The question
Why be in a relationship?
Good fucking question. I mean, what’s the point? Is it love? That hurts a lot. Is it sex? That’s fleeting and useless. Is it practicality? We can help each other? Fear? We don’t want to die alone?
All of the above… something different based on your mood and the present need?
Why NOT be in a relationship? Wake up and NO ONE IS THERE! You don’t have to worry they’re going to be an asshole to you before you’ve even fully woken up. That can go on for years before you get the picture that it’s never going to end without you leaving.
You can buy what you want within your budget. No one cares what you buy or what you wear or what you do with your time or your body or whether you look good. You can flirt, or not. Doesn’t matter. You can set your own priorities in all things.
You can be your own disgusting self. I guess I’d like to have less of that but not the caring part. I don’t like that part because then I’ll have to care back and that means they have power. I’m 100% certain that’s never good for women.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wished I could just stop being heterosexual, the number of times I’ve fantasized of literally launching into space on a ship with no men. I remember a man in a comment on something-or-other mockingly saying “well, should men and women just go their separate ways?” and I thought “wow, that would be great.” Zero irony. I thought that while I thought I was in a wonderful marriage, the best one for me at least. It couldn’t get better than this…
I know, I know, not all men. Yes, there are many good ones. I have lots of male friends. I love them. But I thought I’d found a good one and he made my life an actual living hell. He was just better at hiding his bad side than the average bear. I tried to create space and sometimes succeeded and I was happy but whenever I was around him I was not good enough. He was angry but always for different things. I never knew which thing it would be that day. If I did everything right that day he’d tell me that it was even worse than what I’d been doing before. It could be anything:
Loading the dishwasher. Everything in the kitchen. If I bought tupperware. Always the wrong shape, size, material. He didn’t just not like it, he HATED it. Anything I bought. The way I shopped. My driving. “Why didn’t you just?” Holy heck. Just please let me have quiet. I just want to work on things in my own way. I don’t want to be told how I’m folding the laundry wrong or ironing wrong or training the dog wrong or shoveling the driveway wrong or mowing wrong or organizing LITERALLY anything wrong. I’m the one who cleaned the toilet and folded the laundry and did the dishes and shopping and cooking. Never once in 22 years of our relationship did he clean a toilet. If he went shopping he got angry because I’d ask him to get something for me. He said it wasn’t efficient… If I went shopping I was happy to get him things. Why? Because it’s more efficient than him having to go out later to get it, right? I get it. I’m very flighty. I forget things and I don’t do things in the way you’d like but I don’t mind if you do things your way. It’s just another way to do things. Please just let me try to figure things out on my own so I can think about what I’m doing not how I’m doing. Its not at all an efficient way to live. You’ve always got someone else running the show but not in a way that actually benefits anyone. Don’t talk about efficiency if you can’t even define it because it’s just about maintaining a sense of authority in all things. Don’t talk about logic if you don’t even understand how illogical your desire to be in control is. It’s totally irrational. You aren’t my yardstick for success. I will define that for myself now.
Deep breath.
So, the alternative. Instead of having one person, turns out you just make a frankestein relationship. If you need an intellecual partner you talk to a person who fulfills that need. If you want a workout buddy you can find that in one of your friends. You need to feel spiritual? You’ve got a buddy for that….
Why do we ever get into a relationship?
Sex? Practicality? Love.
Sometimes you love someone and you want to be around them even though it would get in the way. That sucks. Because eventually it falls apart and it breaks you into little pieces and you try to figure out which shards you can salvage and mosaic into something pretty. But you wonder if there’s anything that would ever be worth doing that to yourself again.
Men just move on. Women get stuck. I don’t want to do that. I want to feel free. If freedom means being alone, so be it. Everything else can just exist in the imagination. No problem at all.
It’s fun to flirt and to imagine you’re in a relationship but you’re grateful that you don’t have to actually meet anyone and you can’t imagine how you’d ever let anyone touch you again. Not in the real world. That’s especailly true when men see you strategically. They see a vulnerable middle aged divorcee. They know tricks and ways of talking to you to make you think they care. You’re a goal. A mark.
Still makes me sad. It makes me angry. I wish there were a different way.
