mqx

I don't write about my dating life that much. It's a combination of not wanting to sound like every other whiner on the net, but, in reality, I don't really date that much. I don't date because I'm not really a master pick-up artist, and I don't get out enough to meet people the un-pick-up way. Getting older doesn't help, of course, as most of my friends are married, etc.

I met a very nice girl (woman) sometime last fall, and, like usual, I did find a way to mess things up. Oh, don't worry, I know how ... this isn't some random teen angst filled lecture on how women don't understand them or they don't understand women or wondering what they did wrong or blah, blah, blah. We broke up because I broke up with her.

Greta (not her real name ... while most people write revealing relationship blogs in hopes their jilted lover will read them and it leads to reconciliation, I'm man enough to say these things directly to her ... though a little more diplomatically, of course. So, if she does stumble across this, hopefully any embarrassment she might feel is tempered by a pseudonym. Yes, I know without a last name or my full name or whatever it would be really, really hard to know who I'm talking about, but just in case, Greta it is.) has a great sense of humor, plus a good heart. She is smart, cute, giving. She is one of, if not the most, easiest girl to get along with I've ever dated. A lot of very nice things; let that not be understated.

Oh, don't worry, I know the bad, too.

Our income levels are very, very different (she's quite well off.) This, I admit, bothers me a little; I'm a little old-fashioned. It bothers her, too. She's also a little old fashioned. This spills over into some related categories that make us both have trouble picturing the long term (for example, she wouldn't ever move out of her very nice house and I don't know how I would feel a sense of ownership in her and her ex-husband's very nice house.)

Speaking of spill over, she values career as much as personal relationships (in the past, more.) I've lived my whole life looking out for friends and family, sometimes over career. Of my core group of friends and family, no career I could ever love would be worth any one of them. Careers are something you do to get money and the only reason you need money is to buy food and shelter and a bunch of other useless crap you think you need. Like nice houses. But that stuff is important to her and I am not exactly a up trending asset, financial-wise.

As an aside, my friends Steve and Mary actually have a matriarchal household. She makes fat bank, he stays home and cooks, makes homemade bacon, grows fruit, teaches his dog to hunt, all of that. Not a bit old-fashioned. But they are the only friends I have and people I know that work that way.

Greta doesn't ever want another child. That's kind of a wash, as I'm not sure I ever want a child. But that would definitely cinch my decision.

Oh, and of course, there's sex stuff. In totality, I love being naked with her. Touching her, cuddling, sleeping, showering; all that stuff. But, she's pretty conservative, I get bored easy, and, on top of all that, I hadn't had sex in over three years. While my mind is always willing, my up and go isn't so great anymore. Maybe it'll come back, but I am older and I don't want to become reliant on pills (blue or otherwise.) Plus, when I'm over thinking relationships (more on that in a minute), it's hard to muster the proper enthusiasm. I know that has to disappoint her, no matter how many times I can make her orgasm in other non-intercoursey ways. It disappoints me. Ah, sweet shame spiral.

I just realized I'm kind of talking in the present tense, like we're still going out. More on that in a minute, too.

One of the oddest differences, which has been responsible for way more discussion time that it deserves, is that she is a very outgoing, social kind of person. I'm a very homebody, relaxing with friends and watching movies or TV kind of person. We've made this into a big deal and it's not, really. My parents take separate vacations, for example, and have been married for 42 years.

I don't mind going out or being social, usually. I just won't ever decide to do that on my own. Plus, her ex-husband was completely co-dependent (no friends, clingy, the whole bit.) While she's worried about how we'll spend our free time (in the long term), she's hitting me on the other side about being worried we'll spend too much time together or I'll be clingy. In truth, I would be okay with two or three nights a week of mutual activities even if we lived together, provided I got to cuddle up to her soft, sexy self every night. It's up to her to figure out how many of these so called social activities she wants me at and how many episodes of Lost she's willing to watch; but I'm about done dealing with it in the abstract. She might also want to not anticipate what I do and don't like, but we all do a little of that.

Did I mention she kind of sucks at this, too? Relationships, I mean. Did I mention the co-dependent ex-husband, who, whether she believes it or not, must have cheated on her during the last part of their (long) marriage, with a certainly that approaches scientific fact. Absolute fact emotionally, And no man with that much emotional attachment to someone can resist trying to fuck them. She put a lot of work into a lost cause, while he set the groundwork for his next marriage. Now, she had a clue, as he left a previous relationship to go directing into hers, so I can't feel completely bad; but it still sucks.

Anyway.

Her next boyfriend (the one before me) also pretty much cheated on her, but he had the decency to tell her as he was doing it. She slipped into stupid vulnerable girl mode (very, very rare for her, trust me) and excused his behavior for way too long. Along with a couple of other decisions I won't go into (even vaguely), her skills at this kinda worries me. I've made bad decisions, too, (more on that in a minute), but she doesn't seem to be aware of them, much less own them.

Anyway.

Then there's me. My main crime was being further along, emotional-wise, than her (which drove me to a greater crime, which I'll get to in a minute.) Further along means, say, if we were walking along a road .. not a post-meteor strike road like the one in Cormac McCarthy's The Road (though, I guess they're both love stories) .. but some kind of nice country road with lots of cool scenery; if we were walking along that road, through that country ... I'm about a mile out ahead. She's sort of meandering (which is a euphemism for her not being sure what she wants in a relationship/has set her standards unrealistically).

