Fighting Against my Own Desperation

Shrughug

New member
34 year old, queer woman here. Mostly attracted to women. Out of the closet, late in life. Married to a mostly asexual male.

I have spent most of my life in denial of my own attraction to women up until only about 5 years ago when I officially came out to my husband. He is mostly asexual and I think about sex constantly. So considering those two differences between us he suggested we open up our marriage.
I feel like I've been trying to make up for lost time ever since...

So here's my quick-ish poly dating history leading up to now to help explain my main issue :

Soon after we opened our relationship (5 years ago) I had my first (sober) kiss with a woman and it totally knocked my socks off. I also lost my lesbian v-card to this woman and even though it actually was awkward and unfulfilling sex I still wanted to dive in deep with her relationship-wise. But she was single and not poly so she wasn't interested in anything more than FWB.

Next I met a married, poly woman who seemed the total opposite. She wanted a relationship right away. She said "I love you" fairly quickly and I was thrilled. I imagined a future frolicking through the lesbian daisy fields with her. In my naive head it seemed reasonable like in movies when people fall in love passionately and in a whirlwind :p ... It turned out that this quick dive into relationship WAS too good to be true and was probably a result of a manic episode of hers as a result of bipolar. I don't doubt that her feelings were real. They just weren't lasting and what I really need/needed was stability. I kept thinking things would get better if I just gave her the space she needed but it was pretty miserable for us both until I finally just told her we were better off friends. The hope that things would get better between us was difficult to shake because I had had a taste of that exciting whirlwind in the beginning of our relationship. It's hard to have something so promising taken away so abruptly.

So after that I really felt that I just needed more experience and less emotional attachment. I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't just fall into a crush on just anyone who was available and interested in me. So I sort of went shamelessly wild for a bit. (some of you will laugh because it's really not wild at all). I hooked up with a m&f couple for a bit and then two other people separately. The latter two both seemed interested in relationships with me but I didn't feel the same way about them. Sweethearts but they both had various complications or habits that weren't attractive to me.
So there, I had proved it to myself that I wasn't just needy for anyone.

And now here we are in the present and latest connection which for the sake of anonymity I wont fill in too many details about her. Ugh... I really like her. We've only seen each other 4 times now and I'm trying to keep my cool. I think I've mostly been ok but also she has a lot of experience so she could also probably sniff out my desperation to get to know her. She has a super busy life and once in a while I start to get paranoid that maybe she's just using that excuse because she's no longer interested. But then after a long time of not texting she'll say something semi-encouraging... I don't know. I've passed it by my husband and he also isn't quite sure one way or the other. Either way, I am probably too invested even though I'm trying my best not to go there too quickly. I know! I don't really know her yet after 4 dates but she already is light years more mature and rational than the others I have dated. And what I have learned about her in conversations, her relationships seem super healthy, honest and loving. I could go into a lot of other details about her that are just really attractive but again, for anonymity's sake I wont. I have been stumbling in my uncool, awkwardness around her and have become really dumbly self-deprecating. -Even though normally I am confident and chill.
I am afraid that my awkwardness and self-deprecation were not cute to her and instead were to her red flags spelling neediness and high-maintenance.

So today, after a long silence from her I began to get sad (possibly paranoid) that things weren't going to go anywhere with her - that she was moving on. My husband noticed my mood and it sparked this whole pretty illuminating conversation.
I feel that my history of only recently coming out of the closet late in life presents its own complications in the poly world. (please if you have any personal experience or advice chime in!)
I have to face the fact that I am dealing with a lot of fear having to do with squandered youth and limited time left on earth. I have spent most of my life and especially the freedom of my youth in denial of my feelings about women. Now that I have embraced my queerness I also have the feeling of regret of having squandered all of those years. I can't help but think about how that whole time I could have been dating women. I could have been having crazy, passionate, single-person sex. I possibly could have even had my female first true love and all of the deep connection that could come with that.
So now here I am wanting desperately to experience those things I missed out on. I have this sense of desperation that feels both inevitable considering my lack of life experience and also hopeless because desperation is not a great look and is sure to turn the best people away eventually. But I also don't know how to shake it off. Pretend I don't want something? PS don't forget, I'm married to a mostly asexual man and I am also wanting SEX. Bleh. I don't want to put all of that on someone!

