What I Need

I had dinner with Eben last night, and as I was talking through some of the things that are bothering me, I noticed him taking notes on a napkin. He was writing down personal needs that he heard me expressing, and the list he came up with and his explanations really helped me sort out some of my thoughts.

In no particular order...

Asking me where I want to be in five years is unfair. I have no idea and I don't need to. I think Aiden's asking me to provide a false sense of stability with that question. Even if I could give an answer, by a year from now it would probably be wrong.

Do I expect him to pretend, if he comes with me, that Shelby doesn't exist? No, that's warping reality in a really weird way. No one just pretends that their exes don't exist. What I would expect is for him to be loyal to me.

I need to be treated as an expert on myself. I've put several years of my life into learning and accepting this lesson that I am not into poly relationships, and asking me to try it again with a slightly different spin is just insulting. It makes me feel like I'm being dressed up in someone else's clothes when I've expressly stated that I will only wear my own clothes. I don't want someone in my life who tries to force me into the shape they want, particularly when I've made it clear that that shape is very painful for me.

I've reached my breaking point. I am out of patience, out of willpower, and I was really proud of myself when I finally found the courage to stand up and say that. Now that the end is in sight, I'm impatient that it isn't here already. I've spent the last two and a half years trying to be someone I wasn't, and hoping for a way out; Aiden has spent those years in relative contentment, and thus can't really see my viewpoint. That's half the reason I'm so itchy for him to make a decision.

The other half is that I realized I was associating reluctance to make a decision with reluctance to be in a relationship with me; I've been unconsciously assuming that if he has a hard time with this decision, it means he'll never be fully engaged with me. Under the light of logic, I think that's untrue. Before a decision and after it are very different head spaces.

I need to feel connected to the people I love. As backward as it may sound at first, that's why I don't want someone who just wants to do what I want to do all the time. Firstly, it puts pressure on me to always have a thing to do and always come up with the activities and the entertainment, and that's exhausting. Secondly, Aiden having things that he does gives me a way to connect to him. I found him interesting in the first place because he was different from myself. I already know me; why would I want to date me? If neither of us ever brought new experiences back home, we'd run out of things to talk about, and reasons to be interested in each other. This difference is where having a crush is centered.

Now that I've sorted some of that out, I'm regretting taking away the deadline. I regretted making it, and then I regretted unmaking it; what's happening here? I'm looking for an end to the uncertainty. I need to know when I'll know. I found a place to go physically, which allowed me to relax the deadline a little bit, but I'd like Aiden to suggest one. Not knowing how to go forward is driving me nuts, partly because leaving my life up in the air indefinitely is unfair and impractical and partly because The Vacation is still looming.

Option C

What Aiden is looking for is not actually option C...it's option "D-all-of-the-above," which I should have picked up on earlier, because that's been one of his favorite phrases as long as I've known him. I told him yesterday that option C is that I leave and tell him to fuck off.

I was wrong. That's not my option C. I've been feeling so guilty about dragging him along, and he's been asking for more time, but I can't doodle around waiting for a decision he won't make...so here's how those things work together. I apply the deadline only to myself, and leave Aiden to do what he wants.

He cannot have option D; that requires me to want it too, and it's near the bottom of the list of things I want. I don't feel bad about that. I've spent enough time and energy trying to force myself to be part of someone else's paradigm that I really cannot muster an apology for having figured out what I don't want.

So I'm leaving. I need my out and I will have it, and I will have it soon. But Aiden doesn't have to come with me. As long as I don't get locked into a minimum-length lease agreement, there's no reason for me not to go off on my own and see what happens. If he decides in a month that I'm where he wants to be, he can come join me.

This feels right. I can't speak for him, but it feels to me like a reasonable compromise. The only concern it leaves me with is the upcoming vacation. The small Aiden is going to be away at camp for four weeks, and that's our only chance during the entire year to take a vacation. If he comes back to me after taking the vacation with Shelby, I'm going to be pissed at missing out. The possibility of time with him and no one else gets me unreasonably excited, and when I miss out on something that gets me that excited, in turn I get unreasonably disappointed. To be honest, that's probably part of the reason for my giving him a deadline in the first place. Firstly, it was for my general sanity; I can't indefinitely put my life on hold to wait for something that may not even happen. But secondly, it was to get things sorted before The Vacation, so I know what to plan for and just how much to worry.

