It's a Texlahoma Story

Yeah this is one situation where even I can't feel bad about ghosting :p

It is shit like this that makes me hesitant about getting excited about guys too soon... Well, shit like this, and shit like going all gaga for guys like Daredevil who are guaranteed to make my life complicated. But I am really enjoying talking to the guy I'm supposed to meet next week! Being open to guys in their late 40s/early 50s has definitely broadened my okc options.
 
Frustrated tonight ... I never see Andy anymore. I mean, I see him - I see him working and I see him sleeping. That's it. And he doesn't do those things on any kind of a predictable schedule, either, I have no idea if I'll go for a run and come home to him asleep or on a conference call.

I think this is the first time in ... years... that I've felt like I'm not getting enough Andy. It sucks, big time.

I did a thing, though. I canceled the long weekend with Andy and D. I may plan another weekend away with just me and Andy (if he's ever around, sigh) but I just... I could not handle being so deprived of my husband and then having to share our big weekend trip with someone else, even my friend.
 
Good that you could make a decision about cancelling.

Did you find a way to talk to Andy already? You have to tell him that this can't be going on indefinitelly.
 
GirlFromTexlahoma said:
Frustrated tonight ... I never see Andy anymore. I mean, I see him - I see him working and I see him sleeping. That's it. And he doesn't do those things on any kind of a predictable schedule, either, I have no idea if I'll go for a run and come home to him asleep or on a conference call.

I think this is the first time in ... years... that I've felt like I'm not getting enough Andy. It sucks, big time.

I did a thing, though. I canceled the long weekend with Andy and D. I may plan another weekend away with just me and Andy (if he's ever around, sigh) but I just... I could not handle being so deprived of my husband and then having to share our big weekend trip with someone else, even my friend.
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Good for you! Great idea to just cancel the whole thing and then get away with Andy alone later. Brilliant!

I hope his schedule eases up soon! I remember those days of when my ex h had crunch time and slept at the office sometimes, or was working and also going to school nights, and doing homework on weekends. And we had kids! I was so drained. I never got a break. Things eased up in our mid 40s.
 
Tinwen said:
Did you find a way to talk to Andy already? You have to tell him that this can't be going on indefinitelly.
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We did talk some last night.

What happened right before I wrote that post was that I went for a run, got home at 7:30 and was sooooo excited to find Andy just getting home. I took the quickest shower ever and - he was passed out on the sofa in the family room when I was done :( So I ended up eating dinner alone, watching tv with the dogs in the rec room upstairs so we didn't wake him.

Andy got up around ten pm and apologized. He said he has realized that his old boss was able to do this job and still have a life because old boss had Andy - a trusted second in command. Someone he could delegate shit to without worrying that they'd screw up. Someone who could stand in for him when he needed to be in two places at once. So Andy is going to try and find someone to be his right hand man (or woman).

It's hard, though, he needs someone he trusts completely, not just in a "won't screw me over" way but also in terms of ability. A person he could, say, send to Europe on client visits and trust that they will do as good a job as he would. There are a couple of people who worked for him in the past - they've left the company, because Andy is a great mentor and they're climbing their own ladders now - but he's going to reach out and see if they'd come back.

Magdlyn said:
I hope his schedule eases up soon! I remember those days of when my ex h had crunch time and slept at the office sometimes, or was working and also going to school nights, and doing homework on weekends. And we had kids! I was so drained. I never got a break. Things eased up in our mid 40s.
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I hope things ease up, but ... Steph is in her early 50s and a couple of notches higher than Andy at their company, and she's even more swamped than he is :( She's actually been trying to get Andy to leave his current role and be her right hand man!!!!

There is this whole stereotype of executives just practicing their golf swing all day while the underlings slave away - but I remember, as a kid, having friends whose dads were bigwigs at work, and how they'd complain that they never saw their fathers. I don't want that life, money isn't worth it, I don't want to only see my husband on our fancy vacations. Especially because he'd just spend said vacation glued to his phone, working.
 
powerpuffgrl1969 said:
It might be hard for Andy to be willing to step back a bit, though. It's tempting not to resist the lure of upper mobility.
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Very true. I do this calculation of hours+stress vs money, and think, shit, the best balance of that was several promotions ago. But there's this other aspect for him. Not *power* exactly, but - status. Respect, recognition, prestige, those things. And the chance to do things his way... Being able to say, I need more senior consultants, and just create those jobs, hire whomever he wants, without having to beg someone for approval... That's huge to him. I'm glad he has Steph, who gets that stuff, because I have happily opted out of the competitive career thing. There isn't much jockeying for position or politics in social work, outside of academia, one of the things I love about my job.

