In the midst of our “normal” argument, I was trying to explain my point from our different perspectives and the young 20-something had devolved into her usual name-calling and insults when she threw out this gem, “I can see why you’re still single at 38, you’re such an asshole!” If I had stooped to her level, I would have retorted “I can see why your longest relationship was less than 6 months and everyone treats you like a slut, you had more than 35 bodies before you turned 22 and you don’t even remember all of their names!”
But slut shaming is not my style outside of this blog and you always think up all those really good daggers that might have helped you win after the fact. Besides at the time, my goal was to resolve the fight in a constructive manner to enable growth and understanding, which in hindsight was pearls to her swine and a wasted effort as my friend loved to always point out “but she lacks the cognitive reasoning ability” for a lasting relationship.
But the point still stung because I’d already been reflecting on the fact that I was the only one in my circle of college friends to have a serious girlfriend from 17-20 (my first love) and 21-24 (my grad school ex who utterly broke me) and my romantic life has been worthy of writing a tell-all book ever since. In hindsight, she never apologized for the verbal abuse she barraged on me when she got upset and the best reason I can come up with for why I tolerated it was she was willing to date me when I was unemployed while everyone else was running away and she was repeating the pattern of abuse her mother inflicted on her and I wanted to help her overcome it.
The last half decade I’ve been making serious concessions on my standards of a datable woman. Before I started dumpstering, I was dating a creative free spirited woman whom I had been friends with first and she was perfect on paper and I enjoyed our vibe together. She had her college degree, lived alone, great job, good company, beautiful, fit, great style, amazing conversations, intelligent, empathetic, you name it I felt like she could be the one. 3 months later I was tolerating verbal, emotional and physical abuse while trying to right some wrongs and misunderstandings or trying to end the relationship, both to no avail.
Whether or not she had a college degree and her living situation didn’t make much of a difference when she was throwing right hooks at my head because I didn’t want to pay $25 for a burger at that particular restaurant. So when I finally exited her cycles of abuse, that list I kept of what I wanted and was looking for in a mate really didn’t fucking matter anymore. And my dating pattern has spiraled downward into dumpster after dumpster ever since, and perhaps I've become the trash for their dumpster?
When I recount some of my relationship tales and unpack what transpired, numerous friends describe a number of my ex’s as crazy. The common denominator is me, and I maintain I don’t think they’re crazy but I do have a pattern of getting people to reveal their truths that they often haven’t shared with others previously. I get very deep and introspective a lot of the time and I bring that into my personal relationships. When I give people the space and understanding to be their authentic selves and accept their truths and them, they sometimes become empowered to live their full truths and go a little crazy and off the deep end with it.
So the creative ex quit her corporate job and went fully into freelancing, blowing off years of pent up stress and frustration at having her art nitpicked and controlled, unfortunately some of that fell negatively onto me. Years later she continues her evolution as a freelance artist and has become much more emotionally stable than when she was throwing haymakers at me in Tribeca. My recent pornstar ex dabbled in sex work before I met her including a private casting porno and is now on her way to full blown publicity and will be all over PornHub and Xvideos before summer ends now that shooting has resumed. Is it really all that crazy if that’s their truths? Then again both of their crazies are rooted in their own individual patterns with similar backgrounds of unpacking and understanding the contents of their unresolved emotional trauma and baggage, but that’s for another article, coming soon!
Honesty, respect and being our authentic genuine selves are core tenants and values that I practice each and every day. I love surrounding myself with other honest and genuine people because together we often build and create in contrast to the numerous people who are stuck in perpetual consumption cycles. However, my style of blunt honesty doesn’t sit well with everyone. I piss people off all the time because I speak my mind and mean what I say. I do this with no agenda besides having an honest, open exchange where we can share ideas, perspectives and stories. Because I prefer to enable the free flow of all information to all people all of the time, I don’t get along well with people who are insecure or have an agenda and work to manipulate others and situations to get what they want. I embrace honesty to such a level that most people end up believing me and I can always back everything up.
However, I never shy away from accepting blame and responsibility when I am wrong, but I do make others work for it and prove me wrong because I’ve invested a lot of time and energy developing my views and values to compromise them without at least some in depth discussion and analysis. At the end of the day, if someone can’t be honest or respectful with me then there’s no need to make space for them in my life and I just let them fade back into the ether. We live in a society where people block and avoid rather than deal with issues head on, but not me. I don’t block or avoid anyone as I’m very adept at pushing people away and establishing boundaries so they’ll never contact me with lies and disrespect ever again, but I prefer to resolve things respectfully and civilly.
That’s my trigger in relationships when my evil, vindictive Gemini twin rears his head to protect my deeply sensitive and vulnerable self from being further used and taken advantage of. People that lie, cheat, hurt and get away without remorse or punishment trigger the fuck out of me, my defense mechanism and my vindictive side. Users, abusers, manipulators all, I will be the left hand of truth and the right hand of karma if I choose to have a say in the matter to right perceived wrongs before that person can use, manipulate, hurt, and take advantage of someone else like they did to me.