A Blurry Future

Aiden asked me yesterday where I see myself in five years. I couldn't figure out how to answer because I have no idea. I'm more of a pantser than a planner when it comes down to it. I'm capable of planning but I only do it when and to the extent that I absolutely have to.

That question also enters the foggy territory I've been trying to avoid of making promises about the future. I don't want to try to sell myself as the better option; I am who I am, and he should pretty much know by now who that is, and what kind of accessories come with the package. I'm already fighting the feeling that I'm dragging him into something, and I don't want it on my conscience later that I tried to convince him to come with me. It's his decision, not mine, and honestly I'm considering just walking so that I don't have to deal with the guilt in the future. I'm starting to fear that the structural damage caused by taking him with me might be worse than the pain of leaving him behind. Neither will be any fun. I don't know if there are any good options left. And of course there's the indignant voice in my head saying, "You don't even have a two-week plan...how can you expect me to have a five-year one?"

On the other hand (to return from a tangent; there are a lot of things on the first hand, apparently), I can't blame him for wanting to know what the bike looks like before driving it home. I'll try to answer the question, but I admit that I'm finding more reasons that I can't answer it than potential answers.

Let's say for the sake of argument that we move to the place we looked at last week, over the bicycle shop. I change my work schedule to Wednesday-Thursday-Friday temporarily to make some more cash, likely spending one of those nights at home and one at work. I keep attending practice Sunday and coaching on Tuesday. I finish my personal trainer certification and get a job at one of the local gyms, not necessarily in that order (there are two immediately in town and plenty more in the surrounding area), then cut my previous work back as I get more work closer to home. Eventually I probably get tired of working for someone else and start my own personal training business; maybe that involves teaching people to skate. I take two to four weeks every summer to bomb around the world on a motorcycle. I write a book. Someday I will make time to put music back into my life, either by composing on my computer or joining a band or both. Ideally I get my financial shit together enough to retire early, or at least take regular work sabbaticals.

That's all me, of course, but I can't really construct an "us" without some input from the other half. To make some assumptions: he gets some work close by or starts some kind of internet business, keeps skating and reffing, goes with me on summer and weekend adventures, and plays epic kinky games with me. We brew mead and cook food and fix bikes. We go on a lot of night walks and do a lot of camping.

Doubts

I'm starting to doubt myself. Putting my life in limbo to wait for Aiden to make a choice, combined with his worries that our relationship won't work out, have illuminated some concerns for me.

He's a terrible decision maker. It doesn't matter where on the scale of seriousness the decision lies, whether it's whom to date or which brand of toothbrush to purchase. Watching him struggle to decide has always driven me a little nuts; it usually ends with me making the decision after he's taken too damn long. And I went and put my own future on his options shelf...what the hell was I thinking?

Anyone on the outside would tell me I'm an idiot for even offering him the chance. He's a jobless dad with a troubled teenager, whose only income is state aid, who demonstrates no drive to accomplish anything outside the house. I brought up that concern to him and he said getting a job wouldn't be a problem...but didn't specify beyond that, choosing instead to avoid discussing the topic any further. People have told me I can do better, and I've studiously ignored them, but maybe I should be listening. The kicker is, he could erase these doubts so easily by just taking some initiative. I'm no leader, but I've learned to take charge when it needs to be done, and honestly it's not that hard. I've told him what needs to be done (many times, in many ways, on many subjects) and he just...doesn't. It's a mystery to me, and a huge frustration.

So I'm keeping him why then - for the sex? He lets any obstacle that comes up get in the way of us getting that time together, then claims that the outside circumstances aren't something he can control. Of course they're not; but he can choose not to let them control him. He just doesn't. He complains that he wants Option C (finding a way out of the false dichotomy) but doesn't actually come up with it. A few weeks ago when I wanted to talk to him alone and Sheila was home, I told him I was at the library. He insisted I come home even though I made it clear that wasn't an option for me. I waited for him to suggest meeting me at the library...but he didn't. I finally had to tell him to come find me. Was that really all that hard? Why is it down to me to come up with every damn solution to everything?

I wonder if, in trying to set myself free, I'm just taking on another burden.

This Is Me

The conversation about responsibility and resentment that I started yesterday led back into me trying to explain why I'm so unhappy here. Aiden's afraid that if he goes with me, at some point down the road I'll decide the problem is actually him and leave him. He's said it in multiple ways, concerned both that his kid will drive me away and that somehow he himself won't be up to my standards.

