I Fucked Up, I’m Sure of It
I’m slowly beginning to get myself back on track. This hasn’t been easy maintaining the healthy factor of my lifestyle with all the fucking around I’ve been doing at shows, with women, and with drinking. Now I need to stay up all night and get this last push of data migrated.
Having failed to clearly divulge that I was in an open relationship to the person I dated over the weekend, my primary partner in my open relationship was displeased. Understandably so as I told her I was going to broach it in person. Which I legitimately did, but felt it weird when she didn’t respond with any direct followup. With my partner obviously upset, I had promised that I would let her know that day. Her and I talk through the night as she works in a lab all night mostly by herself and has nothing to do but kill time anyway. I invite her over to talk and smoke a bowl after she works while I finish up the data transfer and get ready for my meeting with the client. No dirty stuff, just sitting around with a bowl. She tentatively agrees depending on how she feels after her shift.
Come time towards the end of my partner’s shift and she alerts me that she’s pretty tired and wants to go to sleep. I respond, “ok, no problem. Get some sleep” — then she unnecessarily adds, “also I’m pretty uncomfortable with you not telling her so I’m not going to come over.” That threw me back so much. I was obvious that I wasn’t inviting her over to fuck or anything sexual; literally sit together over a bowl of weed. I didn’t respond because I was kinda pissed — at least miffed at that point. So we went the day without talking. I was fucking exhausted, I had an in-person client meeting coming up and had to be on my best game for the next few hours, so I put it out of my head completely.
The client meeting went better than expected! They were stoked at the progress and how everything was looking which felt really good because I’ve been working my dick into the dirt to get them wrapped up and happy.
Fast forward to later in the night, I get a text from my partner saying simply, “Hi!” which I ignored. It prompted me to be like, “shit, I need to tell this girl I’ve been dating I’m in an open relationship.” This prompted me to text her and reiterate in case I wasn’t clear. She said I wasn’t clear. Fuck. Well, that’s shitty. How much more clear can one get than the phrase, “I am in an open relationship?” So my mind started racing with all the how/what/why can I do better as my anxiety spiked awaiting a response. I hadn’t responded to my partner yet as I wanted to suss out what was going on first.
A bit of time goes by and I get no response from the person I had dated. Fuck. So I respond to my partner letting her know that I needed a little time to process as her snarky addition about not coming over because she was upset I didn’t come out as polyamorous on her terms felt punitive and mean. How can one turn on/off caring and communication like a faucet? That’s fucking gross and sociopathic (which is not a term I throw around loosely) to try and control people through giving and not giving communication. But I knew it was more of a knee jerk reaction, and I was nervous about coming out to this person I’d been dating. Contrary to my expectations of expressing myself asking for a little time to process, I get a shitty message back, “I’m going to ignore this conversation to avoid saying anything mean.” Like, did she not understand that she had gaslit me stating I didn’t tell her, when I very much did. Because she’s suffered abuse like this in the past, she feels like she’s exempt from dolling it out. That couldn’t be further from the case, and there’s probably some statistic adjacent to this about how people that have been abused are more likely to abuse others. But that’s a digression for the point at hand.
My partner goes on to call me a liar and is insistent that I have nefarious plans. Like… what? What kind of evil plot involves potentially alienating people around you for expressing yourself? Around this time, I get a response from the person I had dated and begin conversing. I bloviate all about how I see open relationships and how mine actually works, meanwhile apologizing and mentioning that I’d like to date her regularly because she’s fucking awesome. Meanwhile, my partner is losing her goddamn mind, demanding screenshots and demanding some sort of control over me and how I communicate and deal with interpersonal relationships. My understanding of open relationships is that it’s not about control. If she didn’t feel safe, then that’s one thing and I’d happily assuage her concerns by adjusting my actions. Happily! But no. She eventually argues herself into a corner of “nope, fuck this, I’m out.” And I don’t argue it.
At this moment, I had recollections of this behavior from my partner when we dated originally a couple years ago. I had attributed a lot of this entitled attitude to her alcoholism and extreme anxiety. I’m sure that the anxiety is still a factor, but the alcohol isn’t there, and this is just as shitty as it ever was. Clearly she needs more work on herself, I need to work on communicating better, and we all need to work on forgiving each other. It seems like one thing pisses us off and we look at the person like they’re actively committing genocide. I did fuck up by not being clear with the person I was dating and should have been like, “Yes, my partner’s name is ____ and we used to date years ago then reconnected after my last relationship. She just came out as poly and I’m still exploring this.” That would have been good of me, but I did the bare minimum and got shit results. After some talking and a little bit of pleading for forgiveness, she finally concludes that she deserves better, more up-front communication with somebody else. I can’t blame her. I thanked her for her time and moved along.
I’m close friends with a lot of women. I hear their horror stories of men and I genuinely try to not be that person. Interpersonal mishaps like the ones mentioned above aside, I never want to make a woman feel unsafe simply for being a woman. That’s really fucked. Men rape, men degrade, men do awful shit to women constantly and I never want to be identified among that group.
So in a matter of an hour or so, I lose two girlfriends. However an old acquaintance I went on a couple dates with hits me up stating, “I’ve been taking these hormones and it has been making me absurdly horny. Help?” So I made myself a steak, brushed my teeth, and headed to her place. At least my night will end fun.