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muckefuckI finally heard from Pasillero. Yesterday morning, I decided to use the holiday as an excuse to send greetings, figuring that I probably wouldn't get a response. My plan was to follow up with a last-ditch attempt today or tomorrow in the hopes of getting some closure and moving on. Then he confounded all that by replying promptly and completely nonchalantly, as if nothing was amiss. "I don't know how we got here," he confessed. Having worked through so much angst already, I was completely blunt in my response: "You stopped texting." I said it was something we needed to talk through face-to-face and he agreed, but he was too tired out after a day spent taking care of his mother. So now the plan is to meet up tonight and I'm trying to work out what I need to say.
I think we need to start out by acknowledging that it's a tricky relationship for both of us to manage. It's more than "just sex" but also less than polyamory. There's a friendship component, but that isn't the chief focus. If we were to get too intimate and too attached, it would threaten his primary relationship, but if we try to keep things too cool, then we risk losing interest in being together at all. There's a healthy zone of emotional attachment here and it's narrower than it would be for a primary relationship.
That said, I need him to recognise that I'm in a more vulnerable position than he is. He could end this relationship tomorrow with little in the way of concrete consequences. We have mutual friends, but we're not especially close and we don't generally frequent the same locales. And if that happens, he still has a partner at home. Yeah, I know firsthand how awkward it is to end a relationship and not really be able to go to your partner for support, but it's still easier than being left with nothing.
And that's happened to me. When explaining why I went two weeks without getting in touch, I said, "My fear of abandonment kicked in." I'm not sure if he understands how much the trauma of becoming a widow (for me at least) resembles the trauma of being dumped. Or that I've been ghosted not just by tricks and lovers but by people I thought were good friends and had trusted for years. Even before this happened, his occasional lacksidaisical attitude toward communicating was rubbing me the wrong way.
He's the one with the tighter schedule, whose ability to play is contingent on the situation at home. Ergo, I think the burden should be on him to get in touch each week to let me know what the plan is. In return, I hold my Wednesdays open until I hear from him. That hasn't been an issue much, but it could it become one if I start increasing my commitments, either by seeing other guys or by doing something like the proposed language exchange with someone in Evanston.
Hopefully he'll be receptive to that. And, if not, at least we'll get some clarity so that, if we need to end things, we can do it by mutual consent in a way that affords us both some closure.
I think we need to start out by acknowledging that it's a tricky relationship for both of us to manage. It's more than "just sex" but also less than polyamory. There's a friendship component, but that isn't the chief focus. If we were to get too intimate and too attached, it would threaten his primary relationship, but if we try to keep things too cool, then we risk losing interest in being together at all. There's a healthy zone of emotional attachment here and it's narrower than it would be for a primary relationship.
That said, I need him to recognise that I'm in a more vulnerable position than he is. He could end this relationship tomorrow with little in the way of concrete consequences. We have mutual friends, but we're not especially close and we don't generally frequent the same locales. And if that happens, he still has a partner at home. Yeah, I know firsthand how awkward it is to end a relationship and not really be able to go to your partner for support, but it's still easier than being left with nothing.
And that's happened to me. When explaining why I went two weeks without getting in touch, I said, "My fear of abandonment kicked in." I'm not sure if he understands how much the trauma of becoming a widow (for me at least) resembles the trauma of being dumped. Or that I've been ghosted not just by tricks and lovers but by people I thought were good friends and had trusted for years. Even before this happened, his occasional lacksidaisical attitude toward communicating was rubbing me the wrong way.
He's the one with the tighter schedule, whose ability to play is contingent on the situation at home. Ergo, I think the burden should be on him to get in touch each week to let me know what the plan is. In return, I hold my Wednesdays open until I hear from him. That hasn't been an issue much, but it could it become one if I start increasing my commitments, either by seeing other guys or by doing something like the proposed language exchange with someone in Evanston.
Hopefully he'll be receptive to that. And, if not, at least we'll get some clarity so that, if we need to end things, we can do it by mutual consent in a way that affords us both some closure.
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