All I can say about the kid is, I know what I'm getting into. I've lived with him for over a year; nothing he does is giant news to me. I know things aren't roses all the time, but as long as Aiden doesn't try to shirk his responsibilities onto me, I don't see it being a huge problem.

That leads to the concern that Aiden himself is...I'm not sure quite how to phrase it, since the concern is his rather than mine, so whatever I say will be putting words in his mouth. He'll be insufficient? He won't satisfy me? He won't be good enough?

I can't specifically answer a question that isn't specific, so I'll explain my perspective and hope it sheds some light on the subject.

I stated my concerns about Aiden getting a job. I cannot and will not support the three of us myself. I don't make enough money, and even if I did, having to do it would make me bitter. I see that clearly enough to not sacrifice our relationship to it. That could certainly destroy us, but the boundaries on that are at least clear enough to serve in further discussion.

That aside, I see nowhere to go from here but up. I've made a million tiny decisions that have become habits, mostly in the category of toning myself down and shying away from fun things. Turning down sex, not suggesting fun ideas that cross my mind, stopping the flirting I used to do...it's all based in being uncomfortable around Shelby, and leads to what I describe as feeling "sat on." This is what I meant when I said, "There are things I can't do because I just can't." I realize that statement probably made little sense at the time.

I'm a funny combination of an open person and a private one. I'll talk about anything, so I say that I'm an open book; but there's a line for me between talking and doing, and I'm more inclined to feel shy when it comes to my actions. I forced myself to figure out how to perform sexually in front of Shelby because that's the only choice I felt I had, but it has never been right. I'm always inhibited when she's around, and that's why I jumped all over the couple of nights that Aiden and I got to ourselves when she was staying with her grandparents. I feel like I almost never get to express myself fully in a sexual sense, and I'm itching to change that.

I've stifled other things, too. When we first got together, I felt a strange dichotomy in which I tried to act two different ways with each of them, and it meant that when we were all together, I felt very torn. I wanted to be bouncy and excitable with Aiden, because he brings that out in me; but for some reason I felt a duty to be a little more subdued and adult with Shelby, even though deep down that's not who I really want to be.

My eventual compromise leaned mostly toward the duty side, unfortunately. Maybe it was my own shyness and introversion. Maybe it was some flavor of demonstrating resentment. Maybe it was getting bad reactions from Shelby when I tried to do those things, because she was jealous. It was probably everything.

Now, I want to be who I wanted to be before, and I won't reach for it. Not while she's around. I shouldn't have to force myself to do things that I feel are wrong to please someone else. It's put a huge amount of strain on me, and resulted in some bitterness and anger that I wish weren't part of me.

Aiden asked how I knew I was making the right choice. This is the right choice for me, because I've spent the last several years trying to make every other choice in the book to make other people happy, and it's resulted in me being miserable, and angry at myself and my partners. That cannot possibly be how I'm supposed to live my life.

Accepting yourself can be hard when the world is telling you that something is the "right" way to do things, and the way you do them is different. I'm surrounded by people who think that poly and open relationships are the right thing, that evolved humans choose to share because it's a more advanced way of doing things. I've tried long, hard, and repeatedly to force myself into that paradigm.

It's not me. Fuck it. It's been an incredibly painful lesson to learn; I feel like I'm ripping my heart out. But this is me, and I'm accepting myself for who I am: I don't want to share. This is a scary cliff to jump off of, because I may lose Aiden again and I HATE the thought of that happening. He is an amazing, loving, beautiful, sexy person that I connect deeply with and desperately want in my life. But to be true to myself, I have to take the risk. If I lose him, I lose him...and it will hurt like hell. I'll always have a scar. And I'll always be able to say that I did right by myself.

The Waiting Game

This mess is making a mess of all of us.

Shelby says she feels awful about her behavior and is thinking that it stems from resentment, for rescuing Aiden from a previous bad relationship, providing for him, and then having to live with his disregulated son's chaos. She completely nailed something that had been bugging me and allowed me to bring it up to Aiden, which is basically that I'm worried about heading down a similar path. He doesn't want our family to split, of course, and I understand that; he was happy with things the way they were and just wants them to go back to status quo. There's no reason he would vote for breaking us up and I'm not asking him to. But I'm taking that path and no one is going to talk me out of it.

