It’s been an interesting, yet kind of fucked up, past month in my brain.
Around the beginning of March Don and I got into a fight. The reason for the fight was kind of unrelated (translation: I’m not discussing it) to what ended up being my takeaway. In the over a year since we’ve known each other, we’d talk often about making a date and I’d leave my schedule open or even cancel plans with people, only to find out that he wasn’t really making an effort as much as he’d say he wanted to. Not that I blame him; it’s not like navigating open relationships is the easiest thing to do!
He admitted this during the fight; that more often than not he was going along with it, getting my hopes up but constantly lacking the follow through. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hang out, but due to many reasons – I think one including a caution on his part – we didn’t as much as discussed.
So when we both realized this I kinda’ pulled away. I realized how much energy had been going into mentally prepping for scheduling time together and how spent it had been leaving me. It made me kinda’ sad, but also simply exhausted at the idea of being … exhausted.
Now that some time has passed, we’ve talked about it. Things were weird, but they’re getting back to a new normal now, which is great. Steph has also changed lately; I can’t put my finger on it but he seems to have matured (?) somehow. Pulling away from Don has also taken my head out of the clouds to allow me to see it more and I’m really enjoying Steph’s company lately, more so than ever before. It’s not that the want to hang out with Don, alone or with the four of us has lessened, but I have been hit over the head with the fact that there was a lot of over-promising and under-delivering and I need to own my part of that and not make myself so available all the time only to be disappointed. The other day I didn’t cancel plans with Harvey when I could’ve hung out with Steph and Don, and while it felt really weird and I had to deal with feeling kinda’ guilty, it was nice to have control over my calendar again.
When we hung out last night I noticed how the fight and aftershock has affected me and the two of us together, and it’s definitely for the better. Instead of thinking constantly that I better enjoy myself NOW because who knows how long it would be to get time alone again, I was able to just be really happy with the moments we were having.
That my friends, is a breakthrough 15 months in the making.
