And then there is no mystery left
October 24, 2008 at 8:44 pm | Posted in online dating, relationships, sex | Leave a commentTags: dating, first date, luke, seth, sex, therapy
Yes, so, clearly I’m having trouble keeping up with my update schedule. Sorry. But here goes:
I ended up agreeing to go out on a date with Luke last weekend. The good: he looked pretty much exactly like his pictures, but for a slightly weaker chin, so he was pretty cute. He managed to hold up his end of an intellectual conversation. He paid for everything (though really we just had drinks at several different bars). He had a yummy body (pale and skinny and hairless, with protruding hipbones and a tiny waist and freckles across his back). And the sex was good; I was impressed with his stamina and relentless enthusiasm.
The bad is, actually, too much for me to fully go into at this point. In summary, I really should have paid attention to the red flags I’d seen before I’d even met him. Yep. How many times do I need to relearn this lesson? Anyway, he displayed abominably bad manners, and while some of this can be chalked up to his total lack of experience with girls he can slap around in bed ( “oh wait, she’s not just a fucktoy? 😦 ” ), I’m also less than impressed with his communication skills and his ability to, like, not be a stupid fucking indecisive flake. OK then. I was willing to give him another chance and explain to him the rules of etiquette (primarily: hi, I’m still human, you need to treat me with some goddamn respect and appreciation if you want anything from me), but his ability to even allot me some time to finish this conversation is apparently nonexistent. SO NOT IMPRESSED. So I think I am going to just tell him TTYN. (By the way, I’ve become addicted to the new MTV show “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.” OMGWTFLOL.)
The good news is that going on a date with this dude who may justifiably now be labeled a Total Creep (and maybe many of you would have given him that label two months ago, but I guess I’m more generous/naive than that) has made me appreciate Seth a lot more. It seems the key to keeping that relationship in calm waters is to just avoid all possible party-related interactions in his company. I don’t deny that part of what makes me somewhat comfortable with this arrangement — more comfortable than I might otherwise be — is a healthy dose of denial about the extent and range of his other relationships. On the bright side, he has modified his OkCupid profile to indicate that he is way too busy to start dating anyone new. So I guess I’m on the permanent schedule, even if it is just once a week.
Meanwhile, I’ve started seeing a therapist — an intern, a student of the California Institute of Integral Studies. The first session (intake) went okay, but then again I didn’t let her talk much; she just asked background questions. The second session, this past week, was a little rougher. I once again talked almost the entire session, but I ended up talking a fair bit about poly and kink and giving her a perfunctory education on these things. I’m not sure whether her total ignorance will end up being problematic in the therapeutic relationship. I did manage to talk about nothing but Seth the entire session, which I thought was pretty funny. Relationships are a great diversion, like a tangled ball of yarn you can just sit and pick through for hours without getting much of anywhere. And I guess they make a good icebreaker for me. I talk about relationships to everyone — even to complete strangers like you! The deeper issues, whatever those are, will have to be worked up to. Earned, so to speak. Ha.
The other change that’s happened in me since my date with Luke is that I seem to be more eager to go out and find some more people to date. Who knows why? Maybe the one date was enough of a blow to my self-esteem that I feel like I need to go trolling for someone who will appreciate me more. And yes, even more than Seth. And with whom I can have a great intellectual conversation — that would be great. And as long as we’re wishing, how about some emotional bonding too? Not to get greedy or anything.
Nothing much else is happening, sorry to report. See you next week, by which time I hope to have at least two new prospective boytoys.
Lukewarm is not sexy
October 9, 2008 at 11:37 am | Posted in dating, relationships, sex | 5 CommentsTags: boyfriend, dating, girlfriend, luke, relationships, seth, sex, STDs
I’m on vacation this week, which in theory would mean that I should have lots of time for idle reflection and that sort of thing. Well, this isn’t actually the case, but I’m going to pretend it is for just long enough to write this post.
I saw Seth a few days ago for the first time in over a week, since he had been sick the week before. I wasn’t feeling much like going out with him, since I had a lot of shit I needed to get done and anyway I seem to be perpetually in a state of talking myself out of the relationship. But I showed up and then he showed up and the first thing he did was give me a mix CD for my long vacation drive. Aww! I’m a sucker for gifts. And it was a kinda cute thing to do. So the date went decently. After dinner we wandered over to Mitchell’s for ice cream and while we were eating it, he asked me, “So are we dating yet?”
“We’ve always been dating. We go out on dates,” I told him.
“I guess that’s true!” he responded, though not exactly happily.
“Are you trying to bring up the girlfriend/boyfriend thing again?”