The best medicine I have come up with so far is spending a lot of time with myself, keeping my dating options open so I'm not just focusing on a single person, and continuing to be the grateful, joyful, person who recognizes how lucky she is to be married to my favorite human who allows me to be free. He really is incredibly beautiful to me.
So, things may not happen with this new interest and part of me gets really sad because I feel like my chances of finding someone who fits and experiencing something grand, deep and affirming won't be many. Is that a common feeling for the poly community?

Thank you for your thoughts!
 
I don't intend this to minimize anything you've said. Everything you're feeling is valid.

At the same time... You say you're 34, but some of your post reads as if you're feeling like your life is nearly over. Yes, you went through years of not dating women, and I can see it's hitting you hard that this is something you could have had all along and didn't. But you can have it *now*, and you have a lot of time left.

I'm 47. Until I was 36, I barely dared to have sex with *anyone* because of being raised in an extremely sex-negative environment and experiencing sexual trauma as a child and teen, followed by 14 years of marriage to an extremely sex-negative and emotionally abusive man. I learned not to let myself feel anything during sex. I learned not to ever initiate or even give any indication of interest in sex.

I was 36 years old the first time I allowed myself to experience any genuine sexual pleasure. 37 the first time I made the first move sexually, which is something I *still* have trouble doing a decade later. I was monogamous with my ex-husband; a year and a half after leaving him, I met my current husband and was monogamous with him for five years. And for various reasons, sex wasn't a frequent thing with Hubby and me, so between that and some miscommunications, I lost a lot of the ground I'd gained after leaving my ex.

I was 42 when Hubby suggested that I see other people. (He's steadfastly monogamous.) 43 when I realized I'd fallen in love with a guy I'd been "playing" with, and Hubby and I discussed it and I finally realized I'm poly. I was 45 when I finally accepted that I'm kinky and allowed myself to start exploring that.

Sometimes, I have regretted the years of not allowing myself to enjoy sex, not expressing wanting it, not realizing I was poly, not accepting I was kinky. But regretting those years doesn't give them back to me. It just makes me feel like shit, and, like you, I end up feeling desperate and frenzied to make ALL THE THINGS happen all at once to make up for lost time.

Life, unfortunately, doesn't work that way. But it is possible to stop dwelling on the "could have beens" of the past, and focus on what is now and what could be in the future. And you're two years younger than I was when I first started even allowing myself to enjoy sex, and a LOT younger than I was when I started doing poly and kink. It might not feel like it right now, but you really do have a lot of time left in your life to explore these things.
 
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So, things may not happen with this new interest and part of me gets really sad because I feel like my chances of finding someone who fits and experiencing something grand, deep and affirming won't be many. Is that a common feeling for the poly community?

I empathize. After repeatedly falling for women who didn't love me back throughout my teens and 20's, I married a man. When I reached 40, I started up with women again. I dated for 2 years as a married woman, then husband and I split. I sure would love to find a female life-partner open to me having male lovers too. Unfortunately, my current girlfriend struggles too much with her mental illness to be anyone's life-partner or I'd put a ring on that.

I cannot tell you how many times in my life I too have felt/feel desperate. When I was married and monogamous to a man, I couldn't even stand seeing attractive lesbians together, the envy ate me alive. When I first started dating women again, I tried every dating site, asked my lesbian friends to set me up, even tried the swinger's crowd. I hit on every woman I knew who I thought might be open to the idea. Still, even now as a poly-solo, I've only gone out with a few women. I've actually only slept with 2 women in 6 years, but they've been high-quality women ;)

In my experience, yes, it can be difficult to find emotionally available women willing involve themselves with a married woman, and of course, you need to be attracted to each other and compatible in other ways as well.

Ultimately,"grand, deep and affirming" is a lot of pressure to put on someone you're dating. 34 isn't that old, I'm 12 years older and haven't given up yet. I offer more empathy than advice, except to say try to have fun dating women without such great expectations, and you'll definitely have some magic moments. I know I have.
 
Not wishing to judge you at all, but yes, you're right when you say that desperation is not an attractive trait. Since you describe yourself as normally confident and chill, I'd say you're probably still adjusting to your sexual freedom and having come out... and hopefully, with time and a little more experience, you'll settle into the person you're becoming and be able to relax.

It mightn't seem like it, I know, but 34 is FAR from over the hill. It's actually pretty common for women to have their first same-sex experience somewhat later in life... just as it is for people to finally realise they're no longer interested in monogamy well into their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.

