Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

The fates are vicious, and they're cruel.

I’ve spent most of the last week recovering from a surgical repair to my left Achilles tendon. It had been bothering me all year, but I’d put off seeing ortho about it, thinking it would get better eventually. I was already battling cervical and lumbar spine pain. I was back and forth to Alabama to see and care for Bumblebee while he was undergoing chemo and then surgery and then radiation. I was starting grad school. I was still raising two teenage sons and working a full-time job.

But after a ten-day study abroad in Berlin, I came home limping. The sixty miles I walked during that trip were invigorating in so many ways. They also gave a nasty bone spur in my heel the opportunity to lacerate the tendon. There was no option but to remove it, which happened this past week.

I’ll spend two weeks in a splint, then several weeks in a boot. I have at least four weeks on crutches or a knee scooter. Physical therapy won’t begin for at least four weeks, and I’m told to expect a year for full recovery.

I can’t do most of what I normally do around the house, like laundry or cleaning. I can’t reach some of the cabinets to put away the dishes. Cooking is awkward. Showering is a convoluted chore. The boys have been somewhat helpful. Friends have brought food. Pandy and Cookie came to help get some things situated for us this weekend. Max is old enough to make a run to the grocery store for me. (Delivery isn’t terribly helpful, as I can’t really put a lot of the groceries away.)

Elevating my foot is key to healing during the first few weeks. I have spent days in bed or on the couch, binge watching television. My eyes have been too blurry from the pain meds to try to read.

In the midst of it all, I am still dealing with the emotional aftermath of this fucking breakup.

I am forced to be still in ways I hate. For years, I have walked to clear my head, and the exercise is incredibly helpful at dealing with my anxiety and depression. But physical limitations this year have made me far less active. I’ve lost muscle tone and gained some weight back, and that is going to worsen over the next few months before it gets better.

All of this makes for a perfect storm of self-recrimination and frustration and anger.

I find myself journaling the same things over and over—hurt and anger and confusion at how the hell I ended up in this place again, how anyone could be so consciously and callously hurtful of someone they professed to love. Then I think about the times I have hurt others, and I question at what point I stop paying some karmic price for damage I’ve inflicted.

When will I have worked hard enough and atoned enough that other people stop fucking hurting me as some kind of cosmic penance? Why am I the one left holding the hurt and carrying the blame for anyone else? Why does there seem to be no consequence for their actions, except what I am left to deal with?

I don’t know how to get past what I don’t understand.

Moonshine admonished me not to lie in bed crying over this and not to let it define who I am, to look at the good in my life and not get mired in the bad. “I really believe that everything happens for a reason, but sometimes we can’t/don’t or won’t see the reason. I think the reason for this is that you needed to see how string you can be.”

I don’t want to have to be stronger right now. I don’t want another Nietzschean lesson in my own resiliency. I am fully aware of my tenacity and my capacity. The one thing I wanted was a partner to carry some of that for me, sometimes when I needed it most, so I didn’t have to keep breaking my back to do every fucking thing by myself.

He told me he would do that. I trusted him and believed him and gave him the opportunity to be taken at his word, and he shrugged and dropped it all back at my feet when I was least prepared to pick it back up.

And he told me it was for my own good.

I am viscerally offended by the cowardice. I am hurt in ways I have rarely been—after having been as open and honest and brave as I could be to even engage in that relationship with him. I am now literally trapped inside my own head with no physical outlet for it, and I want to crawl out of my own fucking skin.

But I refuse to compartmentalize it away. I refuse to pretend it didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter, because to do so it to traumatize myself in the exact ways others have hurt me. It won’t define me, but it will be another marker on my journey, another cautionary tale of another person who made me carry their shame and who dismissed me with little thought in order to justify their cowardice.

Another on top of another on top of another on top of another….

Except this one promised me he wouldn’t do exactly this, just so I would never have to feel this again.

I’m not grieving him. I am mourning the loss of trust and love and faith—and at a time when I need it most. Hope feels dangerous and is not allowed right now. I am lamenting the death of my own passion, again, at the hands of a man who will never face me to apologize for the catastrophe he created.

And I’m doing it all from forced confinement.

The timing is ironic. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of forcing me to slow down and deal with it now. Maybe there’s something coming that will need my attention and focus, so that I need to be free of this bullshit to deal with that.

Maybe it’s just coincidental assholery.

Maybe none of it means a damn thing.

 

 

Yes, you must leave everything that you cannot control. It begins with your family but soon it comes round to your soul.

I’ll be honest: it’s been a hell of a week.

This breakup with Bumblebee has been foundationally shattering. Over the course of a few days, my plans and my beliefs about my life just shifted. Grad school and work and boys are still ongoing. I’m still getting ready for an upcoming surgery to repair a blasted Achilles’ tendon that has bothered me all year.

But I’ve also mourned. A lot. I haven’t slept consistently, and most days the thought of food makes me nauseated. I’ve seen 4:30 a.m. most mornings this week, eyeing the tear-blurred clock blearily.

I’d forgotten how hard this part is.

In reality, I begged him not to make me remember. From the very beginning, I laid out what I was afraid of and why. More from self-awareness than from self-fulfilling prophecy, I knew the depths of despair I was likely to fathom if another man let me down in those ways.

Alas, here I am.

My therapist praised me for having been truthful and honest and open from the beginning, for giving him the literal playbook to prevent my being hurt. Don’t do this to me. For giving him the opportunity to take the responsibility for his actions within my boundaries.

“But maybe most people can’t handle that,” she said. “Maybe most people not only can’t be themselves, but they also can’t handle you being yourself.”

Fuck. This is hardly the first time I’ve been faced with such musing, from someone else or from myself. I have a tendency to see straight into other people, especially emotionally avoidant men, call them out on their shit, and tap my foot impatiently while hoping they will step up and make the changes they need to make. I know how hard that can be. I’ve done it. I’m still doing it.

It took me a damn long time to realize I wasn’t going to be redeemed by anyone else. No other person can ever make up for the shit that has been done to me—or for the shit I have done to myself. That responsibility lies squarely with me.

But the redemption comes not from meeting someone who can not do the stupid shit that undermines my tenuously-reintegrating psyche. It comes from my not making the same choices, not having the same limited emotional responses to similar stimuli.

                                                                                                                                         December 2, 2017

And this time, I did do it differently. It still wasn’t enough. But it wasn’t that I wasn’t enough.

But I am a girl who believes in Love. Deeply. Completely. Yes, in its redemptive power.

It took me decades to realize that my paternal grandparents had set the example for what love was supposed to be. More than fifty years of commitment and love and songs trilled across the house to one another. No fights, just “discussions” and intense care and open affection, no matter what. (At least as was shown to me.)