In "poly news", I finally had to bite the bullet and tell Daredevil I wasn't interested in a relationship. He was disappointed but understood (his words). I feel - relief, mostly. A bit of disappointment in myself, but at least I recognized the "not in a place to handle this relationship" before jumping into it.

I'm still chatting with Mr. Next Week, trying not to get my hopes up too much :p but he seems very cool.
 
I had a date with that Mr. Next Week guy... Hmmmm... He seems sweet, but no real sparks. I'm on the fence about a second date. Depends on if any of the other okc prospects pan out, I guess. Wow, my enthusiasm, huh :p Andy leaves today for a week of work travel, so I know I will go stir crazy sitting home alone all the time, and I'm trying to at least get a couple of fun date type things lined up.

Since real life is kinda slow these days, I've been lurking on fetlife poly forums and marveling at the trainwrecks. Amazing that I have been doing the whole non monogamy thing for years and still read things all the time that make me scratch my head - "how the hell would I handle that?" sorts of things.

Situations where I feel like there is no good solution, no answer that doesn't involve somebody getting hurt.

There was a thread written by someone who has a mental illness, asking if she was doing something wrong by asking her partner to keep her diagnosis private and not talk to his other partners about it. On the one hand, of course she deserves privacy, of course she should get to control who knows her medical history. On the other hand...

I would LOSE MY SHIT if I found out that someone I was dating had a partner with a severe mental illness and had kept that from me. I cannot imagine anything that would feel like a bigger betrayal. Your partner has hsv? Whatever. Your partner has schizophrenia? Get out of my life, lose my number, actually never mind because I'll be changing it, moving out of state, and getting plastic surgery so you can't recognize me. Also I hope you rot in hell forever.

Extreme? Yes. But I have an absolute policy of no "reality impaired" people in my life. (My dad's term for those whose illness or drug use involves delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, etc, to distinguish them from the mentally ill who live with anxiety, depression, ocd, illnesses that do not affect their ability to function mostly in the same objective reality as the rest of us.) As Andy says, I have already earned that merit badge. It's not a poly thing, a partner thing... I would not date or be super close friends with someone who was in regular contact with a paranoid schizophrenic parent or sibling. It took me decades to get away from my batshit crazy family, and I fully intend to live out my days without ever appearing on the radar of another crazy person.

To me? Sharing a partner with someone who has a psychotic mental illness is 100% something people should get to consent to, or not. And it's NOT the same as consenting to share a partner with someone who is mentally healthy, or who has depression, or occasional episodes of ptsd. It is a HUGE MOTHERFUCKING DEAL and if you have a partner like that, you absolutely need to be upfront and tell people.

Ok, yeah, I'm worked up, but - I'm not going to live the way I did as a kid, with the constant fear that someone's paranoia will send them after me. "So, Claire, Cousin My Dog Shits Magical Messages is talking on a banana like it's a phone again, and I heard him say your name a bunch before he locked himself in the closet, do you want to borrow my gun?" Nope. Never again, no fucking way.

(This is not only an actual phone call, but one that happened regularly during my early 20s, and was usually seen as no big deal, because Cousin My Dog Shits Magical Messages was "mostly normal before the meth". :rolleyes:)

But - I totally realize that my boundary here is conflicting with other's rights to privacy. I have no idea how to reconcile that. I do think I am going to start listing my deal breaker stuff before I get serious with anyone. Before they would mention me to other partners. "Not to be awkward or anything, and I don't want to violate anyone's privacy, but I don't want to date you if any of your other partners have psychotic mental illness, a history of violence, or an addiction to hard drugs. So, um, you don't have to say anything, but if any of those apply, just go ahead and ghost on me, ok?"

Some days it all gives me a headache.
 
