Forgive me for this word dump. I sort of need to get everything on the screen to sort my thoughts.

I believe I told y’all I met a man in August. We got together quickly, like the next day. I shared with him that I had a difficult time with the idea of getting with someone, as I’d been in an abusive marriage, also a long relationship with a man who wouldn’t commit not sure whether I really told him that or not), and I’d been raped a year before.

Yes, I know, probably not the wisest things to share with a potential BF if your aim is to find a BF. My aim was to make sure that the person who was interviewing for the position wouldn’t tell me a few weeks/months down the line that I was too messed up for them.

That night, I emphasized that sexuality is important to me. We had sex. It was good, but not great. I mean, yes he made me squirt, but also left me wanting for more. I thought maybe it was a matter of getting to know one another, and things would get better. At least he knew to make sure I’d had an orgasm before taking care of his needs.

He wanted to sleep the night. I tried, but then I just couldn’t, and told him he had to go. A few things were bothering me: he was calling me names like “my love” and such and I told him I was nobody’s anything. I didn’t belong to anyone but myself. Especially not after knowing each other less than 48 hours.

Also, I have been using a breathing apparatus for sleep apnea since the spring and it isn’t exactly ‘sexy’. I thought I’d forgo using it for one night, but then as I was trying to go to sleep, I realised that not using it was bothering me more than I wanted to keep this man in my bed. So out he went and I wasn’t sure I was going to hear from him again.

But then, we continued chatting, and the following week, as we were dancing together, I slipped on a wet patch on the dance floor and broke my tail bone. And he stepped up and helped take care of me, took me to the pharmacy, enquired about me.

I then left with my kids on holidays, and we kept chatting. For me it was more as a friend than anything else, but there was sometimes an innuendo undercurrent.

Sometime early September, we met again. He came to take a short stroll with me, I wanted to go watch the stars. We talked. It was nice, and things moved from there. At some point, we announced to our friends that we were together. The sex still wasn’t awful, but still not great. I tried to tell him what I liked and didn’t, but he never really understood.

There were a few conversations where we discussed me being bisexual, and how it was worrying him. I had to explain more than once that if I made the decision to be exclusive with him, it meant that he was the only person I was with, men and women included. Being bisexual doesn’t mean that we can’t control ourselves when we’re around women! It was difficult for him to understand, we come from very different backgrounds, but eventually I think he understood there was no threat. Still the way he talked about people being in homosexual relationships didn’t completely sit right with me. He doesn’t hate homosexuals, has friends who are, and he helped them, and… he was with me, right? But he couldn’t understand us, and at time it felt like he didn’t really want to. It would change too many things culturally for him.

But one thing that was nice is that, when we had tension, we were great at talking about things and hearing each other. So I kept hoping that things would get better sexually, for example.

But you can only improve something you actually practice. To say that we didn’t do it often is an understatement. At first, it was a nice change, to feel like someone wanted to spend time with me to be with me, not for sexual pleasure. It was also very pleasant to have someone to cuddle up to and sleep with every night (yes, circumstances made it so that he moved in with me after a month or so). It was pleasant to not be alone (none of my children were living with me at the time), and really healing to have someone I could count on to do things like going to the dump, or helping me with changing things around the house. He also accepted all of my (physical) limitations, even if he didn’t always understand their extent.

However, too many things felt heavy. We both loved dancing (that’s how we met), but aside from that, our cultural differences were too great. It felt like he was content living with me, next to me, but we didn’t do much together aside from being with his family. And they’re nice people, but I want to share more than that with someone. I want to be able to discuss books, movies, to visit places and discover new cultures. Not just me discovering his, I mean, but us discovering other places.

The fact that he only had one day off per week, was working like crazy, with not much to show for it, didn’t help. I don’t necessarily want a rich man, but I also don’t necessarily want to be with someone who is struggling. It’s not like my situation is that stable that I can easily pay for everyone. I can live comfortably enough, but not go beyond that. He asked me to be patient, it was after all only a matter of months until things settled down for him. So I waited.

