MrFarFromRight
Banned
Maybe I’m just projecting. I was with a wonderful woman, M, for 6 ½ years. I thought that every other man must be jealous of me for having landed such a prize. When she split up with me, we stayed “good” friends. With hindsight, I realise that this was largely due to the energy that I put into maintaining this friendship (while she occasionally accused me of “clinging to the past”, “not being mature enough to move on”). Some aspects of how wonderful she was:
x) Whenever things went really bad with her (things going skew-whiff in her life that had nothing to do with me), she’d dump on me (treat me like I was the BIG problem in her life). As she told me the day after one such dump (it usually took her until the next day to apologise): “I’ve got all this shit in me that I need to get rid of. And you’re the ONLY person I know who loves me so much that I trust that you’ll still love me even if I treat you like shit. So it all comes out in your direction. I’m sorry.” She was sorry, but that didn’t stop her doing it again and again. (I felt proud that she trusted me to this extent!)
y) The first time she went to a talk about AIDS (the talk was part of a conference to do with her job, and I was with another GF that weekend), she blew up with me for being irresponsible for having sex with the other woman without using a condom. (This was back in the very early days of AIDS, when we were all pretty clueless: She hadn’t had any worries BEFORE this weekend, hadn’t warned me not to have any un-safe sex.) I pointed out that I actually had been responsible (as far as I knew at the time), that I’d asked the other woman about her other relationships and that she’d told me that the last time that she’d had sex was 2 years earlier (and that time without fucking). I’d thought that that sounded pretty safe to me. So anyway, M insisted that we immediately both [M and I] have an AIDS test, and that from that point on, we have no sex without condom with any third parties. That seemed fine to me and I got my AIDS test as soon as possible. Here’s the hammer (as they say in Germany): as far as I know, she never – at least in the rest of our time together – got that AIDS test for herself. (And yes, she, too, had BFs on the side.)
z) After we split up, I was some kind of embarrassing dork (not immediately and not all the time, but at certain phases of her personal growth)... aside from when she needed me. [One example: Right after she’d split up with the father of her 2 children (VERY ugly split), her parents paid for a holiday on Corsica for herself and the children. Her parents were going to be on Corsica for an extra 2 weeks before M and the children showed up. She planned to drive down with another woman and that woman’s own child, but this woman dropped out. So then M ’phoned me and asked if I’d be willing to hitch (from Spain to Germany, over 1000km) to her place (she and her ex were still living under the same roof), get into the car with her and the children, and accompany them to the south of France, to the ferry terminal, where I was supposed to get out of the car and hitch back to my place in Spain. I asked if it wouldn’t be possible for me to show up a day or 2 before the drive through France (I’d need to catch up on sleep if I was going to be any good on the trip south) and also take part in that holiday: that it seemed a bit rough to me to do so much travelling just so that she’d have somebody to keep the children entertained while she was driving. (Also, I really liked her children, and thought that I might be supportive on the holiday.) Her mother ended up inviting me to a week of the 2-week holiday, as occasional babysitter, with all expenses (ferry + camping ground fees + food) paid. (I have also always liked M’s mother. And she me.) Small detail: While on Corsica, M – in awful pain after recent split with ex – was dumping heavily on me, and contaminated the way her children saw me.]
Two years ago, after an exchange of e-mails (I suggested a holiday together with the children / she treated me as if I’d just crawled out from under a stone), I finally accepted that there wasn’t even a friendship here. When I told mutual friends about my decision to let M slip out of my life, one of them (a mild-mannered person, who’d also been dumped on by M) exclaimed: “Well, it’s about time!”
Carma, I’m not suggesting that you drop SK. But I think you need to be realistic about just how wonderful he really is. It sounds to me like you’ve got (as I used to have) an inferiority complex and feel so happy/lucky to have this wonderful husband... who dumps shit on you. (And seems to do it on purpose.)
At the very least, the 3 of you (Etta, BC, SK) need to sit down and be really honest with each other. And you might need to see a poly-friendly, unbiased therapist.
I still think that you need to stop seeing Barbie as an enemy, rather as a fellow victim of SK’s irresponsible, unfeeling, egotistic behaviour.
