Welp. here I am again

[Mrin]

Hi folks,

As some of  you know I've had an on again/off again relationship with a woman for the last 5.5 years (it was mostly "on" in some format). Last August we were engaged. As of last Monday, we are over. And that will be our last chapter when it comes to be romantically together. 

I could go into all the sordid details but I don't have the energy. There wasn't any cheating. Or lying. Or addiction. Or any of the "big" things. In the end it all just came down fundamentally incompatible personalities. We had patterns for sure - every couple does. But this go around it became that the pattern was something that no matter how hard each of us tried not to trigger it, it could be and would be triggered by events completely outside of our control - any stress event. And, the one thing we know is that there will be external stress events as we grew old together. In the end, we had the "are you happy" talk and neither of us were. I was willing to keep working on us because I had made that commitment to her when we decided to "do it for real" this time. She wasn't - and that is probably the "right" decision. And so we ended it, on friendly terms.

And then I got pissed. I talked to a few people on the phone and got riled up. I felt betrayed. Duped again. You see, I was in a really good spot 15 months ago. We had cut our romantic ties. We were good friends. She was dating and I was happy for her. I was dating and excited to see where things were going to go with a special woman I had just met. And then it all came crashing down. We had lunch for me to train her on some tech work I had sent her way. She confessed that she had broken up with the perfect guy because he wasn't me. She only wanted me. And I dove right in. Head first. Didn't even look for the rocks. We gave it our all. We got engaged. We tried to be different this time. But in the end, it wasn't different. But looking back, I felt duped. Like she interrupted my life for her own whims. And didn't follow through. I felt like I has wasted 15 months of my life and it pissed me off. 

So I sent a few very nasty texts to her. I regret that. When I woke up in the morning I was still pissed but able to keep from lashing out at her. I sent her an email that basically said how I felt and that I would be putting myself in some sort of imposed "time out" to a) deal with all of these emotions and b) not lash out at her. So I severed everything I could between us. Told her I was blocking her on social media and not to take is personally. And that I would get back in contact with her when/if I had dealt with my "crap". See, I know that all of this - this anger... these feeling of betrayal... of wasting 15 months of my life... that's just my stuff. My way of making meaning of it all. Those are just my "stories". Doesn't mean that I don't feel them. Doesn't make them any less real than other stories. But it is my stuff to work out and I'm not going to inflict them on her. 

That's where I am right now. When I woke up last Tuesday I was 50% sad, 50% relieved and 50% pissed. Ya, you can see the issue there. Now, I'm some other mix totaling just 100% and it feels good. We did the final "getting of the stuff" yesterday and I felt this crazy sense of lightness as I drove away. I could breathe. Not sure why I felt that. Maybe it was putting our romantic relationship in the rear view mirror. Maybe it was just that I had been stressing out about the "final meeting". Or maybe it was some defense mechanism of mine to keep me from feeling the profound loss of someone who I love so much. Anyhow, it felt good and that's as far as I am going to get with that. 

So here I am. Single again. I'm going to lick my wounds for a bit and work through "my crap" for a while. And just enjoy living a simpler life with my two daughters. But sometime I'll get back in the saddle again. I always enjoyed dating. I enjoy meeting women. Thank God I'm an extrovert! And I look forward to it.

 

Mrin

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

Best of luck to you, Mrin.  Breakups are hard. 

[FMW]

You seem to have a pretty good attitude about it all now, that's great.  If you're smart you will learn whatever lessons were to be had from that relationship, appreciate any happiness you had together and then move forward with that positive attitude.  

[lana-banana]

So sorry to hear this, Mrin. You always write with thoughtfulness, insight, and compassion. It sounds like you're already in a pretty good place mentally; wishing you the best as you go forward.

Edited January 20, 2020 by lana-banana

[Artdeco]

I’m sorry! I’m always sad when I read that people break up, even though they did love one another so much. Want to share what happened?                                                
 

sending you hugs either way 

[greymatter]

I am just seeing this. So sorry to hear. I always appreciate reading your posts and was happy for you when you two were heading toward formalizing things. This really surprises me, but also, makes sense given what you've shared. It sounds very hard, even though you sound like you are doing okay. 

[Mrin]

Thank you. I appreciate the warm words. A little update: life has been pretty interesting since immediately after The End. It is as if the Universe jumped right in front of me and tried to cheer me up and distract me. It has almost become surreal. 

