A confusing, disappointing morning several days back has really put me into a tailspin mentally.
I’m never going to be normal, I’m never going to feel and think what mainstream society says or expects I should. Which I don’t actually care about (for me), but I do care in the sense that it will matter to my potential partners. If they feel the same as the larger society, than that means I’ll be abnormal to them as well. I’m not going to feel complete in a storybook romance.
Just because I feel loved, doesn’t mean I have all the love I need. Just because I have someone to love, doesn’t mean my heart is full. I can be poly, monogamous, and happy at the same time, but there is an upper bound, a limit to that happiness. Monogamy in our relationship does not cause me unhappiness, but it does leave me feeling wanting.
Now I realize and know about what it is I don’t have in my life, what I am missing for me. And it makes me a little sad, I am already mourning things I think will never happen for me. It’s just not enough.
None of us get do overs in life. I have so many damn things I truly wish I could do over, entire years I want to change, but I can’t. And now I don’t want to spend my future years beating myself up and agonizing over the past years I can never change. I want to look ahead, to build a fuller and happier life, and I want to do that openly and honestly, with you by my side.
I don’t have a bonding off-switch. Many (most?) people search and strive for a partner, and once they have it, that need to search goes away, or goes quiet. Not for me. When I am in a romantic relationship, that doesn’t complete or satisfy me in the way I guess it does most people. I still feel the want to connect with others, I still get an amazing, life-affirming rush when I catch a woman’s attention or make her laugh in that true way. I still have desires. I still want new experiences and continually growing connections and love.
The sort of love that society promotes feels very zero-sum to me. And that’s kind of how our relationship has been structured too. Not that I want it to be, but that’s how it feels. Before, this was 100% on me, bottled up. Now it’s 50/50, with me having shared my thoughts and now keeping quiet and not pushing the issue, and you going about figuring out how you feel and working through it. But I don’t want it to become 100% the other way, that it’s something you agree to for me but secretly and silently it kills you and eats away at you. So I guess we remain at the 50/50 with no changes for the foreseeable future.
And for many, many, many years I had made myself believe that all of these feelings were wrong, that I was wrong. And so I pushed them down, pushed them away, told myself that it was wrong and inappropriate to want the things that I wanted. That I was the problem.
Now? I don’t want to be the problem anymore. I don’t want to be wrong. Instead of living a life where I have to constrain myself and chastise myself, I just don’t want to do that anymore. So I want to choose to be honest. I want to choose to listen to myself. And I want to find a way in life where I can do that.
Wow, I have more to rant, more on my mind, more that has been on my mind for a long time, but I don’t want this one post to become an insane man’s manifesto. So I’ll cut it here for today, and I’ll keep thinking on the rest.