I'm with you on the mental illness and/or drug addiction, Claire. When Blue & I first started dating, he was dating a woman with BPD. She wasn't psychotic but her mental health issues caused major issues for Blue & I. When they broke up, she chose the *scorch the earth he walked on* path and made his life hellish (and mine by extension), for quite a while. She also cyberstalked me. I will not do that again. Ironically, the family member that I have with schizophrenia is really benign compared to that crazy woman.
 
GirlFromTexlahoma said:
"Not to be awkward or anything, and I don't want to violate anyone's privacy, but I don't want to date you if any of your other partners have psychotic mental illness, a history of violence, or an addiction to hard drugs. So, um, you don't have to say anything, but if any of those apply, just go ahead and ghost on me, ok?"
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Um... yeah :D Laughing out loud, but maybe that's exactly what you'll have to do!
Seems my mind is still behind your's in terms of finding worst case scenarios :)
 
I think, given what I've observed, that schizophrenia might be one that if someone is closely supervised and properly kept on meds, they are fairly safe to deal with.

I tend to try and err on the side of caution. But the wife/mom of the family where my son is staying, has schizophrenia. She takes meds, and she is very, very sweet. Her voices don't make her do bad things to anyone but herself. And her husband stays home with her, they get state assistance because he is her caregiver. Neither of them work.

And they are good, good people. In fact, it's possible that he has saved my life. And they've done a service of priceless value in letting my son stay with them, and their oldest son is an honor student with full scholarships.

But there are reasons that this relationship came about. If presented with someone new, and an opportunity to make a choice to start building investment with them or not, knowing that I might be dealing with dramatic mental illness, the "reality impaired" as you put it, might make me back off. There is nothing wrong with protecting yourself, in whatever ways you need to. However...I don't think it is common practice for someone to disclose, unless they are for instance a caregiver and it's a big part of their lives, that they have a seriously mentally ill...parent, child, sibling, ex partner, etc.

I'd understand if someone did not see fit to tell me right away. But we all get to decide what we can handle, and what we can't.

Personally, there is something I feel like a total asshole for... I am uncomfortable around those who are mentally disabled, like more along the lines of Down's Syndrome, things like that. And it's just a matter of some triggery stuff from childhood. A family friend was a nurse who did home care for a severely mentally disabled boy named Jared. And Jared had this lovely habit of going up to people and asking things like, "Do you have a penis?" I was like 6 or 7, a little girl. I vaguely understood that this older boy was boldly asking me questions about my private parts, and I was VERY, very uncomfortable. The woman/caregiver said, "Oh, it's OK. That's just his way of getting to know you. It means he likes you."

It felt disturbing and invasive, and the adults were telling me that I had to smile and cope and that I did not have any business having a problem with it. They weren't coming to my rescue in any fashion, even if the only real peril was a very strong feeling of awkwardness.

One of like a million examples of "boys will be boys, and can act however they want, and you had better shut up and smile and not complain." But in this case, not only was he not in any way accountable...for ANYTHING he might have chosen to do...he could not even be reasoned with to follow even the most superficial of civilized social norms, he was outside of the rules because of his disability. Or so my child brain decided to learn in that moment.

The deeper message was that protecting myself from this sort of person was my responsibility, I'd better stay away from them, and I couldn't expect them to follow any of the social rules that (mostly) kept smaller, weaker people like me safe from bigger, stronger people. They might do anything at all.

So being around people who have noticeable mental disabilities, or appear to, gives me an INTENSE level of discomfort, but I feel like a jerk for it, so I try not to show it.
 
Spork said:
Personally, there is something I feel like a total asshole for... I am uncomfortable around those who are mentally disabled, like more along the lines of Down's Syndrome, things like that. And it's just a matter of some triggery stuff from childhood.
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I don't think that makes you an asshole. I honestly don't think *feeling* a certain way ever makes anyone an asshole. If you were going around telling everyone that all mentally disabled people should be locked up, or expecting people to exclude the mentally disabled from things to accommodate your feelings, maybe ;)

But you're not doing that, any more than I'm suggesting we return to institutionalizing all people with severe mental illness. I mean, I studied psychology for 6 years, my rational brain knows that the vast majority of psychotic people are not violent. I worked with mentally ill adults enough to see that many are very high functioning. I have simply had enough crappy experiences with the reality impaired that I'm incredibly anxious about interacting with them in my personal life.