As some of you might have read, I discovered I have a half sister and she's a pretty rad person. No one knew - including her. I'm genuinely happy about it and get to meet her and her family next weekend.

A very pretty blonde just popped into my life about the same time too. Like stop the presses pretty. She's also a very intelligent and seemingly good person. She lives not far from me. I'm a ways away before I start dating but I have to appreciate her coming into my life like that. 

I've hung out with my friends more in the last two weeks than have in the last twelve months. They've been great. My work is fun and rewarding. 

And just today I received a random check in text from the woman I was really excited about and had gone on two dates with just before my ex sprung the "let's get back together and do it right" thing on me. She appears to be single and would like to have dinner next weekend. Who knows...

It is almost like reality has snapped back into place to where it basically was 15 months ago. 

Hey if the Universe wants me to be happy, who am I to argue? I'm going with it. 

 

Mrin

Edited January 27, 2020 by Mrin

[scooby-philly]

Congrats on all the good news! @Mrin

5 months out of a relationship myself - my sadness of my own doing. Now I'm still waiting on the universe to give me that hot blonde...lol. But I'm trying to work back to being a man of joy who's happy and radiating it most of the time.

[Ruby Slippers]

It sounds like you're bouncing back just fine. For many of us, most relationships won't last forever. The best we can do is be thankful for all the wonderful times. I think that at the end of our time on this earth, those beautiful memories of love will be one of the best comforts.

[Mrin]

Thought I'd give an update in case this helps anyone going through the same process.

Life: Life in general is going great. I'm healthier than I have been in a long time. My career/work is really good and I'm getting lots of time to ski this year. My daughters and I have planned two vacations - amazing how much easier it is to plan vacations when you only have one custody schedule, one work schedule and three very similar people to pay and plan for. Ha! I met my new found half sister and her family. They are awesome! 

Friends and Family: Friends and family have been awesome. Like really awesome. Funny thing, when you end end a relationship, it gives everyone the opportunity to share what they are really thinking. My family has been more or less supportive of my ex - which is good. But my friends really let me have it for ever thinking it would work out much less proposing to her. I had to tell one that while I appreciated her opinion I needed her to back off as my ex is someone I still care about and I won't let someone vilify her like that. 

My Heart: My heart is surprisingly happy. I feel a really huge sense of relief. Looking back, aside from the personality difference that doomed us, I see two other things. 1) the relationship was grossly lopsided. Part of that was by design - we fashioned our relationship intentionally as a big umbrella, little umbrella type thing. But part of that was just who she was. She wasn't able to contribute to my half of the relationship. Time. Monetarily. Or really in any way. It wasn't that she's a selfish person or anything of the like. It is just more her nature to receive and not give. That is cool in some ways because it scratches the alpha male provider itch for me. But when everything I was doing for her was received with indifference and often disdain, the way I felt about my labors of love quickly went from good to toxic. It surprised me how quick that shift occurred.

2) The engagement thing was actually a really good thing. For me, when we became engaged and then things went downhill I had this very pronounced "do not want!" reaction. If we had just been dating I would have been more inclined to weather the storm. But because we were engaged all I could think about is "I don't want this to be this way for the rest of my life". That made me realize that in the past, with this relationship and others, I had tolerated intolerable or even toxic situations because of the lack of permanence.  I mean, we were just dating, right? I could leave at any time. But the second we became engaged, the permanence of thing whole thing  became intolerable if she was going to be that way. I am sure that worked the same for her. I've made a vow to myself to speak up in future situations and not tolerate such things - in relationships and even friendships. '

I've insisted on No Contact which has really been Low Contact as we disentangle our lives. She did initiate a swap of closure emails which was annoying and cathartic. 

Romance: That has been kinda cool and weird. Three women who I dated or talked to in the past when my ex and I were on breaks have contacted me. Actually more (which is really odd) but only three of whom that i'm interested. 

I met up with one a couple of weeks ago. She's a neurologist and we hit it off - again. Platonically but we're going snowshoeing together next week. The second is a tiny but darn cute dentist that I'm going to see next week as well. She's -9 years though. The third is a marketing executive in my field. We had flirted during a break about 3 years ago - we were both on breaks from our on/off again lovers at the time. We're meeting up next week as well. It sounds like she may be at the tail end of her own journey with her on/off again lover. Unlike the first two who don't have children, she has two. The first two are very portable - they could easily move to my location. The last has a job that she does remotely so we could definitely do the here/there thing. Anyhow, who knows what will happen but I enjoy the company of attractive women. There is also a local woman who is *gulp* really young. We are just friends right now and probably will just stay that way. Never know though... 

