WARNING- This is a vent...rant...thing...
Now I'm gonna grumble and fuss about my ex, because dammit this is MY blog and I get to do that if I wanna. (It's insufferable, I know. You don't have to read it though.)
When I first started going backstage to hang out with GWAR, after he'd decided he didn't want to go with me anymore, and wished I would stop going too (not gonna happen, jackass!)...he was imagining backstage was something like a Motley Crue video. Orgies and hard drugs everywhere! And...as a woman...there was only one reason for me to be backstage, right? As a party favor. Surely. This is like one of those, "What my parents think I do, what society thinks I do, what my friends think I do, what I really do" memes on Facebook, you know? The reality is...the guys in that band aren't a bunch of hardcore party animals when on tour. In fact I bet most guys in bands aren't, unless they are in their 20's and new to touring. Tour life with a serious band is hard work, it's disgusting, exhausting, taxing, grueling. Let alone when your band suits up in 60+ lbs of foam latex every night (per musician) to perform. They just want to sit around, maybe nurse a beer or smoke a little weed, and chill and talk for a bit, then go crash on the bus. They've got months of hard work with few nights off going on. They appreciate it when you bring them food and don't demand anything of them, but for god's sakes stay out of the way when they're working.
The ex and I fought and fought for the first few years I would go to shows without him. He didn't want to go, because he'd have to suffer alone while I talked to other people, when a "real wife" would have been happy to sit in a corner with him, holding hands and staring at each other. But he hated me going without him. Again...I was supposed to stay at home with him. Well, eventually he got the message that I was going to go and he wasn't going to stop me, and he'd just have to trust me that I was not "accidentally" giving any men blowjobs backstage (he actually said something like that, which made me laugh trying to imagine how one "accidentally" does such a thing!)
Another factor is that I'm 100% sober, 100% of the time. I'm no recovered alcoholic, either. I just don't like alcohol and I won't drink it, and I have no need or desire for drugs. So I wasn't going to have any drunken mishaps.
Well fast forward to now. We broke up last spring, about a year ago now, and I went on to form other relationships. I had a few brief things that flailed out, then started dating Analyst, he brought in Fire and Hefe, and eventually I added Zen to complete and close my own circle. Done. Old Wolf on the other hand, just has not been able to find anyone but complete train wrecks who will give him the time of day, and getting laid? Nope, not so much. He is bitter, jealous, frustrated, and miserable. It's not because he is bad looking, it's because he radiates desperation, crazy, and toxicity. He doesn't know any other way to relationship besides using someone for casual sex with no care, or else forming a super-serious life-bond that implies "YOU CAN LEAVE WHEN THEY PRY YOU OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS!" That's just...how he be. Honestly I'm surprised our ending did not go a lot worse. But I am trying to maintain a balance, somewhere between casual and committed, with my loves. I have feelings for them all, and I think that is reciprocated. But no one is trying to play house with me, and everyone respects each other's space and I've got some autonomy. That's what I need. He imagines, much as he was being stubbornly delusional about the concerts, that what I've got is a sicko nonstop orgy where no one respects me and I don't respect myself.
Because if I were a good, respectable woman capable of having a good, respectable relationship, I'd stop these shenanigans and settle with one man and be his property like a proper woman ought. I guess.
He's sat and ranted and lectured for HOURS at me about how when I go out to the First Fridays get together at the bar, I probably just lay myself up on the pool table and let every man there have a go. They probably form a line. He insults my anatomy, since after bearing HIS CHILDREN I'm apparently a bit like "throwing a hot dog down a hallway." Funny...none of the men I've got now seem to have any complaints, but maybe it's because I'm having more orgasms these days...
Was that too much? That was probably too much. Sorry, ya'll.
But see I'm supposed to trust this blustering jackalope to finish raising my son. And I'm having some issues with this. Now I know, my reasons are good...he wants to stay in his school, he is old enough for his voice to be heard and have some weight, and Old Wolf now works evenings anyhow, so he'll never be around. But that's another part of the problem, isn't it?
I mean, he goes on about how hard it's going to be for me to be a good parent to Q with my "vibrant social life" taking me out several evenings a week...which is completely voluntary, and I can easily invite someone over to watch movies and eat pizza, if I have my own place, I don't HAVE to go out, and wouldn't choose to if my kiddo needs me at home... But here he is, he's deliberately chosen a 1-10pm work schedule, and just isn't really going to see Ninja very much at all during the week!
So I've already suggested to Ninja to come stay with me over the summer, and heck, in my thinking he might just stay and do his senior year in another school, I don't know... But he's gonna be couch surfing in my living room because I've got a little apartment. We're all being driven out of the house...the FIVE BEDROOM HOUSE...and Old Wolf is just gonna stay there alone because "IT'S MY HOUSE -bluster-bluster-" and he is forever on about how he's leaving it in a trust as a legacy to future generations of his descendents to remember him by. It's no log cabin or fancy Victorian. He didn't build it. It's just a goodly sized typical suburban house in a typical suburb. But since he was able to get a mortgage and buy a house, he feels like he's the big man now. He's made it into this symbolic sort of monument to his own ego that will ensure his immortality.
He likes to ask me what I think I'll be leaving behind.
Memories. Photos. Art. Maybe a book. Yeah...I think that'll do it.
Another thing that grinds my gears, is that he says the way I'm doing my relationships is wrong, because I won't have anyone there to take care of me when I get old. THAT is why marriage and monogamy, and sticking to one person no matter what is how we're supposed to be. I'm just gonna end up in a nursing home, no one to take care of me, one day, because you just don't get that kind of investment out of polyamory.
He is 12 years older than me. I pointed out to him that I never had that with him...we always assumed that he would die long before me. He refused to even listen when I tried to tell him about my life insurance. I was always going to be alone in my old age, what the hell was he thinking of?? He just gave me a blank stare before going off on his next rant. The reality of course is that he is angry that HIS old age nursewife has left. He doesn't care about me and never did.
And everything I do is to "make him feel" this or that. I was a bad wife because I did not "make him feel" needed or wanted. When he came back from deployment and started getting shitfaced drunk every night, it was my fault, because I should have done all the research a good Army wife does, and made sure I knew how it could be for a soldier returning from war, and made sure the right resources were in place for him. But I didn't do that. I wasn't supportive enough. So what he became was my fault.
I guess...to wrap up this vent (sorry, guys)...I don't know what is malfunction is. Maybe he's a narcissist or something. But it's like he is just completely incapable of seeing anything from where anyone stands, but himself. No one else is an actual person in the way he is. We are all non-player-characters in his universe. It's not malicious, it's not done with any kind of deliberateness. It's just being utterly oblivious to the concept that others have thoughts and feelings, needs and motivations. Being with someone like that has been exhausting, dehumanizing, and costly in so many ways. I am angry that I cannot make him see. He's going to keep right on fucking everything up. I sunk 18 years...WASTED...18 years...trying to "raise" this man-child. And there was never anything I could have done.
I feel like really getting over him, is not about mending my broken heart, or even the healing I have to do to my own self esteem and all...it's going to be learning to somehow let go of that anger. Do I need to forgive him? Do I need to forgive myself?