What people often forget is there is really NO other time except "now", the present. None of us are guaranteed a future, and regrets won't bring back the past. What you may consider wasted years were all learning experiences that brought you to this point.

Having accepted your queerness at 30-ish and being married to a man may be be challenges to finding long-term love with another woman, but in many ways you're lucky to have stability and a supportive confidante in your husband. Polyamorous relationships encompass a great many configurations, as I'm sure you realise, and the more you socialise (in general, online, and/or among real life poly "communities"), the more people you'll meet and the wider your pool of potential dating partners will grow; many of whom will be accepting of more unconventional relationship structures.
 
Hello Shrughug,

I am thinking that you are grieving those lost years (in which you could have been dating women, if only you had known), you are going through the stages of grief. Kübler-Ross identified five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You may be experiencing more than one of these stages at this time. One that you're going through, I think, is bargaining. Like, in some part of your subconscious/emotions, you're thinking/feeling that if you can hurry up and find a partner now, you can make up for some of those lost years, you can salvage some of them. This is how I explain your sense of desperation. Then when you realize that the relationship you want isn't happening yet, it makes you sad/depressed, as you realize your time on this earth is dwindling. So that's another of the stages, the stage of depression.

Truly, it is not possible to get any of those years back; they are just gone. And you do not want to spend the present trying to recover the past. The present is all you really have. So, only spend the present on the present. The one truly worthwhile way to spend it.

Of course, it is far easier to say that than it is to do it. You are going through the stages of grief ... and there is no shortcut through those stages. If you're going through bargaining right now, then that's what you're going through, and you'll have to endure it until it has run its course. That, perhaps, you can do something about. You can accept, within yourself, that you are going through these stages, and that's okay. It's okay to feel a little desperate, anyone in your shoes would feel that way. And maybe that desperation will scare away some of your best prospects, but you can still accept that about yourself. You can accept that about the process, the process that you have to go through. The five stages of grief. Sometimes you experience more than one stage at a time, and some stages you might have to experience more than once.

I am sorry that you lost all those years. Believe me, I am in a unique position to understand. I spent the first 35 years of my life trying to serve and make peace with the church. It took that long for me to finally realize that the church was not for me. At that time, I grieved the lost years, the years I had squandered on religion. There was a lot of anger, let me tell you. There was a lot of bargaining too, of trying to make up for lost time. And even when I arrived at acceptance, I never really accepted it 100%. I grieve for the lost promise of an afterlife. Death has robbed me. I have accepted death to a certain extent, but never completely.

You will make peace with your lost past, in due time. In the meantime, try to be patient with yourself, and with the process. Allow yourself to be a little desperate, it's only human. You've lost some time, and will still lose some time. But eventually you will be able to relax ... and enjoy the present.

I know, that's probably not what you'd like to hear. I don't mean it to be bad news, I mean it to be good news. It is okay to be who you are, and where you are, in this part of the process. And maybe this post, and the other posts in this thread, will help you move through just a little bit of the process. To gain just a little bit of acceptance, and not feel quite so desperate.

Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
There's a couple of sides to this, I think. At 34 (I'm also early 30's) it seems like the rest of your life is both close and far away. You've got time, but you don't want to waste it. There's also that biological clock ticking. While you may not want kids and have little interest in men, the brain/hormone stuff is still there and that shows up in other ways. Give yourself some breathing room :) I agree with the previous poster about the idea of grieving for lost years. I feel that too, only with my husband. It took us ten years to get back together and be able to handle each other. Of course you are going to wonder why it took that much time for things to turn out right. Its only natural. But once you find something good, it helps you avoid dwelling on the bad.

As someone who is "lesbi-flexible" there's just something about relationships with other females that is different. It seems like when you know you want that person, you know it in a hurry. A couple of girls I know actually decided on each other simultaneously within minutes of meeting! While that relationship took time to develop, the decision was really fast.

I've been attracted to girls all my life, and I've never really wanted to take it slow. I made myself go slowly and carefully with my GF#1 because she was new to it and timid, but it wasn't my instinct. I'm not sure if it is actually desperation or determination...

If it was me in your situation, I'd down a couple of drinks to get over the awkwardness and just be frank and up front. Maybe it draws her closer, maybe it makes her think twice? But whatever happens, it pops the blister.
 