He has a choice: stay or go. He's on the fence because he doesn't want either option, and while I understand why that is, his hesitation is causing me the previously mentioned worry...that he'll feel like he was dragged along with me, that he'll resent me for disassembling what we had, and that he's going to just sail along and try to be dependent on me like he has been on Shelby. It's not that I think he's inherently useless or wants to take advantage of other people, but that's most of what I've seen him do, and I know that it will destroy us if he does it to me, even accidentally.

Aiden is torn, pulled into a decision he doesn't want to make. Every time I talk to him about it we both end up crying; he because he's looking at loss, me because I feel so awful about putting him in this position. He told me he doesn't see it as my fault, and I hope to hell that's true, but frankly I'm struggling to hold onto that perspective myself. I made some awful choices and there's no way to get out of the resulting situation without doing damage to someone, and I just feel like I should have known better. Perhaps I couldn't have. Hindsight is 20/20, or so they say.

As for me...I'm cracking along all of my seams, just spending every day trying to hold myself together enough to not cry all the time or beat someone into a hospital. I handed the reins to Aiden, explaining that I need to know if he's in or out of my life; I can't look for an apartment if I don't know how many bedrooms it needs or how much income I can claim. Now it's just a waiting game. I'm sitting in my corner, wondering what he's going to do, stuck on pause until I find out whether we're going on with life together or I'm picking up the pieces on my own.

I have a lot of power here, and I'm really trying not to use it for evil. I possess the capability to be manipulative, but living under my emotionally manipulative ex for several years taught me both sides of that pattern: how to use it, and why I shouldn't. I'm pretty sure I could convince Aiden to come with me if I tried. The selfish side of me is begging me to say things with a certain flavor, to tell him all the tasty things I imagine in the future, to spin my perspective into the "right" one. It would be so easy.

But I'd hate myself. Even if I "won," I think in the end I'd actually lose, because I'd never really trust the foundations of our relationship.

He asked me yesterday, "How am I supposed to make this decision? What would you do?"

"I can't advise you on that," I said, face-punching the small voice in the back of my head that was yelling about all the things I could be saying to take control of the situation. "I'm a really biased party, and I've never been in your position."

It it so. Fucking. Hard. To step back and just hold my hands up and wait. Part of me wants to just tell him he can't come with me and let that be that, because then at least the next step is a known quantity and I can assuage the guilt over the fate of his relationship with Shelby (and I have a lot of it).

On the other hand, I said I wouldn't walk out and leave him in the current situation alone. And if he chooses to come with me of his own free will, I shouldn't take that choice away from him.

Or is that just me being a selfish excuse-maker? Maybe taking the choice away would actually be the better decision; to not put him on the spot, to rip off the band-aid and get it over with, to take the pain on myself as penance for my mistakes and let him rebuild if he can.

Are these my mistakes or Shelby's? They're both. They're Aiden's too, honestly. Shelby volunteered for something she wasn't prepared to handle, blamed him for it, and then melted into a screaming monster when it didn't go well. Aiden brought me into this relationship without ever checking whether it was really okay with me, allowing himself to be blinded to any sign of problems so that he could have what he wanted. I allowed myself to be led in without stopping to wave a flag and announce my boundaries, and passed up any opportunity I might have had to fix it because I didn't have the gonads to stand up for myself.

And now here we are. She wants to fix her mistakes and rebuild. Aiden wants it back the way it was before. And I want to burn it down.

Among Other Reasons

A friend asked me recently what I like so much about Aiden, why it is that I say he's pretty perfect for me. The most important things that came to mind are...

He's eternally optimistic. Yes, I complain about this sometimes, but the downside of this double-edged sword is a small price to pay for the upside. I wish more people saw the silver linings in life.

He's cheerful. That sounds like optimistic, but they're not quite the same thing. I love someone who smiles all the time and is always ready with a joke and a laugh.

He's fearless. Not the redneck brand of "fearless" that aggressively tries to prove itself by doing immensely stupid things, but a simple kind that just doesn't waste time or effort on being afraid.

He doesn't complain. It doesn't matter whether he enjoys the task or not; he jumps in, gets it done, and doesn't whine.

He takes constructive criticism well. When told that something he did could have been done better, he doesn't let his ego start a fight about it. He takes the feedback and considers its merits.

He's always up for adventure. Whether it's a new food, a new sport, a new friend, or a new sexual game, he's always in with prejudice. And by prejudice, I mean excitement.