The daughter of an abusive alcoholic who fell in love with a magician and lived happily ever after.

I have spent my life looking for literal magic.

To love someone is an act of grace. It is to be willing to accept their flaws, to offer forgiveness before slights are committed, to promise to be there and to accept them, no matter what. Love is a mercy, both to them and to yourself, and that spark is as close to the divine as we may ever experience on this Earth.

“I think you need to rethink what it is you want from love,” Queen Frostine said to me. “I know you want that redemption, but maybe it comes in a different form than you want.”

I get her point. I do have people in my life who love me, whom I also believe will be there for me, no matter what. She is one of the few, and she knows it.

But Queen Frostine or Pandy or any of my Psyrens can’t be there in the middle of the night. They can’t be there to hold me or to share in deep ecstasy. They aren’t the ones with whom I want to craft that magical life.

I am afraid that the likelihood of my ever getting the empirical proof of the mystical, of what I know exists because I am borne of it, grows smaller and smaller with each passing year and broken relationship. The reality is that I am unlikely to end this life with that resolution, both because of other people and because of myself.

It seems as if my Holy Grail will be forever ensconced in gauzy veil.

On top of it all, I am slipping into the emotional avoidance that I loathe.

And it is frightening to me, to think of becoming the thing I hate the most, of turning into the monster that hides under my own bed.

This is what I begged him not to do.

I understand that I still have the power to make me and to make my life what I most want it to be.

Except what I want isn’t happening. Still. Again. And it’s deflating. The only way I know to make the cycle stop is to get off the damn carousel, but I keep reaching for the brass ring one more time. Just one more time!

I’m dizzy from the trying.

Maybe it’s the last bastion of adulthood. It begins with realizing your parents are simply human. Maybe it ends with accepting your own mortality, closing the binding-worn Fairytales and shelving it forever.

What if that’s not what I want?

Maybe what I want is delusional. Maybe my love of myth and tortured epic is the fairytale I get. Maybe I am fated to live out my life as a Grimm protagonist.

Except I know it exists. I know couples who commit to respectful, equitable, mutual reciprocity, who gift one another with care and affection, whose passion ebbs but also flows for decades.

I don’t know how my story will end. I almost gave up on Bumblebee in October, and I made the decision to try again. It still went unexpectedly south, but I tried. I will try to keep trying, though I’m unsure I will ever be successful in that endeavor.

Yes, my girls will still be there, no matter what. There are a few others. More importantly, I will still be there, no matter what. And I will continue to be exactly who I am—open and honest and clever and smart and loving—because I don’t want to be my own monster.

There is no divinity in turning myself to stone.

 

 

You know I thought you could. You know I thought you could, too.

When Bumblebee and I started 14 months ago, I was coming off a long series of bad relationships and encounters that had left me unsure I would ever be willing to date again. The logistics of a long-distance relationship might be insurmountable, but we both found something so special in the other that we were willing to try.

I was still going to therapy every week, grappling with how my past continued to influence my present, determining what was useful from more then 40 years of good and bad and what could be put away. But one of the things I was adamant about, from the very beginning, was that I could not be a secret. For me, secrecy is indicative of shame, of being told by a child molester that he loved me and that what we did was okay—but that everyone would blame me and be mad at me if they knew.

That dynamic played out time and again, specifically with men and sexual and emotional relationships. Sometimes it was their secret shame that hurt me, but usually it was my own. I learned to equate secrecy and dismissive hurt with love. It wasn’t until I ended my relationship with Rango in 2017 that I really decided to work to rewire that thinking.

And I was exceedingly clear with Bumblebee that I was not willing to take carry that weight in our relationship. Although he’d been separated from his wife for more than a year, he wanted to finalize his divorce before introducing me fully into his world. Fair enough. Like most people he knows, including our mutual friends, I knew nothing of his separation. He told me he was trying to finish it all before it became public. But the divorce was imminent. And he was adamant that he did not want anyone to cast me into some shadow of mistress.

So he said.

Look, my own divorce took far longer than I expected to finalize. Sometimes it be that way. But things with his kids and logistics got in our way. I pulled back but decided to give it another go. Then he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer, just before Christmas. All of our attention turned to his survival.

I was battling my own health issues, but I was back and forth from Atlanta to Birmingham to see him. We spent an inordinate number of nights holed up in a hotel, away from his supposed-to-be-temporary roommate and most other people. Occasionally we would spend a little time with my friends, as his energy allowed. Chemo gave way to surgery gave way to radiation. And when I was having regular dreams of being denied access to him after cancer surgery, he introduced me to his brother and then, albeit unexpectedly, to his parents, at the time of his surgery. I stayed at the hospital and at his parents’ home to help with his post-surgical recovery.

“I’m looking for the right time to tell the kids,” he said.

Two months later, he finally moved into is own space. He’d been delaying, he said, because he wanted to buy rather than to rent. Okay. But he suddenly relented and secured an apartment, telling me the divorce really was finally almost done. We talked of plans for my visiting him, working on grad school homework from his couch while helping him after more upcoming chemo.

And through it all, we had begun to navigate the idea that, when all four of our children were out of high school, we would have the option to move to the same location. He would talk of what we would do when we retired, how we would grow old together.

Except he still hadn’t told his teenage kids that I even existed. He still wasn’t comfortable with my telling my mom that we were dating, his having known her professionally before he ever knew me. And I was continually agitated by his social media, which was still filled with pictures of family nights and date nights with his long-estranged wife and maybe even a wedding picture (including more mutual friends).

All of these things screamed to me that he was still projecting an image of in-tact nuclear family that had been irretrievably broken for years. And I was still not allowed to share pictures of the two of us together, for fear that it would hurt someone unnecessarily or give someone the impression that there was something untoward about our relationship.

Except, there was nothing untoward about our relationship. His marriage had been over for years before we even began. They hadn’t shared more than co-parenting, as far as had been relayed to me. He was insistent that he loved me, that I understood and loved him more than anyone ever had, and that he was working for long-term future for us. For We. Oui.

“Keeping me in the shadows is hurting me,” I told him.

For the first time in almost two years with her, my own therapist expressed concern at his motivations for not moving forward at a more reasonable pace. Yes, so very much was happening at any given time, and his energy reserves cold be easily depleted. But, from my perspective, being faced with significant adversity tends to make people gravitate toward what they love the most.