But everything came to a head in December. I got into a fight with one of my kids. He was supportive, said he didn’t agree with the way they were treating me, after all you should at least be grateful to your mother for giving you life, for taking care of you when you were a child. And thus you owed her respect. I agree with that, even though I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to support me, and am doing my best to not need their help. I do want their respect though, just like I try my best to respect them. I am done being afraid to come back to my own home because a child of mine is being nasty to me.

But somehow, the way he conveyed this was… off. He didn’t hear what I needed, and when I tried to tell him, and he didn’t understand, I said goodbye and hung up the phone, which he took as me being rude to him. Frankly, I felt like he was being rude to me, as I’d tried to explain what I didn’t want and he was doing just that. So me hanging up shouldn’t have been surprising.

It would have been fine, but that night he came home and wouldn’t talk to me. He was ignoring me. Answering in single words. I was already in too much pain from the fight with my kid, I didn’t need that type of behaviour in my own home.

We had to have a serious conversation the next day, but I think something broke inside of me. The moping, ignoring me, it’s something I had told him I didn’t like already, and he was doing it again. A few days later, we were leaving on a trip together. He wanted to take me to his country in the spring. I wanted to go, it’s a country I’ve never visited, but I’d said I wouldn’t spend that much money on a plane ticket unless I knew for sure our relationship was solid. And one way to figure that out was to go on a shorter, less expensive trip together.

To be clear, he’d always told me he wanted to discover some neighbouring countries, and after the meltdown with my kid, it turned out we weren’t going to celebrate Christmas as a family until the 26th. So I decided to go ahead and book a trip for us around Christmas, when he actually had a few days off.

Let’s just say my expectations for the trip were too high. Or I viewed it as a last resort. I think he didn’t realise I was that close to giving up. The travel was disappointing, but I managed to get over it. I’m used to people not realising how tiring travelling is for me. It’s not for lack of trying to warn him (one of the reasons I didn’t want to buy a plane ticket to go to his country until I knew how well we travelled together).

The first night started fine. We went to a restaurant, visited the city centrer by foot, admired the Christmas lights everywhere, then came home to our rented flat. My hope was that we would spend quality time, including sex. However, he opened a bottle of wine and started drinking. Alone as I rarely drink alcohol.

You may remember that I have PTSD from when my (now ex-)husband drank too much. It is something that we had already discussed and that had already led to near fights. I went to take a shower and then stayed in the bedroom. I was getting angrier by the minute. He kept drinking instead of spending time with me, and I made it clear I wasn’t pleased with that fact. He mentioned numerous times I didn’t have to worry, he would never hurt me. I suppose in his mind, the only way to hurt someone is to hit them. Or yell at them. My experience is different.

At some point, he seemed to realise that he hadn’t packed a toothbrush. And asked me in a sharp tone if I’d packed one for him. I answered that no, I hadn’t. He went on to berate me for not having packed it for him. After all, if I’d packed one for myself, I could have packed one for him too. Being in a relationship means taking care of each other.

That really got me angry, because I tried to explain that it is an unreasonable expectation to have. I didn’t know I was supposed to be responsible for his things. First of all, I wouldn’t have wanted that responsibility. But most importantly, if he tells me he’s taking care of his packing, then no, I am not going to think of taking a toothbrush for him, even if his is next to mine in the bathroom. To him, the fact that our toothbrushes are next to each other meant I should have thought of taking his. I was already annoyed at him preferring to spend time with a bottle than with me. That just threw me over the top. The fact he wasn’t able to reason any more because of too much wine didn’t help.

I told him numerous times that if his question was ‘can I borrow your toothbrush’, the answer was, yes, of course. But I would not accept being made to feel guilty (or at least that he tried to) for not packing something for him. Was he going to tell me off if he’d forgotten to pack underwear too? Just because I saw his underwear as I was packing my suitcase?

He couldn’t reason, and kept at it. And when he came to bed, I told him it was over. He then said that if it was like this, he’d head to the airport the next morning and would fly home by himself. Remember that was Xmas eve, we had travelled by car, with the understanding that he needed to drive, because it is too tiring for me to drive, especially since I was leaving again (by myself this time) on the 26th to head to my mom’s. So if he left me by myself with the car, I had to head back on the 24th, because I couldn’t drive that far on back-to-back days.