I do accept and allow for some drama as part of growth, but I don’t like or encourage it. Drama is negative and draining characterized by bad arguments and often with a selfish motive driven by insecurity. I do enjoy adventure that is exciting, fun, mind expanding and full of banter and that’s a very big distinction from drama.
My absolute biggest trigger is being in the dark about my own relationship. I’m a big proponent of telling your significant other everything including your body count and if/when you might bump into any of your past partners or flings. I think there’s something disrespectful being in a room with others who know your partner is cheating or has cheated or that they had sex with someone else in the room but you don’t have a clue. This also extends to when my partner discusses our relationship issues at length to gain insight and advice from friends and family but doesn’t discuss those issues with me directly, and vice versa. This is actually a red flag level of disrespect for me because how am I to know the motivations of these friends if I’ve never met them?
Unfortunately I’ve been bitten numerous times by a woman involving a guy friend who wants to be involved with her, used to or is currently involved with her without my knowledge. In this contemporary age, there are so many open-minded people out there willing to have open relationships and engage in polyamory that people shouldn’t get into an agreed upon monogamous relationship if they’re going to lie, cheat and disrespect their partner to their friends and family.
Relationships are hard work. If you think or anyone tells you differently, they’re lying, full of bull shit or haven’t been in a healthy relationship. I’m very honest and direct in my romantic relationships because I want us to minimize how often we hurt each other’s feelings so we can build healthy patterns of communication, love, empathy, support, understanding and positive growth. I strive to have friendship as the base of our relationship so there’s mutual respect, support, patience, and understanding. I recognize what we want in our lives can change, we decide we want different things or we fall out of love, but there’s real beauty in having honest conversations and allowing each other time to adjust to reflect on possible changes and think things through over days and weeks. It shows they always prioritized the relationship and still value you as a person even if things didn’t work out.
Sadly, in 3 out of my past 4 serious relationships this has not been my experience and it’s very bothersome to me when someone I cared so much for chooses not to be honest after we’ve broken up. They reveal their true character in the end while I’m left picking up the right energy wrong person pieces of my heart. I’ve noticed a trend in those 3 that I’m picking underdeveloped, unstable women who say they want what I’m offering but haven’t experienced it, don’t practice it, and therefore their words and their actions don’t align around it to make it a reality and then they retreat back into their previous patterns.
It’s possible I have a savior complex. I’ve been accused of trying to fix the women in my last few relationships, most recently by my pornstar ex who complained I was too similar to her mother in wanting to help her build towards a career and true independence. Even my mom told me “it’s not your role in life to help others or take care of people, you need to find an equal.” I don't seek out to fix my partner, but I recognize that the last few weren't ideal on paper so I fostered understanding about a number of issues with them rather than confront them. But I don’t like stagnation, a happy life is about positive growth and that includes changing the parts of ourselves that aren’t working that we’ve developed coping mechanisms for.
To me, in a solid relationship you support and help each other overcome obstacles and grow separately and together. But that assumes a solid relationship with deep involvement and commitment with someone willing and able to do the same in return. I realize when I want to make a relationship work, I accept my partner’s shortcomings and bad behaviors and try to put in more work to make the relationship happy and healthy thinking I can fix it. The problem in my most recent relationships is I was the only one who was putting in work to try and fix the relationship. I need to accept I can never help fix someone, they have to help themselves because it’s the only way we learn and grow.
My challenge is definitely because I am a fixer. It’s one of my callings and I excel at it, especially in my professional life. So it’s only natural for me to want to help those I become close with when they ask and when I’m able to. Since I hate stagnation, I’m very proactive about not having to argue and fight about the same things over and over again. So in disagreements and fights, I seek to address the fundamental action that causes the negative emotion and resolve that instead of coddling feelings and emotions. I choose not to coddle because I see too many people that apologize and focus on feelings but do nothing to correct the core issue, which inevitably arises again. So I sometimes come across as cold emotionally because I compartmentalize my emotions and feelings to do root cause analysis and find what’s really wrong between us so we can move forward.
Deep down I see the humanity in everyone and believe that everyone wants the opportunity to better their life. Some people have been dealt a tough hand and just need a break and receive love and support to become the best version of themselves. However, this requires personal growth and the sad reality is some people prefer the easy way out and instant gratification. Those stuck in the same situation that is their life may not be there by choice but remain there by choice whether they realize it or not. Sadly they’re too broken and lost to know what to do with a good thing when it comes their way, and they often abuse it and destroy that goodness and that cycle often cascades to the next person and continues. If someone is used to McDonald’s burgers, you can take them to get a lobster dinner but what they really appreciate is 10 McDonald’s burgers so your efforts to introduce quality requires someone to understand and appreciate quality.
