Hey.

So I'm not really using this anymore.  Prefering wordpress.  You can now find me at https://fleabite.wordpress.com/

Cheers! :)

x

I'm not used to feeling so intensely close to someone new without there being sex involved.  I'm not used to really deeply enjoying being with someone I've only known a few months, looking forward to the next time I'll see them, feeling excited when they contact me, without that being the delicious honeymoon of a new romance.  Without my clitoris partly driving it.

Because its not a common situation, I don't feel that security of walking a familiar path.  I don't have any idea what comes next.  I don't know him well enough to feel confident of my place in his life when he does find a compatible partner and begin the monogamous relationship that he wants.

So its a bit scary.

Its also interesting how I feel when I don't have the pressure release of orgasm to regulate my emotional energy.  When I can't direct this closeness and budding love into sexual entangling.

Physically touching him is pleasing in all sorts of ways.  The snuggles feel post coital cosy rather than foreplay titillating.  But then I'm used to hugging people I feel close to and that being really really good.  Its just that it usually takes years for that to evolve, without the catalyst of sex to speed up the emotional attachment.

Homologue?

Perhaps its because we've both opened up to each other?  We are very very similar in many different ways.  And that includes scars, and the ways that we deal with them.  Seeing the scars in each other, we both gradually unveiled, trusting that the other would understand and not freak out.  Maybe exposing and trusting the other with our most vulnerable, delicate parts of our psyche fulfilled a similar function that normally would have been achieved by baring and caressing each other's genitals?  Certainly, he held and nurtured and stroked those sensitive, raw places that I normally keep well wrapped up and hidden.  He gently kissed my soul.

Whatever happens next, I am grateful to have experienced something both new and good.  Although I remain nervous about how our relationship can develop, as it is so new and unknown, I try to relax and trust that I can trust and relax about it.  Even though becoming attached to someone means intense pain when it is severed, I have never regretted the relationship because of later grief, whether the loss was due to death or breakup.

And of the many new lessons and challenges I feel constantly bombarded with, having one that is so delicious is a blessing.

Best wishes to everyone on a Pride march today.  Here's the inevitable links though!  

First off, the history of pride - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_parade#History - "Early on the morning of Saturday, 28 June 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning persons rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City.[1] The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. The Stonewall riots are generally considered to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, as it was the first time in modern history that a significant body of LGBT people resisted arrest." 

Second, in many places around the world it is still dangerous for non heterosexual people to express themselves.  First off - the situation in Israel because its easy to forget how homophobic it can be outside of Tel Aviv.  Israeli police reject proposed gay pride parade route through Jerusalem  Five countries have the death penalty for homosexual acts - Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.  The UK is still deporting LGBT asylum seekers back to these countries.

Be angry!  Be strong!  Remember you only have the freedom to march today because of the courage of generations of LGBT activists, and that same freedom can be taken away if we forget that!

x

On the one hand I can now look back over nick' actions and be totally clear on why he was a bad person for me to have as a lifepartner.  he acted thoughtlessly, he never checked i was ok with any of the actually bigdeal changes he was making to our relationship and he put very little work into our relationship though it clearly needed it and i was begging him to.  he did little to show that he actually cared about me.

and yet this love thing.  this bond.  so i feel something has been ripped from and out of me.  so that i'd probably take him back despite myself if i had the chance (which i don't, i've asked him twice in the past couple weeks to reconsider, to try again.  weak moments, alone, late at night) even having reread emails and chatlogs that in plain ascii text spell out to me how he was.  the times he was bordering on callous.  the times he told me the problems were just my insecurity and mine to deal with.  the times he, offhanded, told me he had new plans with Elle and so discarded our previous arrangements.

yes, he is definitely not someone i should want to be with.

but that bloody love thing.  that fucking bond.  that attachment.  that ridiculous desire for everything to be back the way it was, despite that meaning i'd be with this idiot boychild who is too arrogant and desperate to never face any mistakes that he won't heed advice or criticism, and yet doesn't have the empathy or people knowhow to treat a longterm partner with care, respect or understanding.

he repeatedly broke his word to me.  he said he would do one thing, but didn't keep to that.

even when he clearly had fucked up big time, and said sorry, there was zero attempt to make it up, or even to give me some gentleness or love as i tried to heal from what he and ellenor had done.  even at the time it seemed like his major distress was not the two days of hell he'd put me through, but that he might have to admit to himself that he was flawed.  that was where his focus was - making sure that though he apologised he could maintain his sense of righteousness by, very tenuously making it my fault.  in fact i actually internalised that it was at least partly my doing until this week when i reread chat logs and emails from that time with a friend and could actually see how fucked up that was.

argh.