To say I didn’t sleep well is an understatement. The next day, he didn’t talk to me but made no move to leave. I was the one who had booked the flat, so I wasn’t going to leave before he did. Not that I think he would have destroyed property just to spite me, but let’s say it was PTSD too.

Eventually, I asked if he planned on staying in front of the telly all day, or if he wanted to go visit the city like we’d planned the previous day (we’d looked at places he wanted to visit, mainly shops). The fact I didn’t go there to go shopping, but to visit the city, didn’t even make it into the conversation. Before the whole ‘too much to drink debacle’, I had thought it’s not what I really want to do, but we can do that too, and then maybe I’ll find some clothes for myself. I’ve gained some weight since last winter, and there aren’t that many options to buy clothes for people my size around where i live. Not if you don’t feel like looking like a gran… And I hate buying online because my ADHD means that I know I’ll never return something I don’t like on time, and my autism means that I am very specific with cut, texture and so on. In other words, I have to try clothes on before I buy them. And even that isn’t a sure bet that things will be fine

So we went downtown, we walked around, I got tired, we didn’t buy much except what we needed for the dinner and to bring back whatever leftovers would be there, as we had to leave before 11am on Christmas day…

Coming back home, I started to work on dinner. He came into the kitchen to ask me what I wanted chopped, mainly, then left and planted himself in front of the telly. My hopes to share cooking, the burden of it, but also the joy that goes into cooking a feast, were crashed.

I made do with whatever dishes and utensils I had, so was disappointed with the outcome, but we had a nice enough meal. From my point of view at least. But we ate in silence, in front of a movie. I bit my tongue, as it was a British movie, but we watched it in his mother tongue because he doesn’t understand English. An I hate watching an English-speaking movie in a different language. I’d already told him that. Apparently, he didn’t remember, or didn’t care. Then he chose a second one, American, still not watched in English, and that one was so dumb, demeaning for women etc.that I left to clear up the kitchen.

There was a bottle of wine we could have enjoyed with the meal, but he refused to drink any. I can only assume it’s because he felt that the whole debacle started because of him drinking the previous night. I guess the point I was trying to make didn’t get across. I don’t mind him drinking from time to time. I mind the fact he prefers to spend time with the bottle than with me. I mind that he felt compelled to finish the bottle, by himself, and that it influenced his behaviour with me to the point where I didn’t want him to touch me any more. To the point he was unable to hear what I had to say about the sex we’d been having, and how it left me unsatisfied every time.

It is difficult to explain. I did have a good few orgasms. That was not the problem. But I wanted to feel a connection, and that never really happened. He had told me he enjoyed giving oral sex, but it only happened once, for 2 minutes, then he declared victory and never attempted it again. He never heard me when I tried to show him what I liked, how I needed to be touched. “I’m not very patient” was basically his come back. There were many problems with that, but obviously, when you’re pouting, and refuse to speak to someone, that’s no help in trying to fix things. Because neither of us felt like having sex, not me after having been made to feel guilty for not doing something I was never supposed to do. Not him because he felt I was not being fair, he was never going to hurt me…

I can’t remember exactly when I told him this, whether the first evening or on the 24th during the afternoon, before we went to the city, but at some point I told him that I appreciated how he was careful to help me, how he showed his support for my disability, how he helped with these things: he brought me food in bed a couple of times when I was too unwell to stand up, he never got angry that I couldn’t do some of the things he would have liked or that we had planned… he was really good with that, and that actually helped me heal a few things. His point of view was “if we’re together, it’s for good times and bad ones too”. Still, I wanted to be his wife, not his mother. I needed to feel desired, and loved, physically too.

Any how. on Christmas morning, we cleared the apartment in silence, after yet another unrestful night. Then he asked me if we should stop to visit his friend on the way back. It had been the plan from the beginning, but I had told him I didn’t feel like it. I decided I was going to try, and told him we could, but on the condition that he spoke to me while we were there. I wasn’t going to spend a few hours pretending everything was fine, to people I had never met before and might never meet again.

