So remember the being distracted because I stumbled into love? It hasn't gotten any better. In fact, I think this one might stick around for a while. And that's scary, a little, for me. I'm a very independent person, and the idea of tying myself rather securely over the long term to another person makes me react by pushing people away. I haven't had the best of experiences with people I get romantically close to.
As a teenager, I quickly fell 'in love' - actually more of an 'in lust' - with a series of boys, got my heart broken, and cried just long enough for the next boy to catch my eye. My first real experience with romantic love was when I fell for a fellow at school who completely didn't know I existed. I had it bad, and couldn't understand why. He certainly didn't encourage me or anything. When we actually met up through some friends after he graduated, he only vaguely remembered that we had gone to school together. We've gotten together as friends a few times over the years since - and a couple of times romantically, and now we are friends.
I was only 16 when I really fell in love with the guy who became my first husband. And he was no winner - jealous, physically abusive, and just generally a loser. After a few trips to the hospital, I finally got away from him, taking our infant with us. I really was in love with him - there were moments of magic early on, but love can be destroyed if you try hard enough.
Over the next couple of years, just trying to raise myself and a baby while going to college took up enough energy that dating was merely an afterthought, and relationships just weren't an option. But as things settled down, I found myself with someone. And he seemed to be interested in taking care of us. I convinced myself that that was better than love. Until we married, he quit working, and things just generally fell apart.
So I decided that I needed to grow up a little before sharing myself romantically, and swore off men entirely for six years. I learned how to be an adult all by myself.
Then I dated pretty casually for several years. Back in school again, still living the single-mom life, I just didn't worry about it a lot. I found the kink community, and dated people who are my kind of freaks. I found a dominant that really touched me inside. Love? I don't know; I feel very strongly about him, but I'm not interested in a romantic relationship with him. We're friends, and he's very important to me, but that's where it lies.
Last year, I fell pretty hard for someone that I started off teaching, and ended up playing with. I didn't realize how strong an emotional attachment I had developed for him until something went really wrong and he cut me off suddenly. I cried for three days.
And back to dating - and playing - casually. I had people I love playing with but couldn't get close to romantically, and people I dated but really didn't have a good play relationship with. By 'play relationship', I mean playing in the BDSM sense. A play relationship is very important to me, but it's not at all the same thing as a sexual or romantic relationship. In some ways it's much more, others less.
So now I'm in love. We're in love. We've talked about having a future together, and sometimes it really terrifies me. Kiara and Cherish are both able to give themselves completely over to loving him, and I envy that. I can taste that emotion, but I can't just give myself over to it like they can. Even though I'd love to be able to just say, "We're in love; it'll all work out somehow'; on a 'grown-up level', I have a need to look at the realities and possibilities that are really involved.
I'm all too aware of what's 'over the horizon' - all those other responsibilities and tie-ups we each have. I just don't know if everything can be made to work. I worry about the 'what-if's. His other relationships, my other relationships. Can we eventually combine households without my control-freak nature and his coming into conflict? How long will the blush of love make everything look so rosy? And will I worry myself into creating the very problems I worry about?
For now, there are several situations in his life and in mine that are going to leave us both in a 'hold state' for a the next few months - we just can't make decisions about 'us' until those things are settled first. And I think that's going to turn out to be a good thing in the long run. As we work on our relationships between us, so will each of us be working on our own things to deal with. And if love survives all that processing, then we'll be able to work on combining our lives with some rationality.
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