What's ironic is that this boundary of mine - I'm not going to relationship with anyone who also relationships with a reality impaired person - is the one boundary I feel ZERO guilt about, yet it's the one I think might cause others to raise their eyebrows.

Oh well. I am never budging on this one. All the violence growing up, all the physical and emotional abuse I saw... None of it affected me as much as dealing with people whose realities did not match mine. None of it came close. To this day I second guess and question myself, constantly, and I believe it's largely because my observations and memories were contradicted by the reality impaired folks who raised me.

Imagine being a little kid, and you know you went to school today, and your grandmother picked you up - you know this, it happened. But your aunt tells you you were at her house all day, you didn't go to school, you broke things at her house, you stole things, you were there, she saw you. And now imagine every other adult being so scared of upsetting your aunt that they go along with her story, repeat it, it becomes the accepted version. Imagine how that fucks with your head, when it happens over and over and over, every few days, instigated by multiple different adults, for your entire childhood and adolescence.

Yeah. It's seriously a wonder I'm not rocking in the corner, chewing my arm off. I was basically gaslit by my entire family for 18 years. 30 years, actually, that's how old I was when my grandparents passed away and I cut off contact with the rest. After I was living in my own, in therapy, I was able to say, they're making shit up, I know reality, and I was able to be there for my grandparents as an adult without doing too much further damage to my poor mangled psyche. But anyway, these days I avoid anybody who's iffy on objective reality.

I never went into specifics about Daredevil, but this was the issue. He had some medical stuff going on, had been dealing with it for years. Honestly that just made all his accomplishments and brilliance even more amazing. But the medical stuff affected his memory, and might at some point affect other mental processing, and I am not up for that. As wonderful as he was, as much as I felt a pull toward him, that is beyond what I can handle.
 
Figure I'll update y'all on my dating misadventures - you know, so you can all appreciate your own lives more :p

The guy I met last week? Googled him. He's not 52, he's 56. Yeah, I know, lots of people like about their age on okc. But 1) if you're going to lie in your profile, at least come clean when you're at the point of meeting in person and 2) maybe don't go for people whose desired age range doesn't include your real age. My profile says 35-50. 52 was a stretch. 56... Is closer to my dad's age than mine. So I canceled our planned second date, and the dude gets all self righteous and defensive, saying *I'm* the liar because his age lie couldn't be the real reason. Ugh.

And then today ... Holy shit, the WEIRDEST text exchange ever with another okc dude. We were having a nice chat about home brewing, a hobby of his. And then out of nowhere comes... Well this is the text.

Me: so how long have you been doing the home brew stuff?

Guy: since last November. It started as a friendly competition with my dad, but now it's a hobby

Me: the honey rye looks amazing! I hope you won the competition ;)

Guy:Send me a picture of your kitty! :D

Me: um I'm guessing that was meant for someone who has a cat lol

Guy: haha nope

Ok seriously what the actual fuck... Am I missing something or was that just BIZARRE??? Is this a home brewing related joke I missed? (And if so, why didn't he ... say something?) Was he actually expecting me to send pictures? I'm baffled, but I don't think I care quite enough to text back.

Online dating, great for funny stories, not so great for finding human companionship :cool:
 
I have only one potential response to that weird message:

"I seriously have got to know, has that EVER worked for you?"


I'm sorry to hear about Daredevil.

Regarding the age thing...your dating life, you get to call the shots, no judgment from me. But Zen tends to lie anywhere he creates an online profile, not because he's trying to get caught in a net including younger fishes, but rather because he is paranoid as heck about identity theft. And he figures that misstating his age by a few years is just another way to throw off potential internet criminal types. I would scoff at this, but the fact is, his internet footprint is almost nonexistent. You won't find much at all about him, without paying for a background check, and I am very good at research. I mean, from Google, I was able to easily discover loads of personal information about any number of people I've had a passing curiosity about. Not Zen. Not even knowing his address and DOB and other facts about him. He's not quite completely off the radar but he's close.