I fully admit that I had moments of unparalleled utter fucking freak-out about the whole thing. I would be left waiting or rescheduled, because he couldn’t tell the kids or his brother that he already had plans with me. Illness could sideswipe a romantic rendezvous in a matter of moments. And when I asked when it would change, he would tell me he was thinking about how and when to do it.

“I’m looking for the right time.”

It played against all of my insecurities and my greatest fears: making me an object of shame, emotional abandonment, and dismissive ignorance of me. I had been fighting for years to deal with these issues. He knew about all of it—both from me and from my having openly written about the entire process—from the very beginning.

Through it all, I clearly defined my boundaries and defended them. I used my words and said when things were hurting me. I asked directly for change. I tried to avoid ultimatums. For more than a year.

But two months after introducing me to his parents, his children still had no idea that I even existed. He still wasn’t comfortable with telling my mom. I was still prohibited from posting a selfie of us together in case all the people who didn’t know realized we were a couple. I was given the responsibility of the emotional well-being of people I didn’t know and who didn’t even know I existed.

“I need a plan for how and when this changes, or I need the honesty that it isn’t changing,” I insisted. “To keep me living in this limbo is unkind and unloving, and it’s eating me alive.”

I did not demand to meet his kids immediately. I did not demand that he change his Facebook relationship status to include me. I asked that he offer us a path toward starting to blend our worlds—a necessary part of any future we would have together.

And so Bumblebee decided that losing me and losing We was less painful than acknowledging my existence. He chose to continue to hide and to refuse to do the hard work of change that would improve his own life. As I have seen partners do before, he threw up his hands and shrugged and said, “It’s too hard.”

“What the fuck?!?” my therapist said.

I’m not sure I have ever been so shell-shocked by a relationship in my life. It is all counter to everything I believed about him. The confusion from having been held and told days before that he wants every morning with me and then summarily dismissed and ignored is overwhelming. It feels distinctly as if I missed something somewhere. I have replayed every conversation and reread every message a dozen times or more, to the point of making myself sick from the dizzy.

I just don’t get it.

I can psychologize him—I have and likely will do so again. I understand what I believe to be his motivations. I understand his eccentricities and his weaknesses and clearly as I understand his strengths. I have loved him in spite of and because of them. But it is not the path I, or my girlfriends who came to know him quite well, believed he would choose. At all.

Knowing how previous relationships have played out, knowing my reticence and my fear and my strong desire to work through those issues, I was clear at every turn about what I needed and expected and why. He clearly responded that he understood and worked to meet those needs and expectations. Love and respect and care were mutual and reciprocal.

But now I find myself grieving. Breakup grief is different than the grief of death. You’re grieving the loss of the person, but you’re also grieving for yourself—as both the one who has lost and the one who is lost. Your identity with that person, the intertwined being the two of you created, is inextricably just gone.

And it undermines everything I came to trust and believe about myself. What did I miss? What did I do wrong? Was I really so arrogant to believe that I, myself, was making progress in dealing with my bullshit? Am I really just more broken that I realized? Is it impossible for me not to be better, if never fully repaired? Was I simply an object to him, a supplier of the comfort and affection he’d been missing for more than a decade? Was I just a great, gullible fuck? Was he really a coldhearted, calculating liar, capable of fooling me and all of my girlfriends?

Those are some of the questions I grapple with in the dark, in the middle of the night when I am awakened from some fitful dream. Those are the questions I churn throughout the day, as I’m driving or as I’m trying to work. Those are the questions I repeat in my head every time my heart feels like it’s clawing its way out of my chest.

Those are the questions I raged to Queen Frostine when, the day after he made this decision, the gift he’d sent for my birthday arrived in the mail. Because all of this happened two days before my birthday—just like it had two years before when Rango and I broke up.

(And let me tell you, there is no kick to the teeth quite like an unexpected birthday gift in the mail from your unexpectedly-recent ex.)

I don’t know how long this will go on. I can’t even begin to speculate about when I will start to feel human again. I’m currently waiting on a couple of my girls to get into town so that I can feel some love and support while I cry and wallow for a couple of days. I am plodding through work and home responsibilities and schoolwork, feeling like I’m watching everything happen slowly to me, as I move through some thick underwater. I feel dehumanized by his refusal to acknowledge my existence.

I am careful to comfort my internal parts. I am soothed the tiniest bit by knowing that I did everything I could to care for and defend myself. When I made mistakes and missteps, I apologized and did my very best to change. I was as patient with him and his situation as anyone could every be expected to be.

The fact is, I just have to get through it. Logically, the hurt will abate someday. For now, it’s the shadow I still can’t escape.

 

 

Just close your eyes until you can imagine this place, yeah, our secret place at will.

On the first Friday in January, after my New Year’s Eve had gone awry, I was driving home from work, anticipating a long, lonely weekend. I was a little agitated, my anxiety still unreasonably high, worried about how another weekend alone would go. But Bumblebee called, as he often does in the early evening, asking how I was.

“I’m tired,” I lamented. I hadn’t slept well for several days, and it was starting to take a serious toll on my overall health.

“What will help?” he asked.

“Sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.”

“What if I’m there to sleep with you?” He paused. “I’m giving you three hours’ notice, as you’ve asked. I’m on my way.”

And just like that, he drove on a Friday afternoon from Birmingham to Atlanta to see me. We still missed a midnight countdown and champagne, but we did manage to see Bumblebee in the theater (as we’d planned for months) and to get pho (as we’d planned for two weeks). We managed to escape into our beloved bubble, tucked away from the world and focusing on us (We. Oui.) and recharging our shared battery.

All of my disappointment from the screwed up New Year’s Eve, which had ballooned a growing anxiety into an almost-panic, was assuaged by his showing up. As I’ve discussed so many times before, much of my anxiety both comes from and drives my fear of emotional abandonment. Often in my life, love meant leaving, it meant disappointment, it meant hurt—all of which my internal system interpreted as Stephanie simply wasn’t worth loving.

In October, the logistics of the long-distance relationship had started to take their toll. What I need from a partner is hard to maintain across such distance, especially my need for physical touch and consistent, reliable interaction. Hell, I’ve broken up with more than one local man for not being able to make time to see me, because “to date someone requires actual interpersonal engagement within a certain physical proximity.” I swore off the possibility of long-term relationships—until this started with him.

But looking back to the series I did last year on what I value in myself, in a partner, and in a relationship, there was no question that Bumblebee more than meets those criteria. He is brilliant and kind, humble and funny. He is extraordinarily patient, especially with me, and he is deeply and readily passionate. Even with the distance and the circumstances of our lives, the apprehension of love again after divorce, he acknowledges his fear and chooses to be open and available to me anyway. We maintain regular contact and conversation, although sometimes our schedules make it hard to have more than a few minutes of talk on a given day. He is physically and emotionally the safest partner I’ve ever known. The girls have welcomed him as a part of our family, and vice versa. We are slowly moving forward, together, even if we aren’t sure what exactly that will look like.

