Mya's search for balance

Me and Hank had a really sad, serious conversation today. :( He asked me if I'm happy with him. I said it varies, sometimes I'm really happy and sometimes I'm really not. He said he feels the same way. He said he still loves me a lot. I said I feel the same way. I said our relationship feels like a lot of work. He said he feels the same way. I said I'm still willing to work on it because of the love we share. He said maybe it's not about how much we're willing to work on it, but whether this relationship will make us both happy in the long run. We agreed to really think about that and talk about it more some other day.

I'm crying so much right now. I can't really see this ending in any other way than us breaking up. :( I really wish there was another way. I'm still hanging on to hope that there is something we haven't explored. But I don't know how realistic that is.
 
Oh Mya, sorry that you're facing the possible end of your romantic relationship with Hank. Those sad conversations are pretty hard, I know :(

To respond to your previous post: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! It was my birthday this week gone by too x

Hope you get the space you need to figure out your needs and wants re: Hank, and are able to feel ok about choosing the best of the possibilities for you both.
 
Thanks fuchka. Happy birthday to you too!

Me and Hank broke up yesterday. :( There is no way to make us happy enough if we stay together. We could maybe achieve something by just not living together, but that's not all there is. In the end it was a very mutual decision. We're too different, we don't make each other happy enough. It had to happen. But I am so heartbroken right now. :( I still love him a lot. I don't really want to let go. But I just have to. I've been crying my eyes out yesterday and today. This is really really hard.
 
I'm so sorry, Mya. Sending love.
 
Thanks RainyGrlJenny.

It's been a tough few days. We're having a house meeting at the end of this week to talk about how we're going to move forward. We also just found out that we can actually leave the house before the end of the contract if we give 2 months' notice. We had all understood the contract to be more binding than it actually is. That's good news. The bad news is that all of us need to agree on what to do next. We can't give the notice without everyone's consent. I don't want to live with Hank anymore. Hank doesn't want to leave the house before he feels emotionally and financially ready to do so. If I leave, Dahlia will also leave. If Dahlia leaves, Eddie is also very tempted to leave. Dahlia and Eddie pay larger parts of the rent than the rest of us, so rory and Hank would probably struggle to find replacements for us. So... it's all very complicated.
 
Thanks opalescent.

Okay, we've now decided. All five of us are going to move out. We're giving our notice tomorrow. Me, Dahlia and Eddie are finding our own place and rory and Hank are finding a place together, plus possibly another housemate. Let's try this and hope it works better than the current house!
 
Me, Dahlia and Eddie have now moved. We have to pay double rent for a month and a half, which sucks, but it's worth it for the peaceful living situation.

I've been pondering about my relationship with Hank a lot and the more I think about it, the more I'm really glad it ended. To be honest, it probably should have ended sooner. I didn't always like the person I became with him. You know how different people bring out different sides of you? Hank brought up some not so pleasant sides of me that I'm now processing in therapy. And this is not to say that he is an evil person, but it just means we were ultimately very incompatible and I don't know why I held on to that relationship as long as I did. I guess love makes you do that sometimes. At least I learned a lot. I don't regret the relationship. I know myself and my needs better now. I hope me and Hank can be friends after we've taken some time apart. I just can't be in a domestic situation with a person like him, and I'll try to be very careful about that in the future.
 
Life is so much better now. Living in the new house is great. Peaceful. I really really hope this living situation turns out to be better than the previous one. :)

Things are going really well with Dahlia. I'm taking her to Home Country for Christmas, so she'll meet my family and some of my friends. I'm really excited about it! Me and Dahlia don't have disagreements often, but when we do, I feel really good about how we resolve them. I feel like there's mutual understanding and empathy and willingness to work it out. She's still struggling with the fallout of the previous house falling apart and everything that went down there. That means I need to be extra careful with her now, she's actually asked me that. I need to get consent on more things that I've previously done, for example talking about touchy/heavy subjects. I also need to not say that we've agreed something unless we've made that 100% clear on both sides that an agreement has been reached (we had an issue recently where I thought we had agreed to talk about a specific subject after work, when actually it was just me being way too vague and taking her response as a yes - I need to get better at reaching clear agreements). All of this is good practice. I think I learned a lot of bad and unhealthy patterns in my relationship with Hank, and I want to unlearn them. But that will take time of course, so I'm happy that Dahlia is being fairly patient with me. I'm also trying to be patient and careful with her. I have a good feeling about this going forward.

Things with Fay are also good. She is still struggling with the fallout of her and Gabriel's relationship, but I think she's doing much better nowadays. She's dated a new guy for a couple of months now and he seems totally different than Gabriel - which is good! He seems super sweet, a real keeper. Fay seems really happy with having me and him and is not looking for anything more at the moment. Me and her have a pretty steady thing going on, we see each other usually once a week. I like that.