“I was mostly kidding,” he said.
“OK.” I ate some more ice cream. “Wait — mostly kidding? I almost let that slip.”
He grinned at me uncomfortably from behind his sugar cone.
“I have to say I really don’t get the difference between a girlfriend and someone you’re dating when it comes to the polyamorous lifestye,” I admitted.
“That’s a good point.” He thought for a moment. “I guess it has to do with the expectation of continuity.”
I told him my only real hangup at this point is the whole sleeping-with-a-million people thing. We talked about STD testing and such. I told him that I knew it was my thing at this point, and that I just needed to decide whether I wanted to continue to accept so much risk to my “sexual health,” as they say.
He said he understood. “You haven’t decided whether you are committed to poly as a lifestyle or whether it’s just a passing thing, so it makes sense.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Well, if you were committed to the lifestyle you might be willing to take more risks for it because it’s a principle around which you organize your life.”
I looked at him. “Are you saying you want me to organize my life around you?”
He laughed at that and apologized for pushing so hard. I asked him why it was so important to him. And then he told me that it was because the last girl he’d dated from OkC had just up and disappeared after a month of dating. He was trying to prevent that from happening again.
Unfortunately, I failed to take this opportunity to reassure him that I would not disappear without warning. Honestly, it’s something I’d consider doing in general, but he’s been too nice to allow me to justify it.
Driving home that night, I realized that he was probably sticking with me — and interested in dating me in some consistent, reliable manner — for reasons that had little if anything to do with me as a person. He wants to be wanted; he wants to be able to consider this experience stable. And I guess that’s what I want, too, or at least the most basic level of it. Which is why it’s okay right now that we don’t have very much in common, that no crazy sparks are flying. We are, perhaps, just serving each other’s narcissistic ends in a perfectly complementary way.
Listening to his mix CD on the drive yesterday, I skipped about half the songs. Approximately two-thirds of the way through the compilation I began to seriously wonder whether this was just some random travelling music mix he’d had on his computer that he had simply burned and given to me — not made specifically for me, but presented that way in order to endear him to me. Am I unreasonably suspicious? Granted, he really has no good sense of my musical taste, nor has he had much of an opportunity to get one. But then why make a mix CD? The songs, for the most part, clearly aren’t about him, or me, or “us.” This possibility of having been given a generic mix CD depressed me. I’m also not sure whether I should bring it up, and how I could do so without seeming like an ungrateful bitch.
In other news, last night I received my first message from Luke in something like six weeks (i.e. whenever I last posted about him). It said:
Hi Jana,
I haven’t heard from you in a while. How are you doing?
Luke
What the hell? Luckily I was tipsy when I got this, and responded with:
i took an update in your profile a while back to mean that you and the girl had decided to take things between you more seriously. given that you wrote that you were looking only for new friends, and that you and i had already established that you wanted something more than “friendship” from me, i concluded that any possibility of interaction between us had been voided. the fact that you’re writing me now suggests that something has changed on that front, whether or not your girlfriend (or however she’s currently labeled) is aware of it. so what’s the story? in other words: what do you want?
This morning I got his reply:
Yep, the girl and I tried to take things more seriously. It turns out we were just meant to be friends. We left things on good terms. The result is that I’m single.
What I want is to take you out sometime. If you’re available, that is.
If not, no worries. I hope you’re well!
Ugh. Of course, being the person I am, I’m considering letting him take me out, despite the following red flags:
- He was willing to lie to the last girl he was dating regarding sleeping with someone else, which means
- He didn’t respect the last girl he was dating, and
- He was willing to risk her sexual health for this secret fling. Furthermore,
- He didn’t have the balls to tell me that he’d decided with his girl-thing to take things more seriously; he left it up to his OkC profile to inform me. Fucking lame. Finally:
- He doesn’t seem very interesting as a person.
I’m not sure I have it in me to date two guys at once with whom I am far more sexually than intellectually/emotionally compatible. It might get… tedious. And depressing. ALSO, for all I know he could be lying about having broken up with the other chick! Christ.
The reasons I might let him take me out:
- Free dinner. (And he’s a foodie = excellent free dinner.)
- The sex would be good, most likely.
- I am technically in a “poly” relationship and the amount of risk I’m taking being in it is totally stupid because I am not even reaping the benefit of that risk, which is that I get to sleep with whomever I want. So, like, I should start sleeping with more people.
That’s all I’ve got. Oh wait:
- My life is a sociological experiment focusing specifically on male-female relationships. More data!
So, it’s time to vote! Should I let him take me out? If yes, should I include caveats/conditions? Which?
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