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Posts Tagged ‘breakups’

Forgiveness is like a mattress…

Posted in relationships, tagged , , on 24/01/2014| Leave a Comment »

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Last night I had a rare forgiveness dream. In it, I spoke to my ex. I found myself talking to him, and enjoying being around him. I knew I would no longer be close to him or let him into my life, but I allowed myself to remember the joy I felt with him without feeling the hurt and anger. It was good.
A friend recently wrote on Facebook

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And in spite of the obvious silliness, it really resonated with me.

I loved really loved my ex. He made me happy. And it’s ok to miss that. And it’s ok to let go of the rest (anger, pain, fear, resentment, cynicism). Letting go of that doesn’t mean I lose anything. It means I get to have my heart back.

And that’s what forgiveness is.

You want this mouldy old mattress? Fine, get that shit off my lawn!

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Polyamory Burnout

Posted in polyamory, relationships, sex, tagged , , , , , , on 27/06/2013| 2 Comments »

The last 12 months have been intense. I went through a breakup, that nearly broke me, then was in two relationships that ended within a month of each other.

After that, I swore off ‘dating’ anyone during 2013.

Then I went back to Uni, and have been busily preparing myself for a major life and career change (a.k.a. getting a new degree).

Since going on semester break, I’ve found myself with a little bit of free time and absolutely no desire to date.

But I miss having a companion. I just do not want to go through all the heartbreak again. And I don’t feel the rewards of being ‘poly’ are really worth the trouble right now.

However, should I meet someone and hit it off, I don’t see myself saying no because of any ‘rule’ against dating.

Husband and I were talking last night about loneliness. He’s an introvert, I’m…less of an introvert. We have each other, but we both get lonely. I can’t speak for him, but I have definitely been feeling lonely lately. I’ve been working, I’ve been relatively social, but I really miss having ‘someone’. I have ‘someone,’ obviously, I have Husband. But we’ve agreed that we are not perfect for each other in every way. We are not perfect lovers. We are not perfect ‘companions’ (which is a gender neutral word I like to use for the role a ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ fills).  We are, however, perfect partners. We are great parents. We are an excellent Pictionary team.

So what I miss is having a lover and a companion with whom I am compatible. But I do not intend at this point to go seeking out someone to slot into that box (no pun intended). The heartbreak of losing someone who was those things, but also a lying, cheating, betrayer of my trust has left me scarred and scared. Even one year later, I’m just too exhausted to imagine making the effort.

As for Husband, he went through the emotional wringer over the last 12 months too. He was hit hard by the whole drama, then got dumped by his major, longtime companion. They’d been together nearly as long as he and I had been and then she just… yeah. Right after that, he got dumped by his two other lovers/companions as well. (EDIT: I’ve left out a part of this story, another major relationship ended in a mutual agreement to stop seeing each other. It was really emotionally draining and awful. I wouldn’t characterise it as being ‘dumped’ so it didn’t fit into this paragraph.) So it’s not just my own experiences that have left me with Post Traumatic Relationship Stress. Because we were both going through so much emotional shit at the same time (plus there was my school work making me stress out), we couldn’t even really be there for each other either and that has taken its toll.

For now, we are over dating.

Furthermore, I just don’t get crushes anymore. Not in the same way I used to. I used to get crushes that were consuming. And a major part of them was a burning desire to have sex with that person. Now, I get ‘friend crushes’ where I get all excited about hanging out with a new person. I’ve had several major friend crushes on classmates, coworkers and others in my life, but none of them have been sexual in the least. If I find myself picturing someone sexually, my brain clicks in and says, “What’s the point? What makes you think it will be anything special? You’ve had sex. Sex is sex. This person will offer nothing you haven’t had before.” Which is strange. My desire for sexual novelty is completely null. It’s not even like I’ve lost my libido. I still desire sex, but just not with anyone I know (besides Husband and Lovely Boy…more about him later).

I’ve got polyamory burnout.

However, on the horizon, I have an upcoming visit to my homeland. When I arrive there, I’ve got a former lover whom I have been wanting to see since last year. Last year, when I went back home I had planned a tryst, but did not engage in shenanigans out of respect for the aforementioned Lying Asshole, who had expressed discomfort with the idea. (Later events made me regret the decision somewhat, regardless of the fact that it meant I could maintain the moral high ground.) I’m looking forward to seeing Lovely Boy because he’s someone  I have fun with and with whom I’ve been compatible sexually. But he’s a far cry from a regular companion. He lives half a world away, and even if I were to move back next year, he’s still a 10 hour drive from where I’d be living.

And so, for now, I remain lonesome.

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Just for fun: Angry Breakup Blog Roundup

Posted in relationships, tagged , , , , on 17/02/2013| Leave a Comment »

Ever since the Cheatocalypse (the nickname I’m giving the incredibly toxic breakup I went through last year), I’ve been especially tuned into angry posts on other peoples’ blogs about breakups. Since I probably won’t do anything more harsh than my breakup-via-blog-post that I already did, here are a couple of great posts on other people’s blogs:

Year of the Psycho Butch – on superbushpig

Favorite Quote:

“PB TIP NO. 5 – beware of an immediate accord. Why are you connecting so hard so fast with an immediate stranger? Because you are both faking it, madly projecting and not at all revealing who you are….”