Now, for the really weird head scratcher. I had mentioned that a very pretty blonde entered my life. We did a lunch together and the chemistry was palpable. She asked for a second date and came up to visit me last week. Now, before I get into the nitty gritty she professed to be a conservative Christian who was very old fashioned. Not my politics, not my religion. But I liked the old fashioned-ness because I didn't want to jump into anything and thought a couple of G rated dates with a model quality tall blonde was just what the doctor ordered. She came up and I took her skiing. The first half of the date was great - G rated. Lots of good conversation. She's also in the medical field so had lots of cool stuff to learn about. The snow was falling heavily and she needed to drive 90 minutes back to her home so I told her that instead of heading back to my place and having me make dinner for us, we would instead stop in town have a cocktail and grab an early dinner. She was very appreciative of my concern for her safety. So we stopped at one my favorite bars and ordered a round of drinks. We were two sips into them and talking about each of our personal journeys to God when she blurted out that she was *this* close to diving across the table and riding my face until she passed out. And it escalated from there. I mean we went from Jesus to anal in 30 seconds. 

Turns out that under that conservative Christian old fashioned exterior she was some sort of hyper-orgasmic sex addict. The next 2.5 hours were a blur of extremely freaky behavior and sex talk. I mean the tamest of the stuff was NC-17. I'm a Dom and not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but this was... over the top. I thought we were going to get kicked out of the restaurant. After the meal I took her back to my place and the drive was half driving, half self defense. When we arrived she did this sort of live action debate with herself between "I'm a good girl, I don't do this on a second date!" and "take me roughly now". I'm not a hookup guy so I put an end to it by telling her nothing else was going to happen because I didn't want her to have any regrets. That was like throwing gasoline on the fire. But, when she was having one of her "I'm a good girl" moments I made her a cup of coffee and said she needed to be getting back before the roads closed. I put her in her car, she said something so X rated that I can't even figure how to tone it down for this post. I had to pull her out of the driveway because of the snow. She took off driving way too fast and plowed into a snowbank - hard. Like 8 feet into one. I pulled her out again and escorted her to the highway where things were more plowed. 

And that's it. I'm not entirely sure what that was. I mean, I think I'm a magnetic guy but I think there was a lot more going on there than my good looks. She probably would be a lot of fun but I'm not interested in that sort of fun.  I think she was terribly embarrassed by what happened. We've since swapped the "hey lets just be friends" texts. At the end of the day, I'm not looking for a FWB and she's certainly not someone I could bring home to my girls or my mom - OMG can you imagine?!

So that's my update. Hope it helps!

 

Mrin

 

 

 

 

[Els]

Wow. That last girl literally sounds bipolar to me, lol!!

Glad you are doing well, @Mrin .

[Mrin]

2 hours ago, Elswyth said:

Wow. That last girl literally sounds bipolar to me, lol!!

Glad you are doing well, @Mrin .

Whoa. I hadn't actually considered it but that might be the case. It was very Jeckle and Hyde. 

[Els]

1 hour ago, Mrin said:

Whoa. I hadn't actually considered it but that might be the case. It was very Jeckle and Hyde. 

Yes, I'd freak the f*** out too if anyone did that, lol!

I hope you don't mind me  asking about the last relationship - it's all over now and if you would rather not rehash, then tell me to shut up and I will. But when you were talking about the uneveness "by design", I understand that you were referring to the 24/7 D/s nature of your relationship, if I recall correctly?

I do wonder if starting off immediately with these dynamics in a new relationship is a bad idea, or if 24/7 D/s just has the unfortunate side effect of causing this? Or am I completely off the mark?

 

[Mrin]

1 hour ago, Elswyth said:

Yes, I'd freak the f*** out too if anyone did that, lol!

I hope you don't mind me  asking about the last relationship - it's all over now and if you would rather not rehash, then tell me to shut up and I will. But when you were talking about the uneveness "by design", I understand that you were referring to the 24/7 D/s nature of your relationship, if I recall correctly?

I do wonder if starting off immediately with these dynamics in a new relationship is a bad idea, or if 24/7 D/s just has the unfortunate side effect of causing this? Or am I completely off the mark?

