endless construction

There is some kind of format/name change coming to this blog. I like this minimalist theme well enough for now, but I'm definitely changing the title. Something like Curiously Inert or Pointless Exile.

Or maybe not. Much like the rest of my life, this blog has never been quite what I want it to be. Getting the urge to change it up again. I may actually go the whole domain/heavily modified wordpress route. I could make one myself but it seems like the effort/reward ratio is not high.

Open and Closed

Today I want to talk about open relationships. I've been sitting on this post for a while, giving myself some time to cool down, and I think it's about time. It is not my intent to disparage anyone in open relationships, or even open relationships in general, but I was in one for a couple years and it didn't work out so well for me and I want to talk about it a bit.

Honestly, I think open relationships are a reasonable choice, and if you and your partner are doing well and you both find the idea exciting, then more power to you. I don't remotely think that people who practice polyamory or open relationships are some higher and more enlightened form of human being, but as preferences go it's fine. Consenting adults can make any old romantic arrangement that they wish as far as I'm concerned. It's just obnoxious  when people think their preferences are superior by virtue of the fact that they have them. In your life, you will be tempted many, many times to assume your personal preferences make you some kind of magic. It is vital you do not succumb.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I'd choose to do it again. It turned out to be a profoundly painful experience, and the fact that it was a situation I agreed to didn't ameliorate that too much. To be fair, I think me and the ex failed open relationships more than open relationships failed us. I mean we made two crucial errors right from the start. We were using open relationships to try and fix a flagging sex life, and we chose it even though only one of us was really excited by the idea (that person was not me). But I wanted to see if it was something I could do out of simple curiosity and I wanted him to be happy so we tried it. The main issues were he kept to the letter of the arrangement but not the spirit of it (he stuck to the rules but didn't make any particular effort to take care of me or put our relationship first.).  Once he started sleeping with other people he stopped initiating it with me almost entirely. The other was we both chose over and over to continue even though hearing about his exploits felt like being stabbed in the gut every time and we both knew that. So that wasn't optimal either.

So here's some lessons learned from bitter experience, in no particular order.

• If your relationship is in trouble, an open relationship won't fix it. It will just aggravate underlying problems as jealousy and other issues crop up. If you think you feel resentful now, just wait until your partner is out sleeping with someone else for the first time.
• If the thought of your partner sleeping with someone else isn't some kind of turn-on or at least genuinely neutral to you, it's not going to help your love life. Jealousy and low self-esteem will not do wonders for your libido.
• The partner with more success outside the relationship needs to take some effort to take care of the primary partner, not expect the opposite.
• If the issue is that you just don't want to sleep with you partner anymore, don't try an open relationship, just break-up. Insisting you still find them really attractive but just have a headache for two years will fuck them up more than a simple break-up would.
• If one of you really wants to open it up and the other is extremely reticent, just break-up. There's nothing intrinsic in the open relationship that makes it feel good for the reticent partner to stay at home while the other is out on dates. If you think that situation would make you feel bad, trust your instincts.
• If one of you is not really having a good time, either from lack of success or jealousy issues from what the other is getting up to, close up the relationship and see if you both want monogamy again, or just break-up. There's no reason to stay in an arrangement that is actively making you miserable unless you're indulging in your masochistic side for reasons even months later you don't understand. And you wonder if maybe growing up fundamentalist and coming out of the closet means you've been finding ways to punish yourself both in and out of relationships. And why do you do that? Why do you have to carry the judgement of other people for them? Why punish yourself for being human?
• If you've been cheated on (a lot) and didn't enjoy it, consciously allowing someone to sleep with someone else will still feel just as shitty as when past partners cheated on you. Especially if they don't show much interest in sleeping with you anymore. Especially if they insist you keep their feelings before yours even so, just like your cheating exes did.
• It's a little awkward to date in an open relationship. If you value honesty and like to be up front about being in an open relationship, you will have much fewer takers in the dating world. If you don't think "hi I'm in an open relationship would you like to go out with me?" is going to be a power position for you, don't bother. You have to have a certain amount of game to make it work and if you feel like you already struggle on the dating scene when you're single, it will make it that much harder.
• If he's not into you now, sleeping with other people will probably not make him more into you. Work on your relationship first, or just break up.
• If the situation is causing you lots of pain and you're getting nothing in particular in return for it from your partner, for the love of god, just break up.  What are you, some kind of masochist? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?
• If you've known in the back of your mind for sometime that marriage is not in the cards, and there's an expiration date on the relationship, don't open it up, just break up.

So would I recommend open relationships? Probably not, but maybe that's just because mine was ill-advised bullshit that caused me lots of pain for which not only did I not get anything back from my partner, even acknowledgement or appreciation of how big a sacrifice it was for me. Really, I would only ever recommend it if your relationship is in a good place, and you both think it would be lots of fun to take it to another level (not necessarily a higher level, just different). Even then, if it's causing one of you pain, close it down and work it out or consider breaking up.

Whatever you do, do not limp along for a couple years, in an open relationship that is not working for you, hoping these knives to the gut will magically turn into unicorns and candy. That way lies madness. Close it or just break up. You don't have to stay in a relationship that is no longer working for you and is probably never going to.