He has boundless energy. He's perfectly capable of sitting still if the situation requires it, but he will also jump up at a moment's notice to go on a run or do a task that needs doing. Even when he's tired, somehow his energy still feels bouncy.

He loves physical touch. This one shortens effectively to, "We speak the same love language."

We are wonderfully sexually compatible, both in our kink preferences and our physical bodies.

Limbo

I hate limbo. I hate everything it stands for and everything that comes with it. The awkwardness, the uncertainty. I'm trying to find my way out but I'm stuck in this house until I have someplace else to go, and the process of finding that place feels like wading through a swampland.

This past weekend was Memorial Day. Shelby had Friday and Monday off. I tried to escape by visiting a friend at her lake house, but got caught in such an awful rainstorm on the way there that I had to turn around. If my back tire hadn't been bald I probably would have pushed through, but it didn't seem prudent to try, so I went back. The weekend was like all our days now...overtly friendly and subtlely awkward.

Aiden seems to think now that just because everyone is acting friendly means that everything is fine. We talked about that briefly and I explained that just because I'm smiling doesn't mean everything is roses. I'm perfectly capable of being nice and sociable even when I don't feel that way. There's nothing to be gained from acting like a miserable, whiny, angry jackass all the time. Aiden seemed puzzled, saying that he's so inclined to forgive bad behavior the second it stops that he basically forgets it ever happened, and also forgets that not everyone else does that. He actually seemed fairly blindsided by the fact that I still have a problem with this situation and am still actively pursuing a way out of it. I was mystified that he was confused.

This is how communication problems happen.

I tried to explain what's going on in my head, because it's clear that Aiden really has no idea. Between my desire to please others, my ability to smile through anything, and his wilful determination to see nothing but the best in everything, I'm sure there's a bigger chasm between my experiences and his perception of them than either of us realizes.

There's an accepted tenet of relationships that every five positive actions a person takes can be cancelled out by just one negative action. Athol Kay phrases it this way: five date nights equal one fight night. Aiden told me he's hoping that I'll eventually have enough positive interactions with Shelby to make up for all the negative ones. I frowned at him until he added, "Or maybe I'm just hoping for the impossible."

The part he misses is that none of my interactions with Shelby feel positive to me. It doesn't matter what she's doing, whether she's screaming obscenities or making dinner, picking a fight or cleaning the house. Yes, we can carry on a civil and even somewhat interesting conversation, and we can laugh at jokes. But her presence makes me itch. When she touches me I want to run screaming. Fortunately she touches me a lot less now that I've officially ended our relationship; otherwise I'd have a much harder time controlling myself.

She brought up the subject of vacation the other night at bedtime, asking if we were still going to plan a trip. Neither Aiden nor I answered. The silence went on until she asked, "Were you guys plotting to go away without me?"

"No," I said truthfully. "There was no plot."

"Maybe that was a bad question," she said.

"I think Skylar wants to go motorcycle camping soon," Aiden said, and I agreed. No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Aiden asked what was bothering me.

"I've been full of anxiety since the subject of traveling came up," I said. We got to talking about our different perceptions of what was happening. He said he hears that I'm feeling anxious and assumes that it's because I'm waiting for Shelby to drop her angelic act and burst out in anger again; then he said that he's starting to realize that's not what I'm anxious about. He didn't ask what the real root of my anxiety was and I didn't volunteer.

I don't mean to be withholding, but it seems like emptying the contents of my heart would just put more pressure on him. He's already stuck in the middle of a super awkward situation and feeling a lot of pain, and dumping on him just doesn't seem right.

He says he wants me to flourish and to not be angry. I want those things too, and I will get them one way or another. Keeping me in this situation is not the way to get me there.

I am angry; I'm angry all the time, in a way I've seldom experienced. I'm angry at myself for getting into this situation. I'm angry at Shelby for all the awful shit she's done. I'm even a little angry with Aiden, for just constantly pretending it's all okay and trying to zip us into a big pouch of HAPPY. But really, what I feel negatively toward him is a drop in the bucket of everything else. It's a passing annoyance, the downside of a trait that I really love and wouldn't trade for anything.

I want to go traveling, and I want to go with Aiden. There are two weeks coming up this summer during which the small Aiden will be at camp, and my fantasy is that the two of us take a pair of motorcycles and some camping gear and just leave. Destination optional. Sense of adventure mandatory. Lots of sex in various places highly desired.