My love life…

 

I really LIKE RGG… I mean a LOT.

 

Right now, though, I am not interested in pushing anything. I had the feeling, with both STBX and Stalker, that need to push and determine and set a path for a relationship… and this time I am going to breathe, relax, and focus on just liking what I have and seeing where it goes. The thing is, I am not divorced, and neither is he. We both have ex’s that are clinging to our resources, issues with trying to get divorces completed, and different custodial arrangements. We have financial issues, mostly to do with our ex’s, and we have to worry about our own lives.

 

But what is more is that there is NO NEED to push a relationship. None. I might like this man very much, but I can allow it to develop in the way that it will develop. I am no longer the meek 19 year old girl that I was when I started off with STBX. I no longer fear being alone, I do not feel a distinct lack in myself if I am not in a relationship, I no longer need a male attached to me to complete my identity. I am not the scared and broken woman that I was when I looked to Stalker to help me understand my way out of the emotional forest that was my marriage to STBX. I now know that it doesn’t matter where I am going right now, what matters is learning to be genuinely ME and happy with myself, outside of relationship.

 

But being a  happy me IN a relationship as well is good. Not because I feel the need to have someone love me, but because I like the idea of having a companion. It has taken me a really long time to get to this point in my life (and again, you can watch a lot of the mental progression of this on the blog (yes, I’m trying to get people to READ it)) but here I am, finally taking the time to think of what it is that I want.

 

I, personally, have never found it to be a healthy thing to NEED to be in a relationship — I and the people I know who have been pressed into things this way, have all ended up with behavioural patterns that, in the end, destroyed whatever it was that could have developed. I realize that I am 34 (almost 35, eek), I have been married, I have had my children, I have gone through a separation, have lived on my own, and have started to be my own person. Right now I have no “need” to fall into another relationship — I am not feeling like i need to be protected from the big wide world, I am meeting my debts and obligations, I do not think I can have another child (I have had a tubal ligation) so I do not feel the need to mate, I am happy in my own home for the most part, the loneliness that I feel is not so much that I would give up my privacy and time alone yet. And I know the difference between NEED and WANT.

 

So… a relationship is only good for me when it is viewed as a desire, a pleasant experience in my life, and not a vital necessity. Maybe I’m jaded, but I prefer to think of myself as responsible and mature in the view that I can live without being part of a couple… but that I am consciously CHOOSING to join someone’s life for either a brief time or an extended period of time, and by doing so I have been able to relieve myself of the feeling of desperately needing to know where things are going, what we are to each other, to set official terms and that there is a “future” for us. I think, at the point in my life I am at now, I don’t have to worry if there is a future for me… I know there is a future, I will make it. If I move in with someone, if I marry again, if I live alone forever with 40 cats… there is a future and I don’t need to pressure things to go the way I want…

 

Okay… so that’s a rant there…

 

My point is that I have, in the past, fallen for the belief that I am nothing if I am not in a relationship. I have believed that I could be, somehow, a more complete human BEING if I was paired up. But while I really ENJOY the feeling of falling for someone and I have always wanted to create a relationship based on companionship, for the most part I recognize that it is a desire, a want… and not something that I will die without.

 

And this, this sense of companionship, that is what I am building with RGG. And we have discussed it and we have agreed on it, and this is where we are heading. I am HAPPY. In a way that I wasn’t with STBX and Stalker, I feel like I AM a companion and partner with RGG — I’m not a princess to be coddled or a child to be babysat, I am not someone to be kept and controlled, and I am not something to be hidden and only taken out for certain tasks and events.

 

So… yeah… men are good, but right now I don’t think that I will RUSH into another bad situation. I want to have a healthy relationship. I am getting healthy, and I want a healthy person to be with. I want to have a good life where I feel beautiful and desirable, but also like my opinion matters, like my needs and wants and my parenters needs and wants will be balanced, where I can talk to the other about things without feeling like they are condescending to me…

 

Pam’s Life Lessons: