mourning.

I still feel occasional moments of regret - our second anniversary would have been coming up, and we won't get that. But then I think, Dag said we'd celebrate our anniversary last year, but got busy, rescheduled a million times, then forgot all about it. He blew off my birthday. Do I really think we'd be having some fabulous thing for our anniversary this year? No, it would be yet another let down, yet another thing that made me feel like shit and cry.

I miss my friend, though. I miss him, and at the same time I'm SO hurt and angry that he doesn't want or need my friendship that I don't ever want to see him again.
 
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I hear you're angry. In your anger you can't recognise the idea that some people, formerly lovers, have a hard time transitioning to platonic, even though you don't.

Punk dumped me and insisted he wanted to be friends. He wanted to keep coming over, he begged me to not stop loving him. He still liked me, he just lost the "romantic feelings," somehow, when his mother died.

I texted him a couple times and he did visit. Then I stopped texting him, he doesn't text me, and we haven't talked or visited in weeks. So much for HIS request to remain friends.

So even though he thought he wanted to remain friends, he ain't doing it!
 
Sent Dag a quick hello text... I don't know if he'll respond, but at least he doesn't get to say that I'm not making an effort to stay friends lol.

I am angry. I cannot even count how many times Dag and I talked about what would happen if our romantic relationship ended, and swore we'd still be best friends. I feel ... Tricked. Because if I'd known the friendship would end with the sex, I wouldn't have invested so much of myself.

I'm not enough of a hopeless romantic to expect all relationships to last forever. Andy and I have lasted, but I know that's the exception, not the norm, and is due to both hard work and sheer luck. And it's a million times harder, for me, to make things work when you don't live with someone. So while I hope my other relationships will endure... I don't necessarily expect them to remain romantic and sexual forever. The hope is more that the love will last, and the form of the relationship will evolve as our lives change.

I thought Dag felt the same way. Maybe he did, but when it actually happened, he changed his mind. It sucks, though, feeling like I gave my everything and have nothing left. It makes me regret getting close to him and I hate that.
 
Maybe you could consider that, for Dag, being in touch is a reminder of what is not there between you anymore and it might be too painful or confusing for him to just flip a switch from boyfriend to friend.

And there is nothing wrong with dating just to go out and date and not have any ulterior motive except for meeting people and having a good time. It's even okay if you're dating to get over Dag. I don't think you should cancel your date - just go and try to enjoy meeting and learning about another unique human being out there!
 
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