I'm just one of them young'uns over here with my blog and my book of faces, handing out details about my life all willy nilly like I've nothing to hide. But lots of people, especially older ones, just aren't comfortable with that.

Zen remembered to come clean about his age, not at our first or second or third meeting...but before the first time we had sex. Like when I got to his house, he disclosed his health issues (physical, not mental) and some of his history, and his true age, and any other factors he could think of that I might need to know as we became a "thing." I was fine with all of this.

Maybe someone else would not have been fine with these things...but I only get to have a perspective on my own judgments, not yours or anyone else's. :)
 
I am so fucking tired of online dating right now.

If I run into one more guy who thinks the answer to "how is your day?" is "here is my dick" I'm going to lose it.

I'm honestly happy to get dirty pics - from people I'm already sleeping with! But internet strangers? No. Please no.

Between the completely out of context dick pics, and the completely out of context requests to "send me a picture of your kitty", I'm just icked out by the whole thing. (The kitty pics guy? He kept texting. When I finally replied I asked him why he had requested pics out of nowhere. He said he was being spontaneous. FML.)

It's gotten to where I am so suspicious that I can't even enjoy talking to the rare normal guy who comes along. That's what sucks. I can handle the assholes, but when there are so many of them that I start dreading the entire process, assuming everyone will be lying about something or hiding something... Ugh. Just ugh.
 
I feel you on the OKC problem, Claire! So many losers. I'm going from frustrated to bored with it all.

I had a similar situation more than once like your beer>kitty pic convo. One time I was discussing Walking Dead with some guy, since we both had that in our profile. We were going along, who's your favorite character, who do you dislike, what do you think will happen with so-and-so... and all of a sudden he said, OK, chit chat is over, and said something extremely sexual. Like, he didn't really give a shit what I thought of TWD, he was just pretending to care when all he wanted was vagina. I understand people have high sex drives, but good lord, if he wanted sex he just did the one thing that made sure he wouldn't get any.
 
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I had a similar experience. When I didn't reply using the same words he used, he let me know I'm no good in bed if I don't use that language. Apart from that being a ridiculous correlation...it was the first time I'd texted him, had never met him face to face at all, and he thought it was already time to discuss what I had to do or say to please him in bed? Yeah, end of conversation. :rolleyes:
 
Magdlyn said:
I understand people have high sex drives, but good lord, if he wanted sex he just did the one thing that made sure he wouldn't get any.
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This is what gets to me... I mean, anyone who hasn't been living in a box for the past ten years should be aware that women on dating sites don't respond positively to unsolicited dirty pictures. With 3 guys in the past week, this has happened while we were getting along great over chat, talking about meeting in person. Why would a guy risk missing out on a real date just to get some dirty talk:confused:

The only thing I can come up with is that they don't really care about meeting me or dating me, or they're only interested in doing those things if they're guaranteed to get laid on the first date. Which sucks.

I know I take it too personally. My mind immediately jumps to "this is somehow a reflection of me" ... Like if I was younger, prettier, skinnier, whatever, these guys wouldn't send random pics, they'd be too into me to risk screwing it up. I need to do a better job of seeing it as a "some guys are just assholes" thing, not an "I am only good enough for dick pics" thing.
 
So it's kinda funny, the only span of time I spent using online dating, I was only on OKC and I was still living in the house with my ex. And he was on there, too, and we would talk about our experiences with it. (I know, we're weird.)

I would relate some of the bizarre attempts at conversation that other men were throwing at me...and often enough, his response would be, "What do you expect? You are one of only 12 women in this whole metro area, who has checked the box for casual sex in your profile." So evidently, men were using that filter to look for women they thought were easy, dirty, willing to bang anyone, I dunno... Some men really think that if they don't have to work hard to get it, then you clearly would indiscriminately do anything with anyone anytime.

I wonder if that is low self esteem on their part?

Because it's my thinking that a woman who doesn't make a man jump through tons of hoops just knows what she wants when she sees it, that's all.

But I don't know how many times I got messages that made me just go, "seriously man, what the hell is wrong with you??"

I think it's just a hazard of online dating. I don't know any woman who has been on there, who never got their share of filth and stupidity.
 
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