I continue to be totally head over heels infatuated with Jasmin. :eek: Whenever we spend time together I just have this feeling of connectedness and understanding and authenticity. It's pretty great. But last time we saw each other she said that she is in the middle of thinking about what she wants to do with her relationship life. One of her partners is monoamorous and Jasmin is considering changing her dating life to dedicate more time to her (the mono partner), which might mean making changes in her other three relationships. That will probably mean me and her too. I'm not sure yet what that will mean in practice, but I'm letting her figure that out. I think she really likes me and it would be hard for her as well to stop seeing me or reduce the amount of time we spend together significantly. But I guess I'll see what happens.
 
Mine and Dahlia's visit to Home Country went really well. :) My mum really liked her, she said that from all the partners I've introduced her (that's 5 people) she likes Dahlia the best. :D Dahlia also really got along with the friends I introduced her to. So total success!

There's also been a bit of drama regarding the old house, but I think it's starting to resolve now. I can't wait for the moment we're not tied to rory and Hank anymore, in any way. The moment when each of us can make decisions about individual friendships just based on what we want, not what we need to do for each other. Still a couple of weeks left, then I can totally relax, hopefully.

As a surprise turn of events, I recently saw my ex Ray again after not being in contact for a year and a half. It was really nice. Afterwards I messaged him that I still find him sexually attractive. We met again and had sex. We also agreed to not date again since that's not what either one of us wants. But our sexual chemistry was always good, so this feels like a thing that we could do, this FWB or something. He's also going to spend the next several months abroad, so this couldn't develop into anything more anyway. It was just nice to have a bit of a fling and possibly more of the same when he gets back in the country.

Also, my (almost) year in therapy has now ended. I feel ready to take on the world without it. I feel like I have the tools to cope with things better and that I've gained some invaluable insight that will help me a lot in the future. I have several mental health related goals for the new year. I'm not going to be too harsh on myself, more just hoping that I'll achieve at least some of them. Next year will hopefully be a better year for me in several fronts. :)
 
Yay! It sounds like you're really heading into a positive place. I'm so glad for you. :)
 
Thank you for the lovely comment, RainyGrlJenny.

But no, something happened last night that just completely screwed over my budding happiness. And I thought I could catch a break. Fuck you, 2016. Dahlia broke up with me. :( I can't even process it, it's too much to handle. After we've just moved to this new house together, after I've just introduced her to my family. Totally out of the blue. She just realised she doesn't have romantic or sexual feelings towards me anymore. She still feels close and connected to me and would like to continue living with me if I want that, but just not be romantic/sexual anymore. I've never been so surprised about a break-up before. I can't even. I like living in this house and I think the living arrangement works. Dahlia and Eddie are the kind of people I like living with. But I'm not sure how I'll feel in the long run about living together. I guess I'll give it a go and see what happens.
 
Oh no, Mya! I am so sorry... That must hurt.

Hope 2017 will bring stability and happiness to you.
 
Oh no! I'm so sorry, Mya. Something so sudden like that will take a long time to process.

It's okay to just be sad and process. Reading your blog here over the years, I can see how much you've grown and how much you are in a better place now, more sure of yourself, etc. With or without Dahlia.

It sounds like Dahlia wants to remain in your life as a friend and a housemate, which I think is a good thing! No one who has ever broken up with me ever remotely wanted to stay in my life or treat me as a friend in any way. :(

It sounds to me like you are forming really deep, intense friendships with awesome people, even if the romantic/sexual aspect of the relationship turns out to be temporary.
 
Nadya said:
Oh no, Mya! I am so sorry... That must hurt.

Hope 2017 will bring stability and happiness to you.
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Thanks Nadya, I really hope that too!

MeeraReed said:
Oh no! I'm so sorry, Mya. Something so sudden like that will take a long time to process.

It's okay to just be sad and process. Reading your blog here over the years, I can see how much you've grown and how much you are in a better place now, more sure of yourself, etc. With or without Dahlia.

It sounds like Dahlia wants to remain in your life as a friend and a housemate, which I think is a good thing! No one who has ever broken up with me ever remotely wanted to stay in my life or treat me as a friend in any way. :(

It sounds to me like you are forming really deep, intense friendships with awesome people, even if the romantic/sexual aspect of the relationship turns out to be temporary.
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Thanks MeeraReed, that's very nice to hear. :) Yeah, I do often stay friends with my exes. Sorry to hear your experiences have been that different. :(

I think it's partly because of how my parents treated their divorce when I was 12: they never spoke to each other again. That was really difficult for me at the time and kind of still is. They can't do even small talk. If they happen to be in the same space, my dad will act like he doesn't know my mum or will just leave wherever they are. I saw that growing up and decided to never be that person. But I notice now that I'm a little obsessed with staying friends with exes, especially the "big ones". Hank and I are having a bit of trouble at the moment trying to stay friends because he still has a lot of negative feelings about me having to do with things that went down in the old house and my part in it, including siding with Dahlia (who he definitely is not friends with). I'm trying my hardest to make him like me again as a friend, or at least to not hate me, and I do sometimes wonder why that's so important to me. Maybe I should just let him go and accept that we can't be friends. But we'll see how it turns out. I think it's going to be much easier with Dahlia because we have way less baggage. We only dated for 8 months and broke up because of her having more friend feelings than romantic ones, so I guess there's a good chance that it will work out as a friendship.
 
