Once again I'm being a lame at non-monogamy. I'm working 5 days a week for the first time in several years, and my commute is ~1hr each way. Honestly, I *am* taking care of two relationships – one with the hubs, and one with myself. I am an only child, and quiet and bookish by nature, I've spent most of my life with a good deal of time where I'm just being – quietly reading or knitting, needing the tv off and no conversation. It's necessary for my long term mental health.
Until recently I was at least able to use chat programs at work, and could partially maintain relationships that way, workload permitting. That's out the window now though, and I've started jealously guarding what time I actually have for just myself. The end result is that when looking at any involvement, I need to make sure that I'm not going to end up resenting time I don't have alone, and that the time I am willing to share isn't so penurious as to be pointless. As much as I love flirting, and having new people to play with, I put a pretty high value on time spent baking bread and lying around doing nothing.
More specifically, the drastic decrease in free time means that a relationship sort of fizzled out. There were a couple things working against it – he was more than an hour away and I absolutely hate driving (and he didn't drive – he did offer to come to me via bus, but that added the necessity of a hotel, etc). The other issue is more complicated. Sigh. I'm very strong willed, to the point of stubborn. However, this is combined with an equally strong desire for approval. It's something I'm aware of, and I work to temper it so that I am neither indifferent to the opinions of others, nor am I letting their wishes run my life. In general I'm pretty good at balancing it. It is definitely something that influences my sex life, and bottoming with a trusted partner is a good outlet for approval seeking behavior. In both play and real life, though, balancing can be work. I need partners who are equally strong willed, or I end up either running them over or just finding them completely uninteresting. However, if they are used to being able to impose their will, either because they're smarter or more stubborn than other people, then the balancing act turns into a tug of war.
It can even be fun, this emotional and intellectual struggle, for a little while. But eventually, faced with a relationship where I feel like I have to push back all the time just to keep things even – it's going to wear me out, and it's going to piss me off. I'm not going to allow my less-independent side dominance. It's simply not going to happen. It is flattering when someone desires me enough to want that, in a weird way. And I'll admit that there are days when the idea of just letting someone else tell me what to do is attractive. But I would never let it actually happen. The man in question was attracted to that part of me, and believed that I should let it influence my decisions more. Initially it was interesting, seeing how he saw me, and the two of us pushing at each other. To some extent, it made me look at the decisions I've made about how I handle my independence, which was helpful. That kind of pushing takes a lot of energy though, and eventually, feeling like someone else is trying to change me just pisses me off.
It's too bad, really. He's fascinating, and smart, and deeply perverse. He paid incredibly close attention to me, and picked my brain apart in ways that were flattering and interesting. I still ended up feeling like he saw what he wanted to see – not what was really there. It's something that everyone does sometimes. In this case, our opinions were different on a lot of things, and eventually, it wasn't friction I really wanted to deal with. The thing I feel worst about is that I didn't get to explain this to him fully – I'm rarely on chat now, and when I am he's not, so I've taken the easy way out and not forced the issue. Although he's not exactly chasing me down either, so I'm guessing the struggle stopped entertaining him too.