He agreed, and said that we would need to have a long talk when we got home. I agreed and we drove off. The time there was… Ok. I dozed off on their couch for a little bit, he explained I am disabled and get tired really fast (which made me realise he does understand some of it, and hope that there was still hope, because we ARE good when we have a discussion, and he was never afraid of hard conversations).

When we got home around 5pm, I said I was going to rest for a bit. He said he was going away with his nephew who’d stayed at home with the dog, I thought to bring him home, and see his family a little bit. That he would come back, or at least let me know when he would.

I woke up after a few hours, fed the dog, walked him, and waited. We were supposed to have a talk, right? 10pm came and he wasn’t home. Hadn’t sent me a message either. So I ate. Then I finished preparing my suitcase for the next day, I needed to leave not too late. I eventually went to bed, and scrolled endlessly, wondering whether he was even coming home. I eventually drifted off to sleep around 3am. I was not pleased, since he knew we had that one evening to have ‘the talk’ he wanted, the one we needed. I wasn’t worried about where he was, he’d mentioned that a friend of his wanted him to go out. I didn’t mind. I just thought we’d have our talk before he left.

At 5 am, he came to bed. He wasn’t loud, but he wasn’t quiet either. In my mind, I thought if he ignores me, this is really the end. He turned towards me and laced his arm around my waist, and that felt good. And then he started to reach for my breasts, playing with them like a man who has one very specific idea. I was awake, but I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want this to be how we reconnected. I mean, I told him I wanted more sex, yes, but not without the communication we were supposed to have. He continued, trying to get his hand into my PJ bottoms, caressing my butt…

It felt too little too late. I was certainly not in the mood to do anything, and it was not the time for me to do that any how, I had a long (for me) drive the next day, alone with the dog, I needed to be rested.

I told him so “it’s 5am and I have to drive tomorrow.” He immediately stopped and apologised, saying he was sorry, I was right. The next day, we didn’t speak much before he left for work. I stayed in bed, pretended to be sleepy still. I didn’t want to have that discussion right before I had to get the car, the dog and myself ready to leave. He did ask if there were things I needed him to load into the car, and he did that before leaving.

He is a nice man, really. He’s always been a rather good friend to me. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I am not interested about anything more. Not after those 3 days away, that were supposed to bring us together, where we were supposed to finally have time just the two of us without work or kids or pets placing demands on us.

So when I got to my mom’s, I didn’t write to him. I replied when he did, but I stayed curt. I just didn’t feel any will to do more. And when my mom asked me about that BF of mine, I said that it was probably going to be over as soon as I returned home, so there wasn’t much for me to tell her.

I still enjoyed my time with family as much as my feud with my child allowed. Rather a lot actually. It was a weird Christmas, as it was the first one without my gran, and my mom hadn’t felt like preparing a lot of things. But we still had a good time, playing board games together, laughing, singing, eating of course. Making a different kind of memories.

When I came home on the 29th, he mentioned that he was a bit sad because I hadn’t written to him much, but he assumed it was because I was with my family and he didn’t want to interfere so he hadn’t written too much. I explained it was just because, for me, something had been broken during our trip together, and since he didn’t even feel like discussing it as he had said we should, that things couldn’t be repaired before I left for my mom’s. So things were done for me.

We had a long discussion, quietly as one of my kids was in the house, but he basically asked for us to try to move past itto start anew. He’d heard me, and would do what it took to make it right by me. And being the people pleaser that I am, not wanting to have to explain things to my kid either, I agreed. For the first time maybe he actually listened and tried to pleasure me the way I wanted to be. But I couldn’t sleep. Not properly. I thought maybe it was just one off-night.

However, the next day was the same. My kid left, and I thought maybe things will settle down. But I didn’t really want them to settle down. One of the problems I had felt was that we were living the life of a couple of 30 years, not one of less than 6 months. That didn’t change. That night was difficult for me to sleep as well. We were supposed to spend NYE with his family. I’d written to a friend on the 30th already, asking her if things went sour whether I could tag along to her party. She said she hoped things would get better in my relationship, but that yes, of course I was more than welcome.

