"You were supposed to love *you* first, you keep forgetting that part!"

So I confessed something to Clint recently. There are any number of projects around the house that I've been putting off indefinitely. I suppose they fall generally into two categories, dejunking and home improvements. Obviously these are interrelated, as a lot of improvements aren't possible until the area is cleared.

For a while, my excuse for kicking the can was that I wasn't sure how much longer I would be keeping my place. Why redecorate if you're not staying around? (Sure, "resale value", but that can be a chimaera.) But after four years of cohabitation, it's clear that I'm not going anywhere, he's not going anywhere, and if we're going to continue living here, it's worth it to fix it up.

Then I had to confront something else about myself. So I've long known that I'm extremely externally motivated. That's why it takes the prospect of, say, moving house to get me to actually sort through my stuff and decide what's worth keeping. And nothing in my life has ever motivated me like making a romantic partner happy. I don't think this is inherently unhealthy. My life has always been about leveraging others expectations to get me to do things I actually want to do but lack the motivation for. As long as you're honest that that's what you're doing, it shouldn't end up leading to resentment.

However, to work, it requires a partner who's willing to play along, and that's something I haven't had since Cam died. Clint's influence is limited; despite my willingness to treat as an equal when it comes to making decisions about our place, we both recognise that at the end of the day there's only one name on the lease.

Despite my poor track record, I still haven't given up on the prospect of finding a romantic partner who could fulfill such a role. Again, that's not inherently unhealthy. The dysfunction comes from the fact that, with no current prospects, this effectively offloads my impetus into an individual who may or may not ever exist in reality.

So where this leaves me is that I guess I need to figure out how to be my own partner. I need to look at my life through the eyes of someone who loves me and wants the best for me and is willing to do whatever it takes to make the person happy and fulfilled. How do I do this? That's the question I guess I'm going to be rassling with this year.

New year, same old me

So for a while now, I've toyed with the idea of doing a kind of Spotify Wrapped for my hookup app. I wasn't sure who I'd really want to share it with beyond one person, the one who took the top stop on the list of men I'd shtupped. Even though things didn't work out, I thought he'd be amused and maybe a bit touched.

During break, I reached out to him to see if we could FaceTime and got a surprise: He told me he'd be "hanging out with the boyfriend". It hit me like a splash of cold water to the face and tossed my Sniffies Bound idea into the closet. (I may yet dust it off when my one-year anniversary rolls around.) I guess I was holding a bit of a torch for him in spite of myself.

I'd like to be happy for him. He hasn't had great success with relationships. By the time I was his age, I was on my third LTR so I can afford to be generous. But the recency of our intimacy combined with the fact that he only mentioned it in passing makes me want to walk away instead.

Meanwhile, on New Year's Day I was forced to confront the fact that, yes, three years on I'm still in love with BB. Which is fine, it's kind of what I expected, and it's not something that comes up very often. It would be completely fine, honestly, if I could just let go of that tiny bit of hope I can't seem to shake that someday, something might change in the way he feels about it.

Recently I was forced to confront that foolish little hope. He lost his closest companion, his dog Louie, back in November. It was a long time coming and, during that time, I allowed myself to fantasise that when the moment came, it's me he would turn to for solace. Of course, that's not what happened. It was his sister who flew out to help him put poor Louie down and I ended up being unavailable much of the week afterwards.

In theory, he's got a lot more free time now and I could be doing more to create opportunities for us to spend time together. But I realise that I'd still be hoping throughout for some change, some incremental movement toward emotional intimacy. It's just not going to happen. I don't know why I'm struggling so hard to accept that.

So in the meantime, I'm back to my whoring ways. I excused them last year by saying I was making a game of it and seeing how many notches I could rack up simply because it was something I'd never done before. But we're two weeks into 2025 and I've already knocked off 7 guys so clearly I'm not done sowing these oats yet. This isn't sustainable, I know it's dominating my thoughts and harming my nonsexual relationships, yet I'm still afraid of what I might have to deal with if I pause it.