I've still been doing a lot of work on myself, and I am making progress. But some things still bother me, and I'm starting to figure out what is reasonable and unreasonable for me to accept from other people. (Reasonable and unreasonable *for me*. It's a subjective thing.)
I've hung out with Deer a couple more times, and it was pretty good. A couple of weeks ago, I offered him a ride to a party, because he doesn't drive and I knew he'd been talking to another woman who was going to be there. He met her the same night he met me; she's a friend of Party Guy's. So I gave him a ride down, and we ended up crashing at a hotel for the night because I got too tired to handle a 2-hour drive back to his place and then another hour to my house. That was nice, but something felt off about it.
He likes to text and call quite a bit, which I'm fine with because I like plenty of contact with someone I'm seeing. But Friday, he called me and spent half the conversation telling me how amazing the other woman is, and how thrilled he is that she wants anything to do with him because "she's so cool!" and how he can't wait to see her again. Not once did he compliment me, or say he wanted to see me again, or anything along those lines; it was about her. (The parts of the conversation that weren't about her were about his job and his living situation.)
If he had said anything like "You're pretty awesome too," or "I'm looking forward to seeing you again," even though I might not have been pleased about him gushing about this other woman, it at least wouldn't have *hurt* and I would have dealt with it. But as it was, I felt like he'd just been using me to get to her, and that he'd only seen me and had sex with me because she wasn't available and/or because he didn't believe she wanted him, and not because he actually wanted anything to do with *me* specifically. Like I was just a substitute. And while I acknowledge that has more to do with my issues than his behavior, I still think it's not remotely cool to spend a conversation with someone you're dating praising someone else to the sky and not saying anything nice about the person you're talking to.
So I haven't reached out to him since, and I've only heard from him once, very briefly. I don't anticipate hearing from him again, for a couple of reasons I won't get into, and I'm fine with that. Part of me feels like this is what i deserve for trying to get involved with someone so much younger than I am, like I was acting desperate and so he only went along with it out of pity or horniness or both and not because he wanted me in the first place. Even though I'm projecting and speculating, I'm happier not having him in my life if that's the impression I've gotten from his actions and if I'm not as comfortable as I'd hoped to be with the age difference.
Party Guy and I had a date planned for last week, but I canceled it because I just wasn't feeling like going. He's nice enough and so is his wife, but their arrangement is very hierarchical and couples-privilegey, and that isn't sitting well with me as far as my being part of it. He and I have another date planned for next week, but it's only tentative right now because he might have something else coming up that day. If he doesn't cancel, I'll probably go and see how it feels, but I think with him, it's probably going to be best to just keep him as a friend I sometimes see at parties, because realistically our connection would never be more than that anyway.
On the positive side of things, my relationship with my boyfriend is in a much better place. We've had some long discussions about what my issues are with the relationship and what, if anything, we could do that would help them not be so much of an issue. Not things that involve him doing my emotional labor, but things like, "I've noticed when I say X, you respond in a way that sounds angry to me, and then I escalate, and then you do. Let's figure out how I can say X or how you can respond so we short-circuit that escalation." He and I have a lot of communication glitches, but when we realize they're glitches, he's always willing to talk with me, sort things out, and figure out how to avoid the glitches in the future. So that's going better, and he told me something recently that's changed how I view our relationship and his others, which has helped a lot. (It's something that apparently has been true all along, but I didn't know it, and he didn't realize I didn't know.)
And I'm enjoying the times I'm able to see Noon. Over the weekend, we were finally able to have some time together not in a public place, and that was a lot of fun, but also really nice when he was being gentle and doing aftercare. So I'm looking forward to more time with him, even though I know being alone together like that is an exception because of schedules and such; most of the time, we are only going to be able to have lunch together and sit in his car. But sometimes we'll be able to have a time like this weekend, and that will be good.
I've hung out with Deer a couple more times, and it was pretty good. A couple of weeks ago, I offered him a ride to a party, because he doesn't drive and I knew he'd been talking to another woman who was going to be there. He met her the same night he met me; she's a friend of Party Guy's. So I gave him a ride down, and we ended up crashing at a hotel for the night because I got too tired to handle a 2-hour drive back to his place and then another hour to my house. That was nice, but something felt off about it.
He likes to text and call quite a bit, which I'm fine with because I like plenty of contact with someone I'm seeing. But Friday, he called me and spent half the conversation telling me how amazing the other woman is, and how thrilled he is that she wants anything to do with him because "she's so cool!" and how he can't wait to see her again. Not once did he compliment me, or say he wanted to see me again, or anything along those lines; it was about her. (The parts of the conversation that weren't about her were about his job and his living situation.)
If he had said anything like "You're pretty awesome too," or "I'm looking forward to seeing you again," even though I might not have been pleased about him gushing about this other woman, it at least wouldn't have *hurt* and I would have dealt with it. But as it was, I felt like he'd just been using me to get to her, and that he'd only seen me and had sex with me because she wasn't available and/or because he didn't believe she wanted him, and not because he actually wanted anything to do with *me* specifically. Like I was just a substitute. And while I acknowledge that has more to do with my issues than his behavior, I still think it's not remotely cool to spend a conversation with someone you're dating praising someone else to the sky and not saying anything nice about the person you're talking to.
So I haven't reached out to him since, and I've only heard from him once, very briefly. I don't anticipate hearing from him again, for a couple of reasons I won't get into, and I'm fine with that. Part of me feels like this is what i deserve for trying to get involved with someone so much younger than I am, like I was acting desperate and so he only went along with it out of pity or horniness or both and not because he wanted me in the first place. Even though I'm projecting and speculating, I'm happier not having him in my life if that's the impression I've gotten from his actions and if I'm not as comfortable as I'd hoped to be with the age difference.
Party Guy and I had a date planned for last week, but I canceled it because I just wasn't feeling like going. He's nice enough and so is his wife, but their arrangement is very hierarchical and couples-privilegey, and that isn't sitting well with me as far as my being part of it. He and I have another date planned for next week, but it's only tentative right now because he might have something else coming up that day. If he doesn't cancel, I'll probably go and see how it feels, but I think with him, it's probably going to be best to just keep him as a friend I sometimes see at parties, because realistically our connection would never be more than that anyway.
On the positive side of things, my relationship with my boyfriend is in a much better place. We've had some long discussions about what my issues are with the relationship and what, if anything, we could do that would help them not be so much of an issue. Not things that involve him doing my emotional labor, but things like, "I've noticed when I say X, you respond in a way that sounds angry to me, and then I escalate, and then you do. Let's figure out how I can say X or how you can respond so we short-circuit that escalation." He and I have a lot of communication glitches, but when we realize they're glitches, he's always willing to talk with me, sort things out, and figure out how to avoid the glitches in the future. So that's going better, and he told me something recently that's changed how I view our relationship and his others, which has helped a lot. (It's something that apparently has been true all along, but I didn't know it, and he didn't realize I didn't know.)
And I'm enjoying the times I'm able to see Noon. Over the weekend, we were finally able to have some time together not in a public place, and that was a lot of fun, but also really nice when he was being gentle and doing aftercare. So I'm looking forward to more time with him, even though I know being alone together like that is an exception because of schedules and such; most of the time, we are only going to be able to have lunch together and sit in his car. But sometimes we'll be able to have a time like this weekend, and that will be good.