[Of course I’d be more than willing to read SK’s slant on all this, and willing to revise my opinions in light of it. But I can only go on the testimony laid before me, and the above is how I’ve processed that testimony.]
x) Whenever things went really bad with her (things going skew-whiff in her life that had nothing to do with me), she’d dump on me (treat me like I was the BIG problem in her life). As she told me the day after one such dump (it usually took her until the next day to apologise): “I’ve got all this shit in me that I need to get rid of. And you’re the ONLY person I know who loves me so much that I trust that you’ll still love me even if I treat you like shit. So it all comes out in your direction. I’m sorry.” She was sorry, but that didn’t stop her doing it again and again. (I felt proud that she trusted me to this extent!)
y) The first time she went to a talk about AIDS (the talk was part of a conference to do with her job, and I was with another GF that weekend), she blew up with me for being irresponsible for having sex with the other woman without using a condom. (This was back in the very early days of AIDS, when we were all pretty clueless: She hadn’t had any worries BEFORE this weekend, hadn’t warned me not to have any un-safe sex.) I pointed out that I actually had been responsible (as far as I knew at the time), that I’d asked the other woman about her other relationships and that she’d told me that the last time that she’d had sex was 2 years earlier (and that time without fucking). I’d thought that that sounded pretty safe to me. So anyway, M insisted that we immediately both [M and I] have an AIDS test, and that from that point on, we have no sex without condom with any third parties. That seemed fine to me and I got my AIDS test as soon as possible. Here’s the hammer (as they say in Germany): as far as I know, she never – at least in the rest of our time together – got that AIDS test for herself. (And yes, she, too, had BFs on the side.)
z) After we split up, I was some kind of embarrassing dork (not immediately and not all the time, but at certain phases of her personal growth)... aside from when she needed me. [One example: Right after she’d split up with the father of her 2 children (VERY ugly split), her parents paid for a holiday on Corsica for herself and the children. Her parents were going to be on Corsica for an extra 2 weeks before M and the children showed up. She planned to drive down with another woman and that woman’s own child, but this woman dropped out. So then M ’phoned me and asked if I’d be willing to hitch (from Spain to Germany, over 1000km) to her place (she and her ex were still living under the same roof), get into the car with her and the children, and accompany them to the south of France, to the ferry terminal, where I was supposed to get out of the car and hitch back to my place in Spain. I asked if it wouldn’t be possible for me to show up a day or 2 before the drive through France (I’d need to catch up on sleep if I was going to be any good on the trip south) and also take part in that holiday: that it seemed a bit rough to me to do so much travelling just so that she’d have somebody to keep the children entertained while she was driving. (Also, I really liked her children, and thought that I might be supportive on the holiday.) Her mother ended up inviting me to a week of the 2-week holiday, as occasional babysitter, with all expenses (ferry + camping ground fees + food) paid. (I have also always liked M’s mother. And she me.) Small detail: While on Corsica, M – in awful pain after recent split with ex – was dumping heavily on me, and contaminated the way her children saw me.]
Two years ago, after an exchange of e-mails (I suggested a holiday together with the children / she treated me as if I’d just crawled out from under a stone), I finally accepted that there wasn’t even a friendship here. When I told mutual friends about my decision to let M slip out of my life, one of them (a mild-mannered person, who’d also been dumped on by M) exclaimed: “Well, it’s about time!”
Carma, I’m not suggesting that you drop SK. But I think you need to be realistic about just how wonderful he really is. It sounds to me like you’ve got (as I used to have) an inferiority complex and feel so happy/lucky to have this wonderful husband... who dumps shit on you. (And seems to do it on purpose.)
At the very least, the 3 of you (Etta, BC, SK) need to sit down and be really honest with each other. And you might need to see a poly-friendly, unbiased therapist.
I still think that you need to stop seeing Barbie as an enemy, rather as a fellow victim of SK’s irresponsible, unfeeling, egotistic behaviour.
[Of course I’d be more than willing to read SK’s slant on all this, and willing to revise my opinions in light of it. But I can only go on the testimony laid before me, and the above is how I’ve processed that testimony.]
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