 

No worries. Happy to talk about it. So, we had stepped away from 24/7 D/s as it was impractical with basically two different households and only being able to be together for 50%-75% of the time. But we did have a contract that it basically kept a lot of the Big Umbrella/little umbrella type themes that put me in the provider/protector role and her in the nurturer/caretaker role. So that's what I mean by by design. 

As I look back on it, I think it was this "little bit D/s" that contributed to that particular problem. While it put us somewhat in these two roles it didn't do it very forcefully. Like if we were back in 24/7 D/s and if she were treating me with disdain it would have gotten handled quickly. But in this squishy in between, I was pretty much killing myself to raise her boys, raise my girls, pay for as much of our combined expenses as possible, being in charge of two households as much as possible, and being met with disdain or derision. I have to back up here a second - there was a big personality issue between us. She is the type of person that takes her stress out on the people around her by being mean and when I pointed it out to her, she didn't see it as an issue. More like, "I do this because you/they know I love them and don't really mean it - they are a "safe place" for me to work out my stress." Yeah, I know... I hadn't quite spotted it because in the past I was a contributor to her stress so her ire at me seemed logical. But the events of the last 4.5 months were a bunch of outside stressors hit her and she just became mean. For months on end and when she wasn't mean she was completely emotionally shut down. In this squishy little bit D/s world, our relationship was very lopsided without contractual commitments from the parties to deal with it. So it felt like I was doing everything and being met with disdain and meanness.

Aside from the by design lopsidedness, there were other things about her that made it really lopsided that aren't really relevant. Happy to talk about them, but not really relevant. 

Anyhow, so back to your questions:

1. I think this is a byproduct of "little bit D/s". If we had been full on 24/7 this could have been addressed. Still might not have worked out but it would have been addressed instead of festering. If we had been two equal umbrellas, then it wouldn't have been so lopsided. It was kind of the worst of both worlds...

2. Going right into 24/7 D/s: We actually had been together for 2.5 years (and had one breakup) before we experimented with D/s. In some ways that was great because we already had established so much trust with each other than going D/s wasn't a leap of faith. But, we also had a lot of ingrained patterns that made it really easy for either of us to fall out of D/s. At some point I'll get into a real relationship again. I know I won't be happy until there is a D/s aspect to it. Obviously the bedroom stuff but also outside. I think I would not want to start that at the beginning, but also not too far into the relationship that patterns have formed. I'm sure someone has written some more learned stuff on this. I dunno, what do you think @Elswyth?

 

Mrin

 

 

[Els]

15 hours ago, Mrin said:

. At some point I'll get into a real relationship again. I know I won't be happy until there is a D/s aspect to it. Obviously the bedroom stuff but also outside. I think I would not want to start that at the beginning, but also not too far into the relationship that patterns have formed. I'm sure someone has written some more learned stuff on this. I dunno, what do you think @Elswyth?

Thank you for sharing, Mrin. Unfortunately I have more questions than answers about this, because I don't really have much personal experience with 24/7 D/s. I decided really quickly (after trying it with an ex for a short while) that it wasn't suitable for me in real life, and H and I have only ever done bedroom D/s (well, not just INSIDE the bedroom... but you get what I mean! 😄).

I do have a bit of a fascination with reading about it though, and I've followed several blogs written by couples who do 24/7. There's a wide range of different ways in which they started, but so far the only ones I've seen who actually lasted over a decade and are still happy, involved them being together for at least a few years before starting it. In fact, I've only ever seen ONE relationship that got past the 7 year mark and started with 24/7 D/s right off the bat or close to it, and that one's an on-and-off clusterf***.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just inferring a pattern that doesn't actually exist. But starting "not at the beginning but not too far in" sounds like the worst of both worlds to me. You are getting potentially invested in the person without even knowing whether they are or aren't into D/s (if that's a need for you), yet you might not have the strong foundation of equals that might help prevent an uneven situation from occurring.

(I do think that bedroom D/s is a lot simpler and has far fewer implications on the rest of the relationship, but you need what you need.)

[2BGoodAgain]

hmm... there will be ups and downs... times when you think you're in the clear, and other days when thoughts or feelings are invoked, uninvited consciously. 

hang in there for those times, but enjoy the good times... eventually, it'll all balance out and you'll be scott free.. of sorts.

Happy Valentine's!