The difficulties of the distance were outweighed by the reciprocity and depth of emotion and care that we share, and we decided we could not let this relationship go.

But… long distance relationships are hard. We don’t get impromptu lunches or random Tuesday nights together. When I wake from a difficult dream, or just rouse to the Litany of Bullshit that Might Go Wrong, I don’t get to reach for him in the middle of the night. I don’t get to comfort him with a hug after a long day at work, or to care for him when he’s sick. Even if the physical distance of 180 miles isn’t that difficult to overcome, visitation schedules and divorce logistics and family commitments often interfere. Given the still-budding nature of our relationship, almost none of our mutual friends know we are dating, and our time together rarely includes anyone but us.

The inconsistency is both cause and effect of our current posture, and it can be frustrating. For me, it can drive my anxiety to ridiculous levels. For a girl who hates to feel like she’s trapped in a box, the necessary compartmentalization that comes from a long-distance relationship can be terrifying. Not being an active, open part of his day-to-day life can sometimes leave me feeling like an option. On the worst days, I feel like a dirty little secret, which can trigger years’ worth of trauma around shame. The parts of my internal system get conflicted, imagining different outcomes that almost always end in despair. Some days, I break up with him in my head a dozen times or more, simply out of fear that he might one day leave me.

But… the distance does give us opportunity to practice communication. Unless we can manage a FaceTime call, we are limited to text and voice chat. Without the benefit of non-verbal cues, we have to make a very concerted effort to listen to the other. Misunderstandings do happen, but we tend to address them very quickly. Having lived the damage caused by unspoken resentment in relationships, we are usually quick to politely air our grievances and move on, not allowing small scrapes and bruises to fester.

It’s impossible to foresee every twist and turn our relationship may take—and we have been sideswiped more than once by some pretty ugly unexpectedness. But we are both sensitive to not repeating the same patterns and mistakes that caused other relationships to fail.

“You know,” I said to him over breakfast on Sunday, at the end of a 15-hour visit, “maybe it’s good that we’re not in the same city. If we were, we’d be seeing each other every day and just doing what we do--”

“—settling into a groove.”

I shook my head disdainfully. “You know I’m never going to let that happen, right?”

“Baby,” he replied evenly, holding my gaze, “I’m counting on it.”

 

 

I wish you a happy New Year, darling. May your new love be bright and fair.

It’s not news to anyone that I am superstitious af about New Year’s Eve:

From December 31, 2017:

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

From January 10, 2014:

But New Year's Eve, in particular, freaks me the hell out.  There's something about the day or so surrounding the marking of the new year that seems to set the tone for the 364 days that follow.  If it's a good night and following day, the year generally goes well.  If it's harrowing—a car wreck with friends or a two-hundred-mile distance in the middle of a strained marriage—the rest of the year always seems to follow suit. 

For a multitude of reasons, 2018 seemed to be an especially trying year for me and mine. It was a year of upheaval for so many. Pandy lost her grandmother and her father. Cookie got divorced. Queen Frostine survived a Mob hit while we were on vacation in NYC. Max graduated high school, cycled through a few fleeting relationships, spent a month in Germany, and we all survived his first semester in college. Another surgery and back problems for me.

And in the middle of the most difficult year of therapy to date, I stumbled into a long-distance relationship that has presented both unimagined challenges and unexpected joy.

I spent last weekend with him, Bumblebee, and with my girls. We all sat at a restaurant together, laughing uproariously in a back room where we hoped we wouldn’t disturb other patrons (and their children) with our loud, foul mouths. All of us seem to recharge a bit when we are together, whether one-on-one or in little groups of twos and threes. This was actually the first time the Castration Committee had been together in its six-part entirety in the same room.

In fact, Queen Frostine suggested a change in moniker, because “Castration Committee” has, taken on an unacceptable tone of man-hating. One or two of us have managed relationships with good men, and four of us are raising sons to be good men. Ideas were tossed around—from Jugaloons to Side Show by the Sea—and all I can remember for sure from the uproarious discussion is the word Psyrens. So there we are, a group of smart, loud, singing women who just know the others, no matter the distance.

And I needed the time with my girls. I’d just survived my first Christmas on my own, ever. The boys were gone. Bumblebee and my girls were all hundreds of miles away. I’d gone into it with the intention of being brave and calm, my Self leading all of my internal parts calmly and safely through an emotionally-charged 36 hours with mulled wine and good food and the cats.

It ended up being far sadder and more miserable than even I could have predicted, and I am not allowed to be alone like that again.

But New Year’s Eve was looming, no matter what. I’d been worried about it for weeks.

“If something happens,” I told Queen Frostine, “and we aren’t together for New Year’s—”

“Then you aren’t together,” she finished.

It’s not an ultimatum, of You-be-here-or-I-won’t-see-you. It is my perception of an emotionally traumatic history that happens to be cataloged by decades of bad New Year’s Eves (and worse Valentine’s Days).

And I’d been clear, that my coming to visit him for the weekend prior did not absolve him of being with me on New Year’s Eve. I love time with him whenever I can get it, but New Year’s Eve is its own category of agitating for me. We planned a low-key evening—early movie and dinner at the same restaurant we’d frequented since our first weekend together—to just be together. But I could not let go of the possibility (probability) that it would not go well.

“Try to let the fear go,” Pandy said on January 30th. “What if we expect the best?? Do we then invite the best into our home/heart?”

Shaking my head violently, I responded, “I can’t expect that best. I can’t. There’s waaaaaaayyyyyy too much history for that. That’s asking to get shattered.”

But I spent that evening readying the house. I made the grocery list and checked the showtimes for the movie. Bumblebee, of course. I laid out the Princess Bride Blu-ray for our breakfast viewing pleasure. I washed the special glasses I’d bought just for toasting with mimosas.

“I’m afraid I jinxed it,” I told Frostine mid-morning, New Year’s Eve.

“You didn’t jinx anything,” she chided. I could practically hear her blue eyes rolling in her curly head.

And then he texted midday, while I was getting ready to leave work early, that he was sick. He was violently ill, unable to travel down the street, let alone the 200 miles to my house. On top of it, he was upset about how this would upset me.

I understood. I know the illness that was plaguing him. Hell, our Thanksgiving got cut short by my being sideswiped by the flu. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew this wasn’t intentional, not malicious or even negligent. Wholly unexpected and unwelcomed by both of us.

