It ends, and it ends, and it ends.
Sep. 11th, 2013 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormBlake and I broke up on Friday night. He was drunk enough that I felt I had to check in the morning to make sure he remembered. It had been coming for awhile, obviously, but I was hoping it would be a transition rather than a breakup. It still may be. I'm afraid that the timing might break that, or at least delay it. He's been really hurt by my poly-ness, and I'm not feeling like keeping it really under wraps for the rest of the month, till he moves out. I'm not talking about bringing anyone home to the house or anything, but...
...last night was my first overnight date in maybe a year or more? Out of the house for the night, not worried about or checking in with anyone (well, worried about Blake, but I can't imagine contacting him while I'm away would help anything). Also my first new sex partner in over two years. It was fun, and strange, much like you'd expect an unusual experience to be. I'd forgotten how much opacity there is in newness. I'd forgotten what it was like to touch someone as a surface, as I'm still learning to read them, before the skin is merely as close as you can come to the familiar light within. But that's not why I'm here.
I'm here because I'm thinking hard about what happened. I'm here because I don't want to forget, but remembering is so heavy.
He said some things, Friday night, that were terrible. He was in a lot of mental pain, and drunk, and he chose to say terrible things to me. He knew, because we were intimate because I had confided in him, what would hurt me, so he said it. I think at the time he believed it, and it sounded a lot like what my crazybrain tells me in the middle of a bad episode. You don't need to know what he said.
But that moment was the culmination of a very long time of his feeling awful about my doing poly, but assuring me that he wanted me to stay in the relationship and would become ok with it eventually, and of my believing him and still staying with him. I tried reducing my frequency of dates (one every three months!) in the hopes that it would take some pressure off, but it didn't. He could have admitted it sucked for him and left at any time, and I thought hey, as an adult he has a right to decide what amount of discomfort he wants to stay through, and when he will leave. But here's the thing.
He was not enthusiastically consenting to my being poly. And seen in that light, with consent seen not as mouthing of words but as a consistent set of supportive actions and behaviours, he was not consenting. And I was accepting the one in exchange for the other because... well, for reasons that I no longer will, I think. I have been there before, I don't want to be there again. And again. And again. But also I don't want to be there again because I'm tired of hurting people by being with them, just by existing as myself.
I have a network of people who love me enough to ask about my other people sometimes, to be happy for me when I'm happy with them. That's a network of friends/lovers that proves I can still include sex in an intimate dynamic without totally alienating people, even if the relationships are cyclic or rarefied or erratic. I can hold onto those people, lovers and friends, and know that what I want is coming from them, so it's not impossible to find in other people. I don't need to settle for grudging consent.
And by all the gods, I need to remember that.
...last night was my first overnight date in maybe a year or more? Out of the house for the night, not worried about or checking in with anyone (well, worried about Blake, but I can't imagine contacting him while I'm away would help anything). Also my first new sex partner in over two years. It was fun, and strange, much like you'd expect an unusual experience to be. I'd forgotten how much opacity there is in newness. I'd forgotten what it was like to touch someone as a surface, as I'm still learning to read them, before the skin is merely as close as you can come to the familiar light within. But that's not why I'm here.
I'm here because I'm thinking hard about what happened. I'm here because I don't want to forget, but remembering is so heavy.
He said some things, Friday night, that were terrible. He was in a lot of mental pain, and drunk, and he chose to say terrible things to me. He knew, because we were intimate because I had confided in him, what would hurt me, so he said it. I think at the time he believed it, and it sounded a lot like what my crazybrain tells me in the middle of a bad episode. You don't need to know what he said.
But that moment was the culmination of a very long time of his feeling awful about my doing poly, but assuring me that he wanted me to stay in the relationship and would become ok with it eventually, and of my believing him and still staying with him. I tried reducing my frequency of dates (one every three months!) in the hopes that it would take some pressure off, but it didn't. He could have admitted it sucked for him and left at any time, and I thought hey, as an adult he has a right to decide what amount of discomfort he wants to stay through, and when he will leave. But here's the thing.
He was not enthusiastically consenting to my being poly. And seen in that light, with consent seen not as mouthing of words but as a consistent set of supportive actions and behaviours, he was not consenting. And I was accepting the one in exchange for the other because... well, for reasons that I no longer will, I think. I have been there before, I don't want to be there again. And again. And again. But also I don't want to be there again because I'm tired of hurting people by being with them, just by existing as myself.
I have a network of people who love me enough to ask about my other people sometimes, to be happy for me when I'm happy with them. That's a network of friends/lovers that proves I can still include sex in an intimate dynamic without totally alienating people, even if the relationships are cyclic or rarefied or erratic. I can hold onto those people, lovers and friends, and know that what I want is coming from them, so it's not impossible to find in other people. I don't need to settle for grudging consent.
And by all the gods, I need to remember that.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-11 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-13 12:21 am (UTC)Endings are hard. Processing is hard.
If you need puppy snuggles or just to watch video game playing, let me know. Two weeks can seem like an eternity for safe space.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-13 09:22 am (UTC)