Settling down

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a varied, and often complicated, romantic history. I have been fielding a lot of questions recently—due largely to the OK Cupid experiment—about what exactly I am looking for now—here is that answer:

I don’t know.

Okay, that is far too simplistic, but it is true--mostly. Recently I have started to realize that maybe, just maybe, I am ready to settle down a bit. But what in the hell does that mean?

It means I want a primary relationship. I want a man, or possibly a woman, who is single and who understands ethical non-monogamy.

I want someone who can accept that I will most likely already be in relationships of various types when we get together. One of my sexual/play relationships just ended—or at least got put on hold when he moved across the country—so currently I have one occasional play/sexual partner, and one potential sexual partner—I have no idea how those relationships will evolve, or what new relationships I may get involved in. What I do know is that I will probably not be open to the idea of dropping all current relationships for someone, though I would certainly put things on hold if it looked like there was some serious potential that needed proper concentration and attention.

I want someone who understands that I do not sit still well, and that occasionally I go to work and get asked questions like “how would you like to spend two months in Siberia?” The answer, by the way, to questions like that will always be yes.

I want someone who is open to kink—if not participating in it, then at least realizing that I will be participating with others.

I want someone who is interested in building something amazing, but who realizes that we will not complete each other.

I want someone to wake up next to, to watch, and mock, television with, to cook for, to do all of those sappy little relationship things with (yes, I am a romantic at heart—shhhhh).

The thing is, though, that I do not NEED any of that—and I like that. I have never had a problem being alone, and I do not need a relationship to validate my life. When, and if, I find the person with whom I want to settle down, it will be bullshit free.

That is what I want.

Anger and letting go

I don’t process negativity well, and I have some pretty major control issues, so anger is close to impossible for me to let in because it is both extreme negativity and a loss of control. Thankfully, this isn’t generally a problem because I have few reasons for genuine anger in my life. But, well, sometimes life gets messy--especially when relationships are ending.

Any break-up comes with negativity—with J and L I had anger to work through, but I did not allow myself to immediately feel that anger, or any negativity, really, beyond sadness. My focus in the days and weeks after was on maintaining the relationships on a friendship level and making sure that the other two people involved were in a good place. To do this I had to put much of my own shit aside.

Unfortunately, what happens when I try and bury my own feelings is that eventually they come out in a way that allows for little control, so I risk burning the bridges that I was so carefully protecting.

A few weeks ago I was dealing with some fairly heavy stuff in my life—my planned two months in Siberia got postponed until September (after I had already quit my job and dropped my classes), and I once again had a bit of a breast scare, so I spent a week being poked, and prodded, and photographed. All of this acted as a catalyst for the anger toward L that I had been keeping in check for the last few weeks.

I could have eventually worked through it on my own, and I did try to avoid her because I knew it was there and what it could do, but she pushed and I lost it—I just sort of blew up and let it all come out.

  

I don’t like that I went there. I don’t like that I created a situation for which I felt I had to apologize. I don’t like that there will always now be this dark spot on the relationship. But, it was just so damn cathartic. This had to happen—I recognize that. I needed to let go of this relationship, and I couldn’t do that as long as this anger was a part of me.

Now, it is time to move on.