If he’d just not shown up, no explanation, or if he’d shown up late, no explanation, or if he’d shown up rude and mean, no explanation, and then expected me to accept it and understand it and not express any confusion or hurt or displeasure, or blamed me outright for it, then I would’ve been let down.

I know, because I have been let down in those ways by men who professed to love me. Over and over and over.

But he got sick, and he told me. We came up with an alternative plan to wear each other’s t-shirts and snuggle under blankets and talk and FaceTime kiss at midnight, to save the champagne until we are together and can get a do-over.

And I was completely cool with that. I was centered and calm, accepting and still felt both loved and loving.

And then the anxiety struck.

Fighting off a nasty cold, I didn’t feel well. A short nap on the couch was discombobulating. Given what had happened just a week before, I steered clear of the wine and sad movies. But by 9:45, I was well-ensconced in my reluctant acceptance that 2019 will be a year of sickness and distance and thwart and tears and anxiety, that we will likely find ourselves frustratingly separated by illness and trying to make up for it when our already-difficult schedules allow.

“Baby, do not do this,” he admonished over FaceTime, his brow furrowed. “This is self-fulfilling prophecy. We are not subject to the whims of a capricious non-entity.”

Of course I know that. I am too smart and too well-educated not to understand the logical fallacy of my fear of being thwarted by fate or Fate or the Ghosts of Relationships Past. But the reality is that I have been conditioned over four decades to expect disappointment. I have learned to set the bar for other people so low that I just need them to show up. I don’t need them to do anything or say anything or bring anything. I just need them to be there, to be present with me.

My entire system is on such high alert, constantly scanning the horizon for potential disappointment:

• Is this something that might hurt me?
• Is this something that is likely to hurt me?
• How much hurt could I feel?
• Does that possible hurt stem from a previous trauma?
• How do I feel about that trauma now?
• How have I successfully dealt with this before?
• Can I avoid the hurt altogether?
• Is there benefit in feeling the hurt?
• Is there possible reward that’s not hurt?

This is how anxiety works. It is a constant cost/benefit analysis of people and experiences and moments, examining how they may impact my emotions and what future influence they may impart. It is eviscerating discernment, and it is neverending judgment of others and of myself, in desperate attempts to stave off hurt.

“Eventually, I have to stop,” I told him.

“Stop what?”

Stop hoping. Hope means the possibility of disappointment, of more hurt, of more agitation, of more anger, of more self-recrimination, of more tears and heart palpitations. Hope is an inherent expectation of good, of not-hurt.

If I have no expectation, then the good that comes can be met with exuberant joy and delight. And I do feel those things, regularly. I love deeply, and I am deeply loved, by my sons and my friends and my boyfriend and my family.

But that is not enough, and may never be enough, to assuage the perpetual angst that all comes down to basic value judgments made about me by other people, before I had clear, conscious memory. I cannot undo those choices others made, and I struggle to rectify my learned responses. At times, it is a gaping psychic wound that may never fully heal, only close over for some indeterminate length of time. I am always on edge, waiting for the next slice into an ever-refreshening scar.

I know: only my reactions matter now. How I choose to treat myself and others in light of my emotional makeup is what matters. And I try, so hard, to be present, to be mindful, to be kind to myself and to others, to carefully bring my concerns into balance before I act on them.

But when you feel like you’re drowning, it’s impossible not to thrash toward the surface with a desperate breath. When the anxiety hits, it is like waterboarding myself over and over with my own tears.

I am not, generally, unhappy. I am not so afraid that I have trouble experiencing the world, as I was when Max was a baby. I do have occasional days, when the benefit of staying in to read and binge watch whatever is greater than the potential cost of detached interaction with suburbia. I am far more than merely functional in my life. I am engaged with my wonderful, active sons, my dear friends, a man I love deeply who loves me just as much, a job at which I am very good, and I just applied to grad school.

Sometimes, though, I trip over a deeply existential crack. Usually, I can right myself and carry on, maybe with a momentary limp or scrape. Every so often, I fall into the chasm. Mostly I’ve learned to hold onto the edge and pull myself back up. I have no interest in traversing those depths ever again.

We missed the midnight countdown. There was a brief FaceTime at 12:02. I fell into a cold-medicine-induced, tear-stained sleep a few minutes later, the sound of raindrops and neighborhood fireworks outside, wrapped in his t-shirt. I woke this morning, fed and pet the cats, started a new book, watched the last bit of Leap Year while I prepped a Gouda-and-bacon frittata, started chicken stock and chicken salad for later in the week, prepped vegetables for roasting this evening, and did the dishes.

I often do more by noon than a lot of people do in a day.

I don’t write about these things to shame anyone else or myself. I don’t write to find sympathy from anyone else. I write, because there is someone else out there who needs to know they’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed, especially at times when we are expected to be happy and joyful and hopeful. I write because it’s cathartic for me, to help me cull so many simultaneous thoughts and emotions into better focus.

And maybe, just maybe, there comes the day when it all makes sense, my Epiphany, when I can close those old wounds for good.

 

 

I will wait for it. I'm not too late for it.

Absolem used to lament my penchant for hyperanalysis, especially coupled with my impulsivity.

“You don’t think, and then you think, and then you overthink!”

I mean, he’s not wrong. I can be suddenly and passionately reactionary, then take the time to process and ponder, then spend even more time breaking down every movement and choice of words and determining where I could have changed course.

What I’ve learned through a year of therapy using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model is that this is reflective of my parts—either “managers” or “firefighters” trying to protect some “exile” created from trauma—being blended with my Self. Some firefighter swoops in to act quickly, Self determines there likely could’ve been a better way, and some manager dwells on the minutiae for its own future reference.

In theory, it’s not necessarily a bad process to handle action and reflection. It gives those parts a chance to debrief and report back to Self. The problem comes when the parts effectively hijack Self, becoming blended, and the initial action is so reactionary as to be unhealthy.

And that hyperanalysis only ever stops if I am busy and distracted to the point of self-exhaustion.

Sometimes, though, it serves to let me evaluate a situation over time. In both my relationship with DH and later with Rango, our problems became so toxic to the relationship that things seemed insurmountable. But, in each case, I agreed to step back and take the time to move more slowly, to let us both reflect and reassess, to try to come toward the relationship and each other from a different perspective. In some ways, I should’ve broken up with Rango more than a year before I did. But giving us four months of separation, living apart, allowed for the time to try.