And the cherry on top: Fay just broke up with me too. :( In about two months I went from 4 partners to 1. FML.
 
I'm so sorry, Mya.

Ever since I've had multiple relationships they always end all around the same time. This seems to happen to other poly people too. Wish I knew why.
 
Thanks, opalescent. It does kind of add insult to injury when you're already grieving the loss of one relationship and then you're hit with another break-up. I was talking about this phenomenon with some poly friends yesterday and one of them said that sometimes one relationship ending can destabilise your whole dating life and affect your other relationships too. You're maybe more likely to lean on your other partners more and be miserable company for them for a while. Or maybe they realise something in the way/reason your other relationship ended that made them worry too. Sometimes it's surely just a coincidence as well. But I think these are somewhat true in my case. My recent break-ups have influenced each other I think. I'm sure they weren't the key reasons, but both Dahlia and Fay referenced something that had to do with my other relationships/break-ups when they wanted to break up with me. Not as a main reason by all means, but as a "you said this thing about you and person X, and that made me think of Y". I guess it's fair enough, since we don't live in a vacuum.

One of my new year's resolutions is to date less. Date as in be vulnerable and put my heart on the line. I'm open to casual sex, but not to romantic attachments to new people. Not right now. My heart needs to heal. At some point I'm sure I'll be ready again, but for now I have to take a break. And even when I start dating new people again, I want to limit the number of people I'm dating. I want to raise the bar of compatibility and sexual chemistry. I want both of those to be high. I've had a lot of relationships where only one of those was high and I went with it anyway. It's not enough anymore. I feel like making a list of all my relationships and assess them from that point of view, so that I can maybe see some patterns in my behaviour and try to avoid those behaviours in the future.

And speaking of high bars, everything is wonderful with Jasmin. :) She broke up with the monoamorous partner that I mentioned earlier, so now she's all in with non-hierarchical poly, and consequently me (and obviously her other partners). She and I recently said 'I love you' to each other and also set a weekly fixed date night. We're also planning a weekend getaway later this month. All of those things make me super happy. She and I are very compatible and we have a lot of sexual chemistry. Right at this moment there is absolutely nothing wrong with that relationship. Of course it's still early days, only three months in, but so far so good. If I only have to have one relationship, I'm happy it's this good. <3
 
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Things with Jasmin are going great and I think we're both falling pretty hard for each other. She is such a positive force in my life. :)

Now that I'm only dating one person I've been thinking about poly a lot. I still feel polyamorous at heart, meaning that I can very easily love more than one person at a time, but I guess the question is do I want to commit to everyone I like. Ever since I started doing poly I've most of the time had at least two partners. I've been with one partner only twice. First was when I was just with rory after my divorce from JJ. The second time was about a year ago when I was just with Hank for a few months. In the first instance I was pretty happy actually. I saw rory twice a week and we texted a lot in between dates. I felt like he was there for me as a partner. I guess I mainly started looking for another partner because rory had one too and I needed something to do when he wasn't with me. I wasn't very good at being alone. The second time I started to get antsy about finding someone else pretty quickly because I never really got enough of my needs met with Hank.

But now... I feel calm. I get a lot of my needs met with Jasmin. Yes, she has other partners, but she still manages to give me a lot. So I feel like I'm in a similar place partner-wise than when I was just with rory, except this time I feel like I've gotten better about being alone. I also have more friends now than I did back then. I can't say anything about the future, but right now it feels pretty good being with Jasmin and nobody else. Devoting time and energy to other things, hobbies, friends. Also living with two friends instead of strangers is a big factor in not being lonely. Maybe I could go on like this for a while? Being in one fulfilling relationship, living with friends, possibly having casual sex with others every now and then. Right now it sounds really good and safe.
 
I feel like I'm re-evaluating my whole life at the moment. What do I want out of my relationship life? What country do I want to live in? Do I want to continue in my job? Should I start studying again? What are my priorities? :confused: Big questions. I definitely feel like I need a change in my life. I've been thinking about all of those questions for a while now, but they've intensified recently. I guess there's a part of me that just wants to...start over. Kind of like I did when I left my marriage and home country and moved to a different country to live a different kind of life. That was about 4.5 years ago now. Maybe it's time for something new again. I just don't know exactly what that would be.
 
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