When Things Don't Go As Planned

Recently, someone told me that they don't trust themselves with being loved, loved for who they really are and in an unconditional way, because they always manipulate and abuse that love. At the time, that struck such a cord with me. While I think this person meant that they abuse and manipulate in pretty horrible and insidious ways, my past experience has shown me that I manipulate in petty and ridiculous ways, which anyone outside of the situation would easily recognize, usually with the exception of me and the other person.

A few weeks before that I laid next to BT as he fell asleep, I starting thinking about how knowing when the right time to leave a relationship is comparable to the knowing when the right time is to sneak out of bed without waking your partner. (In my case, I had to sneak out of bed partly because of my parents' house rules and partly because I knew I just couldn't sleep.) But any sane person would wonder why I was contemplating leaving this great guy, who makes me feel wanted, safe, cared for, and also COMPLETELY accepted for who I am. Because, even before I heard someone else describe it, I knew that I felt that same way, that I would always abuse and manipulate any true love that was given to me. And I didn't want to do that to this sweet sweet man.

Today was a very VERY bad day. I was ready to give up. BT's prepaid cell phone is out of minutes and he was the only one I couldn't reach by phone. So, I drove the 45 minutes out to the nearby college town where he lives, calling his house and telling them that I would pick him up from work. They said he got off work at 5 or 5:30. At 5:35, I grew tired of waiting for him to come out, so I decided to go in and see if he was ready to be driven home. I knew he'd be surprised and he was. I had come to say goodbye, but I wanted to spend as much time that evening as I could with him. Since our first weekend together, he'd been talking about how he wanted us to really truly date when he got back from his deployment in Iraq. From the beginning, I told him that he'd change his mind once he found out all that I was up to. It was the same discussion tonight, as I told him that he'd probably never want to really date me when he heard about all my extra-curricular activity in the last couple of weeks. As always, he denied that anything I could say would make him not want to date me when he came back.

So I told him about my escapades, which I usually think of as dropping the bomb. But this time it was really his turn to drop the bomb. During these past few weeks when we hadn't really gotten a chance to talk, he said that he'd been doing a great deal of thinking about wanting to date me when he got back. In fact, he was thinking that he wanted to date me BEFORE he left, to start the commitment before he left, something that he had been very much against when I first met him. He didn't want to leave anyone behind when he deployed. But he didn't expect me to stop my current extra-curricular activities. While Mon Parrain and I both questioned how this dating was different than the current situation between BT and I, I suspect that it is just BT's way of showing that he really does want a relationship with me when he come back, that he wants to develop more emotional intimacy with me, and that he would like to come before any other sex partners in my life. I was just blown away. Such a wonderful guy who actually knows me, who I have not lied to about who I am, and he wants me.

Then, I started to freak out. What if I only manipulate and abuse this love that is given to me? In many ways, that is what I did with the Alpha Male of the Pack. Hell, it is what I tried to do to Mon Parrain earlier in the day, even if I wasn't consciously aware of it. But I just can't pass it up. So, starting today, I'm going back to working on making myself "better", getting my meds straightened out and working on...making myself a better version of the self that I want to be.

So, I have a boyfriend now. And lots of "sex in the box"s. Hmmm......