For me—hell, for anyone—ending a significant relationship is never easy. Once I’m attached to someone, it can take me a very long time to disentangle. This is part of having an anxious attachment style. So, when something happens that pushes me to feel vulnerable and emotionally injured (usually reminiscent of some past trauma), I can be quick to pull away, with every intention of ending the relationship. When I’ve had time to think about it, I’ll regret the suddenness of the separation, and then I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time in self-analysis, sometimes to the point of extreme self-recrimination.

I’ve spent the last year trying to learn to rewire my thinking, especially when it comes to how I react to emotionally-charged circumstances.

Taking the time to try to reconcile in those previous relationships made the eventual ending less painful. Choosing to end my 19-year marriage was hard as hell, make no mistake, but it was the right decision, in the end. While DH and I inflicted some serious damage on one another, I was eventually able to disengage. As painful as it was, I knew it was time and had no regrets about making the decision when I did. Similarly, taking the time to see if Rango and I could rebuild our relationship was absolutely the right choice, even if the result wasn’t what I’d hoped for. When that ended, I was sad for a time, but I also had zero question about whether it was really time to let go. Rango and Sass were dead, and I had no interest in holding onto that zombie.

Although my reasons for ending my relationship with Bumblebee were valid and healthy, I felt like the air had been sucked out of me. I have never missed someone as much as I missed him. While the reality of long-distance relationships is difficult to manage, there is no question that we love each other deeply. There’s no question that we have potential for a lasting, healthy, loving relationship like I’ve never experienced before. There’s also no question that the distance and the circumstance may be insurmountable.

But I have to try. I have to give this a chance to overcome the odds. Yes, it’s easier for me to move forward if I know there is absolutely no going back. But he also loves me in ways I have never before experienced.

So, the parts and I had a long talk. Could we walk away now, cleanly and comfortably, or did we want more time to see?

Above all else in my life, I do not want regrets. I would rather fail miserably at an opportunity I took than to let an opportunity slip away. And if I have reason to second-guess my decisions, I will.

So, Bumblebee and I have come to the decision to try. More specifically, to wait. He needs time to deal with logistics in his life. I need time to make sure I’m as healthy and well-equipped to handle a relationship as possible. We have agreed to wait for the other to be ready, to keep talking and maintaining connection, but also to remove other expectations and the pressures that come with them.

There is a love that we don’t want to lose. Maybe that still happens, no matter what we do. But there is also the possibility that we are able to weather this storm, together, and beat our own odds.

And I’ve never known anyone so worth the risk.

 

 

And almost immediately I felt sorry, 'cause I didn't think this would happen again.

One of the things that inevitably comes up in dating is the topic of sex. Sometimes it comes quickly in the form of lewd flirting (sometimes leading to casual sexting). Sometimes it’s a more nuanced, philosophical discussion that may eventually lead to more intimate talk of pasts, of number of partners and STD testing. Maybe eventually to turn-ons and turn-offs.

But, inevitably, it comes.

There’s the unspoken rule of 3-5 dates. Depending on the attraction and the connection, that seems to be the idealized amount of time to wait before getting naked. Sometimes the first or second date seems right, if the conversation has been, as well. Every so often, it’s not about the talk at all—just the carnal need.

But sex is an accepted part of the equation. We are inherently physical, social beings. We need touch from others. We crave intimate connection—even for just a few moments, and not matter how emotionally avoidant we are.

“Why does everything have to be framed around sex?” a recent dating interest asked. “Why can’t people just be friends and then try to meet in those terms?”

He sounds wise, but he eventually asked me for a casual sexual relationship in lieu of emotional attachment. (I named him Ollivander, because he makes magic wands but turned out to be a douche.) His own fearful-avoidant tendencies keep him from maintaining emotional connection, and he has sublimated his desires into other work.

But that’s the thing about dating: we are all looking with the possibility of sex. Even those who wait for marriage have the hope that it comes eventually. That’s kind of the point.

For me, it’s so much more complicated. I have no conscious memory of not being sexualized. The molestation began at about the time long-term memories began to form. It is often tied up with what should be benign remembrances of lazy afternoons and family gatherings. But there are long stretches of years of average childhood that are permanently tainted by those events.

Just before I was ready to choose to be a sexually-active teen, I was raped by a date. I’ve discussed that aftermath at length, both here and privately. There’s no question that it altered my perceptions of myself and of sex in general. My next relationship was physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive. I stayed in it, because I didn’t know better. Love meant hurt, and there was no deeper wound to be found. Other, later relationships often involved withholding and degradation as punishment for my imperfections, especially emotional ones. I often spent months at a time in my long-term committed relationships being ignored and untouched, told it was because I was too needy or too loud or too demanding or too flawed in so many ways.

Over the last 5+ years of dating, I have met all kinds of men. Some were remarkable and fantastic, only to turn out to be incapable of maintaining the connection with me that they so adamantly claimed to want and need. Some were sweet but not right in any way but sexually. Some were just assholes.

But I have always been looking for the one who could maintain both physical and spiritual connection.

That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I hear from securely-attached, happily-married friends that it’s not. Sure, shit gets in the way, and there are ebbs and flows. Life happens. But a healthy couple is able to maintain their intimate relationship, no matter what seems to intervene.

Recently, I met a man. We hit it off immediately. It was intense and passionate, spiritual and deeply intimate. It was romantic and idyllic and powerful.

But after a whirlwind, it started to unravel. The first red flags began to wave when I realized he was drunk and driving. He’d made a viable excuse and rescheduled plans with me. Except he was elsewhere, inebriated, and I was yet again faced with a man who was using substance to instill distance between his feelings and mine.

“No,” I said. “This is not okay.”

I cut it off, hurt and angry. And then I found out he had a girlfriend of four months.

It all made sense. It was sickening and difficult. I never would’ve engaged him had I known—and he was well aware of that. I was not a consideration to anything but his twisted needs.

It was shocking, of course. It was fucked up, and the more I learned, the more fucked up it became. It was calculated and methodically manipulative.

But how the hell did I do this again? Hadn’t I had enough therapy to know better, to see better, to be better?

“But you saw it quicker and more clearly,” Queen Frostine comforted. “That’s good.”

Maybe. But how the hell did I get here again?

“You want to connect, in this way and this way and this way,” my therapist said. “Your system, some protector, is analyzing everyone, seeing what boxes they check. When all the boxes are checked, she’s done her due diligence. She steps out of the way.”

Of what? I thought. What other part is she protecting?

In the Internal Family Systems model, there are subparts of the personality that act is protectors. Managers manage, and firefighters come in to take care of shit. They’re doing the best they can to protect exiles, the emotional compilations that manifest in response to trauma.

That manager was protecting an exile: my sexuality.