Much Needed Perspective. Thank you

First off I just want to say how happy I am that I finally joined this forum. I didn't know what to expect and with my first post you all have responded with such thoughtful answers. It has really lent me some much needed perspective.

kdt26417, you actually caught on and seem to have recognized something that I didn't mention. I was raised in a conservative, religious family also. I'm still coming to terms with the hidden various forms of shame courtesy of that upbringing. Those poisonous roots run deep. - Sex-shame, identity-shame and body-image-shame (the latter taught to me by the matriarchs in the family). Your thoughts on grieving also spoke to me. Reading that reminded me to be forgiving of myself and trust that I'm working my way through it in good time.

majormerrick, I really appreciate you reflecting back exactly what I've been feeling! One thing I hadn't thought of is the biological clock thing which I think is really interesting. I also don't want to have children but the chemicals in my body don't know that! It really helped in reading that to consider those biological reasons. It takes the chaos element out of it. Also, I have been thinking about bringing it up to her. She does value communication and honesty. Regardless, I'm not sure yet if it is a good idea but I'll probably just feel out.

I definitely don't think my life is over at 34 but I hear ya on the age thing. I didn't mean to make it so much about age because I actually do feel relatively positive about aging. The sexiest women to me tend to be older and mature so I naturally look forward to the next several decades in that sense. majormerrick summed up the feeling for me pretty well: "it seems like the rest of your life is both close and far away. You've got time, but you don't want to waste it."

update: I was just being paranoid about the busyness. We'll hang out at some point again when our schedules open up. :)

I didn't address everyone's replies but I really truly mean it when I say that everything was helpful, so thoughtful and dearly appreciated. Thank you!
 
Sounds like things are a bit better ... that's good to hear.
 
Good to have you here, Shrughug. I'm glad you gleaned something positive from the responses and hope you'll continue to visit, read, and update us on how things progress for you.
 
Glad I could help. Sometimes it can feel like being mostly oriented toward the same sex PLUS being in a poly family is a combination that very few can identify with. Just hang in there. 30 seems to be a rough transition. Years ago I was in a relationship with a girl who was turning 30 and it made her kind of crazy. When I hit it myself a bit more recently, I kind of hit that "my life is 50% over?!?!?" realization and it didn't make me happy. Once you find something wholesome that distracts you (like your new crush) it doesn't matter so much anymore :)
 
I also had to laugh a little at your horror at your wasted life, at 34! I was married, sometimes happily, sometimes desperately unhappily, to a man, and monogamous, for over 30 years. We met when I was 19. I knew I was bisexual (or pansexual, although that word didn't exist then), and capable of being poly. The summer prior to meeting my ex, I dated 4 men simultaneously and happily.

But I felt monogamy was the goal, as culture told me, even back in the free love hippy days. So I married at 22, had 3 kids in my early 30s. All that time, my ex was somewhat controlling, aware I was bi and possibly polyamorous (although that word didn't exist either). It made him nervous, controlling, disrespectful of me. He had low self esteem and was jealous of all my friends, and every time I looked at another man.

He had a strong sex drive. I didn't always, partly because of being on bc pills, partly because of pregnancy and exhaustion from kids, partly because he tried to control my sexuality through passive aggressive punishments. Once I hit my 40s, my sex drive increased a lot. When we weren't fighting, my ex and I had a lot of great sex... but emotionally we grew more and more distant.

Anyway, we split when I was 54. I'd only even been with one woman, a FMF threesome I had in college (cheated on my ex h when he was my new bf, the only time I cheated). I met a woman soon after my husband and I split. I was lucky. I met her on OK Cupid. We hit it off right away and have been together 9 years.

I wasn't desperate to meet a woman. I WAS desperate to be with people who didn't judge me for being bi and poly, who didn't abuse me passive aggressively or otherwise try to control me.

But since I was open to men, I got lots of sex. Men really came on to me on OK Cupid, even though I was 54. I am now 62 and still get hit on by men of all ages.

I don't terribly regret the years I wasn't true to myself fully. I enjoyed being a wife and mother. However, I do believe in living in the present. I also feel life begins at 40. That is when many of us stop living for others, or bending to fit in to the larger culture, and start pleasing ourselves for once!

That said, dating is hard, whether you are dating men, women or both. I had to learn to be suspicious of NRE (infatuation). People can be so disappointing. I've had my heart broken or nicked many a time.

Oh well, I could go on and on... Count your blessings, and try to be patient, and let life bring you the joys and pleasures and good people you crave.
 
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