tw: breakups, mild ea
My favorite part of my last relationship was getting called a r***** and talentless. Oh, and prior to all this, told "sometimes you look at me like I'm gaslighting you." Which is effectively a way to preemptively silence anyone who dares mention any gaslighting if/when it happens.
Finally, I was called a bad girlfriend for having called the messy friend who stole everyone's banking info a sociopath. Fun fact: my ex had actually called him a sociopath first.
I had convinced myself that my ex was sweet — and there was a sweetness there, but also an immolating shame, and it made him bizarrely mean and domineering in ways I never expected.
He'd get pissed off when I'd try to make pleasant chitchat on walks.
And throughout all this, because I'd had worse, I was so determines to focus on that sweetness I'd seen, even when it was long gone.
Other men... I don't know. I've tried the whole "stomach it" MO. Sometimes I feel like it makes sense to stomach it from the beginning instead of allowing myself to be suckered in. Either way, I wind up breaking up with them.
I made a Pinterest board of beards.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm sad, but there's no (expedient) sound solution to the sadness, which is why I'm spiraling. I'm disgusted with the options. I am incapacitated by disgust.
Here's an example of what I'm navigating: There was a guy who I could sort of imagine becoming deeply attracted to (I'm probably demisexual), but it was difficult to get over the feeling that he was hiding something from me. In fact, he used to do a lot of hard drugs. That was a dealbreaker, since I don't open pandora's boxes I don't understand, but it wasn't THE ONLY dealbreaker. I felt he was rushing me into a relationship. That was the main source of my dread. The drug revelation just snapped everything into perspective.
I'm writing these posts in a spiral of terror because I am learning that the only way for me not to wind up alone is to get used to placating challenging men. I would have stayed with my surly ex if he'd agreed to have kids on my timeline. Naturally/luckily, he was unwilling to make a single adjustment in his life for me, and so just got surlier and surlier until I burst into tears one night and in true "I can't take this anymore!" style, got in a cab and went home.
I would have stayed if he'd agreed to have a family. What does that mean for my future?
The horrible/good truth is that my therapist tells me I've been choosing better guys these last few years. This is just the landscape. It is arduous. It is unfair. I'm going to have to make a calculation about what I am willing to live with sooner than later.
addendum: the r**** and talentless insults were "jokes." to be precise:
1) while watching the ep of "it's always sunny" where sweet dee dates an intellectually disabled man who the characters repeatedly call a r******, my ex turned to me and said, "i prefer to call the people i date 'special' "
2) after jokingly referring to myself as having been a "talented youth" back in the day (because i attended summer programs for gifted & talented youth), he snipes, "really? what happened?" (this, after a marathon of belittling comments about my directional abilities, followed swiftly by a fond reminisce about car trips with his ex)
in other words, it was all your typical childish passive aggression tactics, there was nothing to be done really, he'd strongly imply that i should have called him out on it in the moment without having to be asked "did that bother you," which was weird because why say something that you know is going to hurt someone you purport to care about?
i never said any of this because clearly my tone is emotional and the only way to get through to these people is to appear as callous and unsentimental as they wish they were