Since my divorce, I have been in fucked up relationship after fucked up relationship. Bounder and Rango and Rex and Katniss and the list goes on. Most don’t have names at all. There are simply too many of them to readily remember at this point.

Every time, I was looking for intimacy. I was looking for redemption for past hurt. I have written extensively about what I want in a partner and a relationship, so my entire system is very, very aware of what I want and need.

Part of that redemption is, ultimately, for the sex. Yes, my body—hell, my entire being—has been a sexual object. But it is really the objectification of my vulnerability and my innocence that is the real crime. The simplistic compartmentalization of me into very basic terms reduced me to an almost inhuman state in their psyches. Sometimes in my own. In many ways, I internalized the same valuations of me and acted accordingly. If someone who said they cared about me saw me this way, that must be the truth of who I am.

I am overly analytical. I constantly observe and break down every detail of everything. I have a degree in multiperspectival, interdisciplinary interpretation. I spend inordinate amounts of time seeing how seemingly unrelated things are intertwined, peeling apart the meaning created by that relationship. People are especially a target of that analysis.The only time that stops is when I'm having great sex.

Once that protector sees the potential object of my affection as being what I want and need, she allows access to my sexuality. That exiled, traumatized aspect so desperately wants to be redeemed, to be loved in healthy ways, that she will preen until she’s a twisted, beautiful, origami delight.

They seemed safe, but they weren’t safe, and I had no way to know, because my protector was nowhere to be found.

For years, I operated from the place of fuck or be fucked. If I could control it, I had the power, and no one could hurt that part of me again.

But what I’m realizing is that even now, four decades after it started, I am still powerless. I am rarely Self-led or centered in regard to sex. I am perpetually trying to find validation, even when there isn’t love. I don’t inherently believe love is necessary for great or even good sex. I do believe sex is better when it is the manifestation and expression of commitment and trust and respect.

I just don’t know how often I’ve actually experienced that.

It’s foundationally unsettling to realize I am so deeply damaged. Yes, it’s impossible to get to mid-life without some kind of hurt and damage. I’m often proud of my scars, knowing what I’ve survived.

But I also realize that I may never be okay. I may never be healthy or normal. It is impossible for me not to see myself and my life through a libidinous lens. It is hard-wired into me, quite literally. And sex is a vital part of life and love.

How am I ever supposed to repair this hurt, heal these wounds, when I am perpetually tearing myself open from the inside? How will I ever be able to do such work outside of a relationship, when the bounds of sexual intimacy necessarily include another person?

This is the reality of sexual abuse. It lasts far, far longer than the act itself. With and without therapy, it changes the abused, alters how they see and respond to every single thing from that point forward.

I debated whether or not to post this. It’s a difficult read. It was difficult to write. But I started Muchness and Light both to give myself a voice and to let someone else, anyone else who needed it, know that they were not alone.

You, reading this, who needs to hear these words: you are not alone. I feel your pain. It’s a terrible shared connection, but it is real. Someone else gets it; I get it. You are strong and you are beautiful and you are loved.

We will find a way together.

 

 

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.

During and after my break-ups of recent years, I have lamented why I wasn’t worth their fight. There is a lot of good about me, so why wasn’t it good enough? Was there something inherently broken, or was there something about me that was so bad that it outweighed the good?

In part 2 of this series, I wrote about what I find valuable in a partner. In part 1, I wrote about what I find to be valuable about myself. In hindsight, I do believe that the men I’ve loved found me inherently valuable. Whether or not they valued themselves, I’m not even sure I know, though their actions would indicate they valued themselves above all others.

But one of the things I realized recently is that we didn’t necessarily value the same things in a relationship. Shared interests and similar social and political leanings cannot sustain romantic interaction, if both parties aren’t looking for similar things in romance.

So what do I value in a relationship?

I value communication. It’s important for me to be in regular contact with the person I’m dating. It doesn’t have to be constant, though I fully admit that I am a very active texter, emailer, and caller. I will think of something that I want to share with that person, and I’ll send it before considering any ramifications. I don’t expect that there will always be an immediate reply, but it is important to me to get a response eventually. Ongoing conversation builds rapport, expresses affection in subtle ways, and strengthens bonds. But it’s just as important to me that expectations—of plans, of emotions, etc.—be shared. Far too often, I have inferred one thing to be true, only to be met with irritation that my interpretation was not at all what the other person intended.

I value reliability. Interaction doesn’t have to be constant, though it does have to be regular. Just as importantly, I have to be able to rely on the person to be there. Both because it’s just downright irritating when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and because I have this deep-seated fear of abandonment, I need my partner to show up. I need them to show up when they say they’re going to, but also when they should. Dismissing important events or forgetting to do the logistical things that you’ve promised to do is an indicator that something in the relationship isn’t worth your time and effort. If you tell me you’re going to do something, show up and do it.  

I value kinesis. I spent a lot of time during my marriage and later in my relationship with Rango sitting around and waiting. I was waiting for them to get up on a weekend or waiting for them to get home from working late again or waiting for them to finish what they were doing to join me (or me and the boys) to do whatever. I stagnated in my marriage, and I became stagnant again during that subsequent relationship. It’s not that I can’t just sit and chill sometimes, but I enjoy going for walks at the park or going to see a concert or a show at a museum. But I also value emotional kinesis. I need movement forward. Not necessarily toward a goal of cohabitation or marriage [in part because I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to do either of those again!], but at least toward shared future. Happily ever after shouldn’t mean stopping at some self-imposed pinnacle and hoping the balance of my life stays exactly the same.

I value family. My boys are a huge focus of my life, and that’s not changing any time soon. My extended family is important to me, and my girlfriends are the sisters I never had. Whomever becomes a part of my life becomes a part of that. It’s vital that we forge our own sense of family, as well, and that necessarily includes my babies.

I value safety. Yes, physical safety is a big deal. I was in one physically abusive relationship and for far, far longer than I like to admit. But emotional safety, for me and for my partner, is just as important. The relationship needs to be a safe space to share feelings and thoughts and ideas, without recrimination. Far too often, I have felt punished by my partner for expressing emotions he didn’t like. In healthy love, there’s no tolerance for stonewalling or emotional abuse.

I value passion. Look, physical passion may well dwindle after that ubiquitous honeymoon phase, but the loss of physical intimacy is the death knell for a relationship. I know; I’ve been there twice. Sex is natural (and wonderful and fun) and is a healthy expression of emotion and trust between two people. For me, a loving relationship will necessarily be emotionally and physically intimate.