This isn't an aside about how I should treat her worse, like her ex's did, so she'll love me more. You outgrow that bullshit when you start dating women who have spines and are confident in their (well-paying) careers. The meanest thing I've ever done to her is doubt her.

Our lists of things we want in a relationship don't match up (they never do, perfectly) but I can't help that. To her credit, she's been re-examining her list, based on how I've treated her and what she likes about us; that, in turn, has helped my loosen up my list in ways I didn't know was tight. But, like all guys, no matter how patient, I'm impatient.

We've come to the crux. Greta is secretive. Actually, secretive is a little strong. But private isn't strong enough. She does little, fairly harmless things such as "I need to go a store and see if they have something and if they don't, I need to go somewhere else." (a nearly verbatim quote), instead of just saying "I need to get a handbag at Pennys. If they don't have one I like, I need to go to Macys."

Seems harmless, but it's not, in two ways. One, she's (by her own admittance) deciding what I think will be boring or not and what I thinks is important or not. All it really does is make me ask her more specific details (since I'm the only one that can determine what I think is boring or important), thus doubling the length of day to day filler chatter or making something important seem like she's hiding something.

Secondly, and more importantly, she uses one of my pet peeve concepts: she is willing to answer any questions I ask. Sounds great on first glance, right? It's not. It's a free pass to not tell me something, then fall back on "you should have asked me about that" or "you never asked." It's the concept of people either unwilling to unable to use simple common sense to determine what might be important to a relationship or conversation ... worst case, to hide things in their past that they are embarrassed about (such as an aforementioned unmentioned bad decisions, which I had to drag out of her and still haven't gotten the whole story ... "Was it orange?" "Yes." "Did it have claws?" "Yes." "Does it bark?" "No." "Is it a cat?" "Yes." "What was its name?" "First or last?") See how tedious that gets?

I am not a jealous guy, seriously. I do, however, need to think I know the truth. Yes, I used the word think on purpose. I don't really care if it is the truth, I just need to think it is.

I have been out with enough women to know what kind of communication doesn't make me crazy and "you can ask me anything", makes me crazy. If I can count on being told in a prompt manner and we had set the rules up in advance (yes, I'm a rules guy, too), she could be getting into all kinds of shenanigans that would drive most other guy's nuts.

So, with this looming secretive posture creeping into my subconscious, I committed a grievous and potentially fatal single sin: I doubted her.

Instead of going through the torturous process of asking her every little detail about my doubts or having her clarify a chunk of things we had argued about and almost broken up over a couple weeks ago instead of finding creative ways to pull information out or put information in, I doubted.

And stewed.

And over thought.

I imagined, speculated. I took the coward's way out and in a fit of morning sleepiness and thick doubt, I looked in something I shouldn't have. I broke a trust, thus losing my ability to call the kettle black.

On top of that stupidity, I did it badly. I used the information incorrectly, I misunderstood it. It set fire to the fears that were already there, causing a quick, burning anger. That lead to a hastily planned break-up (sorry, I don't have the energy to come up with a fire related break-up analogy), which was executed clumsily. Even as we talked about some of the things we should have been talking about, I was still convinced I was doing the right thing.

I also made another decision ... I didn't fess up what instigated my anger. After all, the ideas where already in my head, the new information (I thought) confirmed them, and that was that. Discussing the source of the information would have turned the discussion into the source of the information, instead of the core problems already floating around.

Obviously that was another layer of dishonesty on my part, which I had no intention of trying to cover up further past the point of her asking me about it. "Did you get this information from 'X'?" "Yes." I fessed up immediately.

Ironically, I just realized I (unintentionally) used her own philosophy against her. She had to ask anything she wanted and then I told her. She was pretty pissed, though, so I guess I don't fully understand the core concept.

That snide aside isn't trying to deflect what I did. I did something wrong. I felt bad, and on top of that, as I felt bad, as I realized I had overreacted, as she informed me of how wrongly I had interpreted the information I stole, as all that happened ... I came to the conclusion I had made a mistake. I'm way up the road, remember ... what the fuck am I doing running off to hide in the grass? If she doesn't want to catch-up eventually, then she needs to pull the plug (also not interested in finding a proper road ending analogy). Yeah, it means I'll be further up the road and it will be really, really painful when she does it ... but maybe she'll catch up or maybe I'll slow down or maybe the things that bother me will slow me up enough for her to meet me on equal ground, and maybe, maybe the road will end naturally, at a cute little (very nice) B&B, with tasty waffles and home smoked bacon.

But I broke up with her.

And, despite sending a well-crafted, clever and humble email asking for forgiveness, it's in her hands now. As I knew it would be, the source of the information is now the issue, not the underlying problems (which does not fill me with a happy "I told you so" feeling.) Don't get me wrong, the problems are still there. They aren't going to magically disappear if she decides to get back together ... but they can be dealt with, as they come up.

The mistrust issues have to go away, obviously, on both sides. It is a cancer (a road cancer, fuck you, analogies) that leads back to her mistrust, or my doubt. And, being a grown-up, I can't use her secretive nature as my excuse. I can't compare myself to her past relationships and try to point out the ways I didn't cheat on her or treat her badly.

I just have to wait. In the road.

And two-thousand and four hundred words later, you realize why I don't write about dating very often.