After the second sleepless night in a row, I decided I couldn’t keep not sleeping (it is physically dangerous for me, since I have trouble recharging my batteries even when I sleep well), that I needed to start the year on a clean slate. So I sent him a text saying it was over, and I wasn’t going to spend NYE with his family. I hated the idea of breaking up over text, but I knew that if I went to that party with him, I would spend the entire evening masking, pretending that everything was fine between us, when I knew deep down that it was over. It would make his party a little less difficult, but mine much more. And for once, I decided to choose myself.

He called me during his break, and ended up in tears. I believe he really did love me. The thing is, I loved him too. I still love him somehow, but I now believe that most of our time together, I loved his friendship more than anything. I mean, I never felt desired. Never felt worshipped in that way. I felt that he wanted this to work, had started to introduce me to his whole family, but never actually did what was needed to make me feel wanted. A bit as if to him, I was already a given.

Maybe that’s what made me feel so wrong? I felt like I did at the end with my husband in some ways. Not the abuse I had to endure with him, but rather taken for granted. I also wonder if the fact he pushed things along so quickly didn’t make me feel like I was being gaslit.

And it’s weird, because I enjoyed his family most of the time, they are nice people, who also only wanted happiness for both me and him. But the fact he tried to convince me things were fine, the way he dismissed some of my concerns as “what’s important is who we come home to, who we go to sleep with”… of course he was right. But I think I didn’t allow myself to feel my feelings completely because of his words.

On the 31st, we had planned to first go to a cousin of his, then to go to a bar to finish the night dancing. And during the first part of the evening, people at my party decided to go to a different place. So I texted him, because I didn’t want him to believe that I had done it on purpose to avoid seeing him. I really like him as a person, he’s a good man.

So he went to the other place too. We ended up dancing together a lot. Those who didn’t know we’d broken up probably couldn’t have guessed. He told me he loved me. I said I do too. He told me he wanted to kiss me, and I said I do too, because it was true, and because it was really difficult to know we had broken up. But we didn’t kiss, there was no extra sensual dancing. A lot of hugging.

To me, it felt a bit like that last time you sleep together after you’ve decided that you’re separating, without the sex. It felt good, and a nice way to get closure. I was glad we got to spend that one last evening dancing like this together. It somehow reassured me that we could remain friends.

But I think it gave him the wrong idea. The next day, he asked if he could call me, and asked me “maybe your head is telling you to break up, but ask yourself what your heart is telling you?” I knew then that he felt like that evening of dancing together was me telling him “we’re not really broken up.”

To his defence, we’d had at least 3 episodes where we pondered what we wanted to do with our relationship, continue or stop, so this time may not have felt different to him. And that’s partly what made me decide to call it a day. I mean, yes, managing to overcome our difficulties is important in a relationship. Knowing that we are able to have real conversations to find solutions, where we listen to each other, that’s really important.

But 4 periods of tension, deep enough that we wondered whether we were going to break up, in as many months? I don’t want a relationship where we keep having so much tension. I don’t want to feel like I have to sit my partner down and tell him that he needs to change his ways or I can’t go forward, for him to actually change his ways. Not when I’d tried expressing my concerns before, in a non threatening manner, only for them not to be heard.

Said another way: I was tired of having to threaten to break up for him to hear that some things were really problematic for me, and want to do something about it. It’s not healthy for either of us. Not for him, because I don’t want him to feel he has to change to be in a relationship with me. Not for me, because I’m a people pleaser, and that means that I gaslight myself on the regular, to conform to what they want, convincing myself I want it too. It’s just not possible long term.

Still, during the first week, he came here and we had a discussion. As friends, or so I thought. I asked him what it meant for him that we remain friends. He said it could mean what we wanted. That for sure, he would always be there if I needed him, whether to move stuff, for anything where I require physical help, or if I just wanted to see him. Then we ended up with giving each other a massage, which turned into more, and I felt bad. For two reasons.