i can see all that.  see how wrong he is for me.  see how emotionally abusive he was at times.  see how manipulative he was at others.  how thoughtless and uncaring and uncompassionate.

and yet i still pine for him.  still feel this heartache.  still feel berefit to be without the arsehole.

the person who said he was going to be your life partner forever finds that his new relationship is more shiney.  And then they go off and make life plans together, and their plans together within months become more important than any dreams he and I had together.  And my (now ex) life partner and his girlfriend, both intelligent adults, claim that neither of them thought that this downgrading of my rship with him to "well we'll be living together. with kids, and I'll see you 3 days a week, childcare permitting" would make me feel like utter disposable shit.  Something to pick up and put down as he sees fit, rather than an integral part of his life.  To be clear, I'd said for many months that I was happy to live in a big house with all of us having separate rooms.  And for years my shared dream with Nick, was that we'd live together in a big house with other people and that was something we'd talked about for the future.

To protect the small vestiges of self respect I have remaining, we split up yesterday.  It had already got to the point where every hug, every "I love you" and every goddamned time his facebook picture oppped up I felt this deep wrench of pain at not being good enough for him.  That even after everything we'd been through he'd put so little effort, and even then so grudgingly, into our relationship.  While simultaneously being more and more wrapped up in their relationship.

They have their freedom now. They can go make their precious life together without awkward me clinging round their necks being "over emotional and irrational"  Why on earth would I be scared that my lifepartner wanted to get married, have babies and live exclusively with someone else?  Why on earth would I feel that they'd squeezed me out of his life?

I am enough for myself.

The universe seems determined I learn this lesson.

Finally, I am ready to learn it.

Scared, but ready.

Nick and I split up today.

And I WILL be enough for myself.

But I might need reminding of that in the days, months ... years?  to come.  So please do remind me, if I seem to be faltering.

I started writing this out as an email to a poly list to ask for advice and support.  It took me a couple of hours just to get this far, and it was helpful as it helped me work some stuff out.

However its unfinished, and I'm going to reformat it (shorten it!) for the actual list post.  Here it is.

I wrote it on Thursday evening, so the dates are relative to then.

Please let me know if you did manage to read it all - absolutely ok comments are "listening" and offers of hugs.  Please don't feel you should/can say anything that will make everything better!  just knowing somebody is listening is actually one of the biggest things anyone can do for another human being.

And love and best wishes to all of you with your lives.  I know some of you are having shitty times, and I'm sorry I haven't been in a place to be a better friend/comrade just now.  Maybe I should just start taking my own advice? ;)

( Read more... )

A friend came by today.  He's 70, and has been with his wife since they were 20ish.  They also have an open relationship, though currently only she has another lover - again a longstanding relationship.

Anyway, that much is irrelevant.

What really bit me hard was he was talking about something to do with them growing old together.  The person that, for the past 7 years, I thought would be growing old with is in the process of doing something that will mean the end of our relationship.

N, who I moved to Glasgow to be with, who has been my best friend, partner, person I make life changing decisions with, has decided to make a new life fr himself with E in London.  His plan is that he will see me on weekends/equivalent.  Unless I can cope with that (which I don't think I can - it feels too much of a rejection, especially because of the way this decision has come about) we will split up.

And while I was dealing with that, N, who had stated last weekend he was going to spend these two weeks with me in Glasgow, casually let me know yesterday that he was going to London for 2 days today.

I got really upset about that.  And haven't really heard from him since.  Just an email he sent out on a mailing list we're both on.

Last night I got drunk and happily had a couple of friends who could come over at short notice so I didn't have to be alone.  But today I am.

I can't even bring myself to wash.  Its been a few days now.  Not just lying in bed is progress just now.

Reading webcomics.  Checking email.  Feeling like utter crap.

Have run out of toilet paper.  should go out and get some.  am really stinky.  people in lidls prob won't notice.  its sunny out.  maybe i'll feel better.  might help me sleep tonight if i get into daylight for at least a bit.

Much sheepishness :


Get your own valentinr

Don't really know what to add! Obviously its my first post for like a billion years, and its soliciting attention and affection! But actually, don't send me one unless you do have a wee sparkle or so for me. I am very lucky in love and don't need reassurance or strokes. Potential new flings are much more exciting. ;)

Also it allows me to do "mutual love letters" whereby only if someone writes one to me, will they see what I wrote to them. Oh the glee! :)

I'm not happy with the size of my stomach - it has grown over past couple of years.  So I'm going to measure it and work on reducing it.

Abdo girth is better measure of health factors than weight.

Current abdo girth (forst day of period so is a bit distended anyway)

98cm!

Update - turns out I don't know where my waist is - its 83 cm.  98cm is when I make sure I cross my navel.  I may keep measuring both.