How to Go No Contact – on A Femme in NYC

Favorite Quote:

“8. Don’t fall into the trap of having to defend yourself –s/he may write something on your Facebook wall if you haven’t unfriended her, talk about you at her AA meetings, and play the Scott Peterson card so that everyone thinks s/he is the nice guy and you are a callous bitch for dumping her. People who don’t know you well may feel the need to approach you to tell you what a c*** you are. Let it go.”

If I find more I’ll add them to the list.

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Throwing out the junk.

Posted in relationships, tagged , , on 28/08/2012| 5 Comments »

There’s a great feeling when you finally throw out something that is broken.

Recently, I took a look at the top shelf in my kitchen. Sitting up there since I moved in was my food processor. It has been broken for about three years. At some point, it ceased to have multiple speeds and only went into superfastohmygodwhatfreshhellisthis when I turned it on. It was out of its warranty period, but I thought, maybe, I could take it to a repair place and they could fix it. I mean, it had so many attachments, could potentially make my life easier and I had so many recipes I used to use it with! Just the memory of those perfectly sliced vegetables, that cheese grated in the blink of an eye, and meatloaf mixed in seconds was enough to convince me I couldn’t throw it away. Never mind that the last thing I tried to use it on turned into liquified mush and un-processed chunks and was completely inedible. Never mind that someone else had used it to pulp recycled paper and the blades were dulled beyond repair. Never mind that it just. Didn’t. Work. Never mind that I had found something else to do the same job (maybe not as well, but still serviceably and better in other ways).

So there I was, standing in my kitchen staring up at my food processor. And I thought of Boyfriend. Well, until recently, he was my boyfriend. We broke up. More to the point, I broke up with him. Yet I still wanted him in my life. But I didn’t really. I mean, I wanted the person I thought he was. But he was broken. He had hurt me very badly, and very severely damaged my trust to a point beyond repair. But I wanted to keep him on a shelf, until he somehow proved to me that he wasn’t broken. That he could be repaired. That he really was the person I thought he was, somewhere under the cowardice, the deceit, and the selfishness, there was someone who actually cared about me and who I could trust to be open with me. But then I thought, what could he do? Was there really anything that could fix things? And did I really want to put the effort into it, especially when every time I saw his face or a picture of his face, I was having panic attacks? When I had already lost over 10 lbs from the stress and anxiety of trying to work things out?

Was I ever going to take that stupid broken food processor to the repair place?

No.

And so, I took it down off the shelf and chucked it into the skip, along with all the attachments.

Ex-boyfriend is still friends on FaceBook, but he’s no longer in my news feed and I don’t see us being friends in real-life.

And I sleep better now. And I’m eating again. And there is a place on my shelf for something better.

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The end is here

Posted in motherhood, relationships, tagged , , , , , , on 28/10/2010| 1 Comment »

No, I’m not quitting this blog. Don’t worry. But I do want to talk about endings.

My secondary relationship reached its end, officially, just over a week ago. After not seeing each other for several weeks, I finally “called time of death” on our romantic relationship. It just wasn’t working out, and after repeated attempts to save it, I finally just gave up. As I felt I was the only one making any real effort to maintain things (whether true or not, it’s how I felt), I had to come to terms that it was no longer making me happy and to face the reality that if he wasn’t going to make the effort, then maybe he just wasn’t that into the relationship. He was asking me to lower my expectations of the relationship so far that I basically had to stop caring. And that wasn’t fun for me. Apathy is a real turn off.

C’est l’amour.

This ending made me sad, but not upset. I loved this man. I loved being in a relationship with him. He’s beautiful, we had great chemistry and he made me feel sexy (something I don’t often feel, as a mum). He was an escape from my day to day routine, but also not afraid of coming over to my house and helping out with the baby. I saw such potential in that relationship, and had such high hopes for the future. Letting go of that was hard. But in the end it was when I withdrew my emotional investment that I even knew how much I had invested.

The aftermath has left me feeling unsexy and unlovable. My libido is all but gone and I’m putting all my energy into being a mum and into trying to lose a few kilos.

I’ve started weaning my son. He’s doing well. I’m down to one breastfeed per day. He drinks milk from a cup like a champ, so I’m not too worried about that anymore. I admire women who keep going with breastfeeding, but my son doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself that much anymore. I think I realised it was time when he seemed too distracted every time I tried to offer him the bewb. He was still crying if I stopped prematurely, but now he’s stopped that. Now, I give him one long, intensive breast feed in the evening. Soon, I’ll stop offering that. The end is imminent. By the time his Birthday comes along, he’ll be done.

I’m a little sad about it, but hopefully it will  make things easier. I’ll be able to wear a real bra again and go back on normal birth control pills. I won’t have to wear easy access tops and I can even contemplate going back to work, putting my son in childcare. And I won’t have little teeth-shaped bruises on my nipples.

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