....and here comes the crash.
well not crash exactly but...a time for me to really get serious about what is important to me and what it is that i want.
i had a nice (but emotional) weekend, spending time with both the ghost, music man and NG. on friday i went out for drinks with the ghost and some friends of his. we had a fun time, and got a bit drunk. i had a bit of a strange conversation with him. he was saying something along the lines of wishing me all the best with the other guy i was seeing and "i'm sorry that i can't be more..."
i guess he has sensed that i have pulled away from him a bit. that i am holding back some of my feelings for him because i'm afraid that he will want more than i can give him. i have always known that i don't want to be in a relationship with him, as in "a couple". but he is so important to me, i have such warm feelings for him and i want him in my life. as a friend or lover is not the most important part. like i've written before, we don't really have sex (mostly because of the ed and i don't want to have unprotected sex with him) but i am still attracted to him and love the way he smells and tastes when we make out. but i feel that if he were to find someone he fell in love with and would want to just be friends with me i would be happy for him. when he said that to me at the bar i kind of just clumsily but enthusiastically embraced him and said something about even after all these years since we first met he has always stayed with me (in the sense that i have never forgotten him, even though we usually only keep in contact when i am single). we like each other very much. i am just afraid that we are looking for different things. or maybe i am just stupid and too afraid to fully acknowledge the love i have for him? that is something i'm too afraid to look at i think.
anyway...on saturday i was at a wedding for one of music man's close friends. i had been invited when we were still together but i was still invited as myself and not as his +1, so i decided to go, there would be a lot of people i like there. the wedding was fun and sweet, although i found myself a bit annoyed at the priests speech about what love was and about fidelity and that if someone had problems being faithful they probably needed psychiatric help??! i mean, i hate lying and sneaking around and the breaking of promises as much as anyone, but it just seemed so one-sided and judgmental. he also made a joke about the biggest "adulteress" (making a play of word with the swedish word for adulteress meaning the same thing as someone who breaks up marriages) being mother in laws?? everyone laughed but i was not amused...i actually like going to weddings, to see the love between different people, and especially when friends and family show their love towards the people getting married. it's like "finally we can say how much we mean to each other!" but there are so many traditions that confuse me. like the one (i don't know how common it is) where people are supposed to line up to kiss the bride/groom whenever one of the other leaves the room. only on the cheek though, and for comic effect someone of the same sex as the person being kissed always line's up to kiss them. talk about your monogamous heteronormativity! also i wonder why we couldn't have ceremonies to celebrate other kinds of love, like with friends and family. i have a close female friend who i've known over ten years, why couldn't we have a ceremony where people would come and eat and drink and have a good time, bring us presents and giving speeches about how wonderful we both are and how we are such a good friendship match? i mean, i guess we could do that, he he. but we would both feel really uncomfortable being at the center of attention like that. but still. only celebrating romantic love feels so strange.
oh well. it was fun seeing music man again and we danced a couple of dances. i was not pining over him or anything. at one point in the church they were playing a song that i really associate with him and our time together and that made the tears well up in my eyes for a bit, but other than that, everything was fine.
on sunday, i met up with NG and went for a looong walk around a lake. we had a really nice time and got to know each other even better. we talked a bit about our families and also about relationships and what we wanted. he is not very traditional either, like he wouldn't really see the point of getting married and is unsure if he wants kids. we talked about a good relationship being that you felt trust and that you could count on the other person. i said that since i had just come from a relationship where i really thought i could count on the person and then found out that a lot of feelings etc weren't really true, that had probably made me less trusting. he asked if there was something he did that made me think i could not trust him. i said, no i thought he fel were trustworthy, but my experience had kind of made me realize that things can change and that it's very important for me not to fear change.
i asked him if there are things i do that make him feel unsafe, and the answer was...."yes". i kind of knew this conversation would come up soon! we spoke a bit about me also seeing the ghost, which of course was the issue. NG said that most of the time he tries not to think about it at all, he just pushes it away, and that kind of works but it pops up sometimes. i had not realized that he was feeling so bad about it. i guess part of that is i have a hard time understanding that he is in love with me and what that means to him. it hurts me to know that what i do hurts him or makes him feel unsure or sad. that is never my intention, of course. he is very generous and loving and it makes me feel bad to think that he is not getting "what he deserves", so to speak. i know everyone is responsible for their feelings, but i am now in the situation where he could decide that it's not worth it to him to have these feelings, that he wants to protect himself, which would mean breaking things off with me.
we talked a lot about the theory of things as compaired to reality. it sort of ended with me saying that i needed to think things over, but that i did not want to lose him. so monogamy might be an option. ugh. this is so tough to think about. it's not necessarily that i feel the need to be able to see other people (i'm only seeing the ghost romantically at this point apart from NG and like i said, the most important thing for me with the ghost is that we can be friends. although i am afraid that he might not want to even be friends with me if i end things with him now. it's not the first time i've put him in that position....). but i'm afraid that i will feel pressure, that i will feel like i'm doing things simply because they are expected of me, that i am not giving my love freely to NG. i mean, the monogamy part would not be something NG would "control", it would have to be me agreeing to that being a part of him being in my life. i'm just afraid of what the consequences will be for our relationship. can we be open and honest enough? i have a lot of thinking to do.