One, he actually asked me what I wanted, how I wanted it, and tried to give it to me. It may have been the first time I was almost satisfied. He was obviously trying to show me that he’d heard my queries, and was trying to change for me. But a part of me knew it was too little too late.

And two, because I couldn’t sleep that night, knowing he was in the bed with me. I still wasn’t able to go to sleep, and I had work the next day, and it was difficult to function. And that told me I can’t allow him to sleep in my bed any more. I really have to cut it off, seriously. As in little contact. Much less than for the past week (even though I’d tried not writing him a lot). And absolutely no more being intimate. I simply couldn’t. My body was telling me no.

And I did what he’d said, I listened to my heart, except it wasn’t telling me what he was hoping. It was telling me no.

We met a few other times since, one because I forgot my purse, and thus didn’t have my house key for the night (and still had a dog to take care of, whom I couldn’t forget for a whole night). He still had the house key, so I rang him to see how I could get it, and I managed to get home. The next day, he was driving in the same direction as I had to go, so he took me there and we had a chat in the car. It felt like it was more a discussion between friends, and that was fine by me. I gave him the key back, because I trust him implicitly and knew that if anything similar were to happen again, it would be helpful to have someone I trust who had a spare key.

The second time, I went to his place of work, after he’d finished, and we sat down and had a chat. He tried to say we could be friends, of course we should stay friends, I was an important woman in his life. Then proceeded to say that sometimes, friends sleep together. We could to define our friendship the way we wanted, and nobody else could know how it was best for us to be friends. And of course he is right. No two friendships are alike, and some people are friends and occasionally sleep together.

I was crying when I left him, as I could tell he was hurting. And I don’t want him to hurt. But as I told him later, we cannot sleep together any more. If only so that he knows it’s really over, and can move on in time. I don’t want him to stay attached to me the way I stayed attached to The Dancer, hoping that one day he would change his mind.

I want us both to move on. And since he still hasn’t told his family it’s over, hoping that they’ll just figure it out themselves because they don’t see or hear about me quite as often, or maybe that we’ll get back together before they wonder too much, I know in his mind, it’s still not completely over. So I haven’t written to him too much, which was not difficult since I was also busy with other things, like the funeral of a friend who died 10 days ago (she was ‘old’ and sick, but it still came as a shock and I am feeling very sad about it).

Hopefully that will help both of us to move on. I would hate to have to lose a friend. He needs me as much as I need him, even if for different reasons.

He is a good man, I want to keep him as a friend. But still… I’m having trouble sleeping early or feeling refreshed when I wake up. I know that a lot has happened in the past 20 days, and that probably doesn’t help, but I’m hoping writing my emotions down, here, will help.

One thing I keep wondering is why he would think that I’d be interested in continuing to have sex with him. I mean, I was never satisfied while we were together. Why would I seek mediocre sex with anyone? I have said multiple times, I’m not interested in mutual masturbation any more. Having a sexual partner who will use me to masturbate and who will masturbate me, what’s the point? Rubbing each other, well. I can do it myself with just as much effect. I’m interested in a real sexual connection, which means pouring more than your body into the action. And he obviously doesn’t know how to do that. At least not with me.

Not long ago, I learnt that he doesn’t masturbate. He has no clue what he likes, how things feel etc. I know I could teach him a looot of things, sexually, but… I don’t want to any more. I would gladly have while we were in a relationship, but for that he would have had to be open to listening to me. He wasn’t. Why would I NOW want to teach him? What would be in it for me? I’d much rather take the time I need to heal from this relationship and remain available for the next one.

I am grateful for all the things I healed thanks to him. But I deserve to be loved, desired, and heard without having to shout or threaten. So I’ll wait until I the right person crosses my path. And if it means I’m by myself for a little while, well.,. I’m not afraid of being single. It may have been hard for me to leave my husband because I was afraid of being single, or never finding anyone to be with. I’m not that woman any more. I may still have things to heal, I may still have self doubt, but I am getting better. And he was instrumental to this too. He used to tell me “no matter where you are, you could be sitting next to Miss Universe, you need to believe to your core that you are the most beautiful woman in the room.”

Of course, he was right 🙂