I can understand and accept someone’s flaws and still see their value as a long term partner if they’re willing to work at it and build with me, but they have to see their own value and my value for things to be able to work. I struggle to understand when someone lacks the necessary skills because I’m willing to help them on every little step when I care and they mean the world to me. I fall into this habit where I romanticize someone’s words and dreams and ruminate on how I can help support and nurture them to make it a reality when I should instead be focusing on who they are right now. If someone is serious about their words and dreams they would already be working on the path towards them. It’s much harder to support someone getting their life together than to pick someone who already has their life together.
And that’s my pattern of late, choosing women who don’t appreciate my level of quality, match it, aren’t willing to embrace positive change and growth together and aren’t willing to put in work on the relationship. Meanwhile, in a relationship I often accept a lot of what my partner says and does until I’ve accepted enough things I don’t like that it all comes out in one big argument and then I have to play damage control to identify the issues and strategize a plan for us to address things before they reach boiling point again. My kryptonite is when they’re vulnerable with me then my soft side will usually cave to maintain harmony.
I do like to make people uncomfortable from time to time. The only way you really get to know someone is to step outside out comfort zones and see what makes them tick and how they work. Making someone uncomfortable is the only way you can ever really learn what makes them comfortable. But it’s a fine line because if you’re too abrasive and just going in on them that causes frustration and no one listens. The sweet spot is being able to express our deepest truths while maintaining the security and commitment to the relationship allowing us to brainstorm on all our possibilities that can become realities, while keeping in mind sometimes we have to give people time to process deep topics.
Compounding my picking women of questionable integrity and value, when things start failing I think I can invest more and fix it myself and end up sacrificing too much and losing myself in the process. I don’t know how to accept failure, I just keep trying over and over again and, in everything but romantic relationships, eventually find a way that works. While I don’t know how to disengage from someone that I can still help, I do have my boundaries of what level of disrespect I’m willing to accept. I know who I am but I pour everything into making my relationships work and when they don’t I lose sight of my value, feel I’m not enough and start to question myself.
I need to stop wanting to help when I realize someone is broken or not making me a priority, because they can only help themselves. People in survival mode are unable to offer much in return, much the same way you wouldn’t ask a man with no legs to stand up. I need to pick a woman who already has her life together, who already loves herself and doesn’t need constant validation or acceptance from others because these work in progress projects are breaking me. Since my partners always become my best friends, each breakup and failure is feeling profoundly worse and I don’t know how much longer I can keep trying. I have sold myself so short for so many years now I don’t know if I know what good is anymore. The sad fact is I can’t remember the last time I was with a partner who appreciated and cherished me, told me as much and showed it to me with their actions. The reality is I’m too understanding and accepting to discern good women as partners for me and end up picking based on superficial qualities like physical attractiveness.
Why is it that I whole heartedly accept women with potential who maybe just need some stability, love and support to become the best version of themselves despite it failing for me every time? My mother. My mom didn’t finish college, got married young, had kids young and was a divorced single parent in her mid-20’s. My dad rescued my mom, bought the house they still live in, raised her kids as his own, paid for everyone including my mom to finish college and I think that’s romantically possible. It can work that way, but that’s not how love often works and that has been my repeating pattern and why.
Because of my parents, I often give those help/save situations more value because I think they’ll really appreciate me helping better their life and will love me forever. This is my fatal flaw, because once they’ve taken all the healing from me that they need, they split. I need to let go of this ideal of bringing stability and security to allow a woman to blossom and leave stagnant people behind and find someone on my level. I’m a ride or die kind of partner but nowadays no one fights to the death for love. Instead they let you die and walk away with everything you left behind and the confidence that they still won and improved their situation.
The older you get the more you realize no one really has their life together and COVID-19 really revealed that the vast majority of us aren’t stable at all. Almost everyone is a series of unfortunate events away from bankruptcy and homelessness. I already recognized this after my first unemployment stint, which in some weird way is how I let my last 2 girlfriends live with me without contributing to rent, utilities, household chores, food, etc. I dumbly thought they would see the kindness of my living situation and want to help make each other’s lives easier. No, they both embraced freeloading and both cheated on me early in the relationship and I tried to patch things up and make it work. I feel like I used to have much greater respect for myself and that’s an immediate pattern I have to put an end to. I admit I unknowingly have been trying to shortcut to a lasting relationship by giving them stability and thinking they’ll embrace and adapt to it. In reality, if they wanted to be stable they would already be working on being stable on their own. I ignored the red flag that people who aren’t stable domestically aren’t stable in any capacity.