I can write about what I want or need, what’s important to me in a relationship. But until I’m actually in a relationship again, I have no way to put these things into practice. Queen Frostine commented that my break-up with Finn was probably the healthiest and most mature I’d ever had. I do believe that I’m capable of clearly discerning when something is not working for me, of giving it time to grow rather than starting from a place of intense, immediate emotion, and of evaluating clearly whether or not the other person may be a healthy, cohesive match for me.

So I’m going to try dating again. At least theoretically, I’m open to the possibility.

But I’m also going to keep spending more time doing the things that are fulfilling to me, even if I don’t have a partner to join me. I’ve done a couple of 5Ks this year. I joined a fantastic philosophy discussion group that meets monthly. I’ve started volunteering.

If I meet someone who wants to join me for some things, I’m willing to let someone into that space. But I’m also keeping that space well-defined. It has taken me a very long time to realize that I’m worth my own effort, and I’m not willing to let that stagnate again.

 

 

But I don't need a man who doesn't understand the difference separating need and trust.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” This is not the first time I’ve mulled over that famous Warren Buffett quote. When I first started grappling with defining my own value and self-worth, I examined Buffett in relation to the Dutch poet Lucebert, who wrote, “All things of value are defenseless.”

The price any person is willing to pay to make themselves truly defensible, whether to themselves or to others, is at the core of their value.  Sometimes we do stupid things that tear that down, that devalue us in the eyes of others or in our own mind's eye.  Sometimes we do things inadvertently that drive up our value, and perhaps those acts are somewhat less important when we aren't really striving or sacrificing to make them happen. 

I think it's the acts and actions we require of ourselves to actively defend ourselves that make us valuable, that make us worthwhile.  And when those acts are performed in the face of adversity, especially self-adversity, they can often be those most costly while offering us the most to gain. 

Value is a manifestation of worth, which is some mystical, magical ratio of cost to benefit. But for something to even have a cost—or a benefit—it has to have been traded. It has to have been utilized in a market, in an exchange.

It has to have been subject to experience.

Relationships are all about negotiating each partner’s needs and wants. It feels kind of seedy to think of it as a debit-and-credit system, but it is a similar give-and-take. In healthy relationships, both partners do a good job of expressing their own needs, of fulfilling what they can for themselves, and of being able to rely on their significant other to be willing to fill in any gaps that they can. It’s delicately symbiotic. If any partner consistently takes too much or gives too little, it quickly shifts to parasitic, and one or both partners suffer as the relationship dies.

What is exchanged has both a cost and a benefit, which is totally subjective to each party to the exchange. That mystical, magical ratio is evaluated—sometimes over a long period of time, sometimes instantaneously—and out pops the worth for the evaluator.

When writing before about my own relationship goals—in early 2013 just before I met Bounder and again in 2014 just before I met Rango—the things I could articulate as wants and needs were themselves manifestations of more basic qualities of a person. I still agree with most of those desires, but I can see how those laundry lists are driven by providing relief from past experience. I cherry-picked moments from different relationships and looked for someone who could engage me in ways that were reminiscent of my past.

Now, though, I understand that the actions are expressions of traits I value in a romantic partner, and the worth I assign is based on my own lifetime of experiences, of gains and losses, and how I evaluate the costs and benefits of previous relationships. At the heart of each of those listed wishes, are there more basic attributes that I would value, regardless of the man who possesses them?

I value intelligence. Maybe it’s snobbish of me, but I just can’t date a stupid guy. It’s important to me to be able to engage in thoughtful conversation with my partner on a variety of topics both sacred and profane, and I don’t have the patience to have to define my vocabulary mid-conversation. I don’t expect someone else to know everything about the topics I do, nor would I want to know everything they know. But I thrive exchange of ideas, and that necessitates a certain intelligence.

I value patience. I am incredibly impatient. Motherhood has taught me a million ongoing lessons in patience, but I am still prone to jump headfirst into a moment without significant deliberate thought. (That tends to come after the fact, historically with self-recrimination.) It’s important for me to be with a partner who can remind me to slow down, who is willing to wade through my thought process to whatever realization I eventually come to. Sometimes I need the reminder to stay on task, in the moment.

I value expressive affection. In the realm of Love Languages, I have equal needs for quality conversation and physical touch. I both need to touch and to be touched. But there has to be emotion beneath the skin-to-skin contact. Hand-holding and hugs and random kisses are a physical manifestation of care and concern. I need to hear that I matter and why. Acts of service and gifts are nice, but they mean very little to me if they’re incongruous with words. For some people, outward expressions are difficult. For me, they are a necessity.

I value passion. Yes, sexual passion is incredibly important to me, but I also value a general passion for life. I want a partner who is passionate about his beliefs and his work, who combines them into a personal purpose. I love what I do, and it’s saddening when I meet people who don’t enjoy the work that consumes a third or more of their life.

I value compassion. Whether it’s toward me or toward themselves or toward the world at large, I find it valuable when my partner can feel and express empathy.

I value availability. Because I have a lengthy history with emotionally-avoidant men, I have been stood up, ignored, and dismissed more times than I care to remember. There are the logistics of availability, meaning our schedules have to match relatively well to be able to see one another. But emotional availability—a willingness and ability to be emotionally open and vulnerable—seems harder to come by. By this time of middle-aged dating, it’s virtually impossible to meet someone who doesn’t have some kind of damage. But I’m no longer willing to be trapped by someone else’s defenses.

I value bravery. Life is hard. Bad stuff happens. Sometimes it’s enough to make you want to shut down and crawl back under the covers until the world calms down. Everyone is afraid of hurt and failure and rejection. But there is strength in acknowledging the vulnerability that comes with fear and stepping forward anyway. I know the failures and the successes that come from facing your fears, and I cannot stomach another man who refuses to accept his own challenges.

Per our usual, Pandy and I have talked at length about my ideas of value. She asked me to turn the tables and think about what I’d want a partner to value in me.

“I don’t think it matters,” I told her.

I know what I value in myself, and that value comes from having paid a cost to become the person I am today. I also know what I value in someone else because of those same costs. I spent a lot of time getting my garden to grow. I weeded out the thorns, and now I’m culling the dead growth that could threaten to choke out my prize roses.

Someone else will have paid their own costs, had their own experiences before they come into my life. How they assess my worth to them will be based on their perceptions of their own needs and wants, their own successes and failures. Maybe my curiosity and quick smile mean more than my vocabulary. Maybe they place more value on my punctuality and dependability than on my tendency toward effusive, written expressions of emotion.

I’ve come to realize there’s something else that has its own set of values: the relationship itself. And what is valuable in one partner or another may not be at all what’s valuable in a relationship.

I’ll explore that topic in my next post.

This is the second in a three-part series. For the first post, please click here.