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.