I did see a certain level of honesty from both of them, as honest as they’ve ever been in life when questioned but not forthcoming with the truth, mixed with a healthy dose of vulnerability. Those two behaviors in tandem trigger my gullibility and with enough attraction and good vibes, I accepted their words rather than trust my intuition about their actions that didn’t align. I’ll get myself right in the head then a woman comes along with the right proportions and I forget all my learned morals and values and comprise myself yet again. That was my recipe for opening up, falling in love and getting my heart broken, twice in a row, albeit incredibly deeper the second time around, like a fool. Friends argued neither had long term value and it was just my wishful thinking and projection of what I desired, not necessarily reality.
At some point we have to take accountability not for what has happened to us but for how we have responded to it. For me, relationship failures have really taken their toll on me and my life has felt like a downward spiral since late 2017. It’s taken a real emotional and psychological toll on me and I’ve been trying to right my ship of life but shit just keeps getting tougher and tougher. It’s hard to find hope when you see all the selfishness and greed and narcissism in the world of people who act without empathy and without care for others.
I’ve always been deeply sensitive so I often push people away because I’ve realized when I’m my normal kind and sweet disposition then everyone wants me and I struggle to discern the right partner when I have multiple choices. So I use an abrasive front to keep superficial people away from taking advantage of me. But once I let someone in and commit, I turn very understanding about everything. It’s a double edged imperfect defense mechanism, but I tore it down as my life spiraled and instead started accepting what came my way and stuck.
I feel very deeply so I hurt very deeply. I can’t escape the recurring thought that I’m done with this life and am ready for the next. It just keeps getting darker and heavier and I don’t find joy and satisfaction in the things that used to bring me so much happiness. The only counter thought I seem to have left is to get rid of all my possessions to make it easier on my parents cleaning up. As I purge, I’m filled with the idea to liberate and travel and disappear into the world with only a bag on my shoulders and no fear of death because I’ve already accepted it.
This has definitely factored into my choosing partners. I’ve embraced people with experience with depression as I thought they would understand. But they do not. They lack empathy because they’re too stuck in their own dark world and ultimately don’t really care for anyone else. I’ve romanticized the idea of saving each other, but it’s so Shakespeare and not going to happen. We enter this world alone and die alone and but whereas in the past I welcomed being alone all the time, it has now become lonely and depressing for me. I have to admit, this was never the case before I got involved with women who didn’t return the love I gave freely to them.
I’ve lost my whole sense of self and what I bring to the table as a partner. I thought I was a great catch and many unique and amazing things but more days than not I question everything. The things I thought mattered don’t seem to matter to anyone anymore. The older we get, the more people have an agenda in their search and it becomes less about a connection with two people and more logical, negotiated and forced. Interactions have become more about what they want from you and what you can do for them than a real connection. It’s difficult to engage your authentic self when people present facades and masks.
Because of failure after failure, I sometimes question if I have the energy for relationships anymore. Too many bad experiences have warped my sense of value and self-worth. I don’t even know what I do anymore as a prospective partner. I couldn’t tell someone why they should date me. I don’t even think I’m that interesting. I just feel despair and apathy more days than I like to admit. It’s like dealing with people who don’t know who they are and what they want has made me not remember who I am, what I bring to the table and what I have control of. I’m tired of the rollercoasters and games and have been ready to build sustainable happiness since I was 22, unlike my pornstar ex who’s ready to be the freaky little demon she always knew she had in her. Spoiler: all will be revealed on that in the next article.
Naturally, I maintain a very pessimistic view of dating. Online dating becomes overwhelming to sort through and all the options blend together after a while and come across the same. I know I’m jaded when I feel every single person is already involved with someone, cheats sexually or emotionally, don’t offer or return what they demand and it’s more common than you realize that women get pregnant by other men but don’t tell you. For good measure, toss dating someone who doesn’t know who they are and what they want so when they do make up their mind they’re out the door in a flash and don’t care what happens to you.
On good days I do remember my worth. I’m a fucking unicorn, a great man, a great partner, and worthy of an amazing woman who makes me excited to have adventures with not someone I have to help make their life easier with constant acts of service that are misunderstood or unappreciated. I really forget sometimes how much I’ve developed and grown and refined myself over the years through heartache, struggle, good friends and overcoming bad relationships. I can be too understanding and have sacrificed my value and worth too many times to people who don't appreciate quality or see my worth. To me, a real woman doesn’t show only the best of her. I want to know all of her. I want us to become best friends, confidants who thrive in forthright, candid, honest communication to develop our understanding, trust, and love because a great relationship is something that is built and made. Deep down, I know who I am and what I want. Does she know who she is and what she wants? Now does it align? I want a woman who can do a lot, but I’m not asking for anything that I feel I don’t bring to the table myself. So if I can do a lot as a man, why isn't it possible for a female version to exist? I see no reason why to strive for anything less. But in the meantime, I accept less because that’s the mistake we all make.