How it goes

I forgot today was a work holiday, but I've still been trying to pull my thoughts enough together to write. Between the break-up and getting sick and my 40th birthday I've been in a very introspective (or self-absorbed) kind of mood. I had thought my endless misanthropy towards the end of the relationship was simply the result of persevering in an arrangement that was no longer working for either of us, but it's become clear since the break-up that that wasn't entirely the case. I just genuinely no longer have a sense of who I am, or where I belong or what my purpose might be and I have retreated a bit to try and figure that out.

So to anyone who has been trying to reach out to me and received a lot of nothing for their trouble, my apologies. I'm just having trouble relating to people right now. This has been a frequent complaint in my relationships (romantic and otherwise), and more or less a problem I've been dealing with for decades now.  It's something all the men in my family seem to share and I've never entirely understood it. But it frustrates people and I understand that. Usually, I'm not dealing with it, and now that I'm single I think I'm finally trying to take a stab at it. I would like to be easier to form a relationship with. I would like to be happier instead of this constant little rain cloud. But I don't know myself or my place in the world anymore and since it takes two points to create a line of connection, it's hard, if not impossible, to form that connection when my locus is detached and drifting.

So I'm working on grounding my locus in something that makes sense to me, and right now very little  about the world makes sense to me. I think I can do it, I just need to actually work on it rather than avoid and dissociate which has been my predominant mental pattern since, oh, I don't know, sometime in my teenage years when I realized I was trapped in a religious culture I didn't actually buy into too much.

But, yeah.  It's going to be difficult to relate to people until I know who I am and what I want in the world. And it's going to be next to impossible to date until I have that, and a better self esteem and a life I find more interesting. I find myself boring and apathetic right now and that makes it hard enough to sustain existing friendships, let alone form new ones or go on dates. I can't feel good about sharing my life with someone until I feel good about my life, you know?

The good news is there's lots I can do to change that. The bad news is, there's lots I NEED to do to change that.  And to start, I'm working on forming some understanding of where I came from, where I am, and where I want to go. This is probably a life-long process, but one I need to actually get some momentum going on.

Wish me luck!

Boob Tube Round-up

I've been sick and depressed for the last couple months which means I've seen a lot of TV! Here's some thoughts for no apparent reason, in no apparent order:

Z-Nation: Zombies are a shallow genre that has nearly been strip-mined but this show manages to find some quality gems. Good characters, fast-paced, sense of humor, it's everything I miss in the Walking dead and better for it. Campy, heartfelt, fun, and recommended.

Nurse Jackie: I mainlined all 7 seasons of this show while trying to get over a sinus infection and a persistent fever over the course of a week and loved it. Kind of a sympathetic but brutal look at the effects of addiction on one nurse's life. It's weeds but for pill addiction instead of drug dealing. I felt like they chickened out on the strong gay themes of the first season in later seasons, but the arc is good, feels genuine, and the moments are earned. I wanted to go straight edge as far as substances go afterwards though.

Rick & Morty: I feel like I should be high while watching it (which I'm not because I just finished Nurse Jackie). Not sure I get the buzz surrounding the show. It gets one good laugh out of me an episode, which is not nothing, but it's not Community either. I really dig the SF nerdery throughout though.

Helix: I'm 4 or 5 episodes into this, and I like it, but I can see why it didn't make it past 2 seasons. It has a nice sense of style at times and some great establishing shots, but I feel like this plot has been done before and the mystery hooks could dig a little deeper. And 5 episodes in there are some plot threads already starting to dangle awkwardly. Hey, remember those 30 people you locked in a room on level R? What's going on with them? Just like BSG, it feels like writers charge really hard in one direction for an episode or two before changing their mind and switching gears, leaving plot debris all over the place.

Broadchurch: I really dug this show right from the beginning. Maybe it's just the mood I'm in but the pacing, the characters, the tone,  the murder mysteries all DO have a hook that makes me want to keep watching. I'm genuinely interested in all the little secrets everyone seems to have and how it's going to play out. I'm only a few episodes in, but it's the most compelling series I've seen in a while.

You, Me and the Apocalypse:  I really adore the cast of this show, meteor apocalypse shows are almost a no-brainer for me, and two episodes in I'm struggling to find a reason to keep watching. It just feels flat for some reason. The tone seems stuck in the no-mans-land between drama and comedy where neither comedy nor drama exist in any reasonable quantity to generate interest in the proceedings. I'm not sure where it's going and I'm not sure that I care. And the sad thing is that I WANT to. Help me NBC. Help me care.

The X-Files, season 10: This is the biggest bright spot in the TV line-up right now. The first episode felt odd, and flat, and incoherent while everyone got back into the swing of things. I couldn't tell if they were making fun of the UFO/government paranoia from the 90s or that it's just not the 90s anymore so the specific line of conspiracy seems a little dated, but still, it felt off. Episode 3 however, was a gem. The tongue-in-cheek stories always made for better episodes, and the Were-man is no exception. The writing and the moments are superb, especially those involving Rhys Darby, who plays a character as tragic as he is funny. The mid-episode twist was just delightful. I was sad when it was over. Also, Mulder in a red speedo was probably the highlight of my week. I missed you guys. Welcome back.