badinfluencegirl

sometimes i think about my exes.

i regularly think about them just after splitting up with someone significant.

i think about them when someone i’m dating isn’t or is doing something that reminds me of someone who came before.  i have a prodigious capacity to remember detail which is kind of a problem when you’ve had a few relationships that lasted a year or more and long bouts of celibacy in between.

kind of a problem because you can’t be comparing your current to your ex.  well you can in a ‘i didn’t take this shit then and i sure as hell won’t take it now’ kind of way but you can’t be all “X used to make me breakfast in bed and clearly current doesn’t love me or he would too” cause that’s like, not reasonable okay?

but i remember things.  i remember that when we started dating he would always make sure there was a glass of water by my bedside and i tried not to love it since i knew he would stop.  and he did.

i remember the lover that i could say ‘can we lie around and read for a while and then shag?’ and he’d be like “yeah” and would jump up and grab something off my shelves.  such were some of the most pleasant afternoons of my life.

i recall the first man that kissed my shoulder good night when he didn’t know how to say i love you… others have kissed my shoulder as we drifted into intertwined sleep before, others have kissed but none has left one there forever like he did.  and no i don’t have a tattoo.

i remember being able to stir him into round five when no one should have been able to reach for a glass of water let alone fuck.

i remember shaving our privates together, as an experiment.

i think of the one who never knew how hard i fell for him.  or cared, and i try to remember the second part.

i wonder where and how they all are.  especially the really distant ones.

i smile that bittersweet smile and think of his boundless good cheer and optimism.

i smile a much dirtier one when i think of my first orgasm… among other things.

i look for the common threads that bind these men together and that tear me apart from them later.  i look and i wonder and i try to figure it out.

what is it that i’m looking for?  what is it that makes me insane?  what do i love without realising?

i think about the ones that got away and i wonder about one or two of them.  something feels unfinished somehow when you poke.  the scab still has life in it and you have to figure out why.  this is always made more difficult if the scab has a new girlfriend and easier if he’s married.

yes that’s absolutely true.  men are half expected to break up with girlfriends and much less expected to break up with wives. [originally typed husbands which cracked me up but doesn't fit.]  and let’s face it, letting a husband know that you’re twinkling at him is just rude; seeing an ex boyfriend act weird around you in front of his girlfriend?  kinda priceless.

what?

oh please like you don’t love it when you can make them squirm a little… especially if you want them back.

you know wanting them back, the thing that happens when it wasn’t done when it ended… well in your own head. sometimes it wasn’t over in anybody’s head but that usually involves getting back together pretty fast.

regardless, there is something about discomfiting an ex you secretly want to boink that is strangely satisfying.  for me i really wouldn’t push beyond that because i don’t want a man who cheats on his ladies.  so you know, i might twinkle but there’s a limit.  still makes the cat inside the girl smile that particular smile.

i wonder if it’s fall or breaking up or some combination of both. i wonder if it’s worse because i’m alone and a treasured friend recently passed away.  i wonder how i ended up thirty seven years old and alone.

i wonder if it’s me.

in the life of a serial monogamist there is a moment early in the getting to know you process when you realise that you will see this person again.  probably more that once.

you get that they like you and that you like that they like you.  you have started to dig them and have perhaps noticed smiling after seeing them but you haven’t actually done anything particularly physical yet.

well if you’re me.

if you’re me and you take your time when you get to know people and you have sex with them when you’re good and ready.

well except the ones you fuck and never see again.

that isn’t the same though.  those are the people you know there isn’t anything there with; the ones that help you scratch an itch but that don’t particularly impact your life.  the ones you can fuck because you don’t need to get to know them.

i cannot explain this if you aren’t wired this way.  if you aren’t like this emotionally or physically you are one of those people who met your man and fucked him on the first date and you have a friend like me that you secretly pity.  it’s okay, the feeling is mutual.

anyway somewhere around the second or third date you kiss each other or maybe there’s a little peck the first time and a slightly more lingering kiss the second time or maybe you full out french.  but somewhere between the first lip linger and the second, or the fifth and the sixth you realise something.

you aren’t kissing your ex.

you aren’t kissing your ex AND you aren’t doing anything wrong AND this is totally different.  this behaviour is in fact encouraged among both you and he and it is expected that things will always be different one partner to the other.

and yet?

and yet it’s still weird.  you’re still touching the lips of someone at an angle that is new and different and the texture and softness and moistness factor will all be changed.  it’s not bad it’s just different.

but somehow it’s almost difficult to get past the what isn’t and find the what is.  at least for a moment or three.

it’s an odd little second always because there is something about the kind of serial monogamist that i am that is always convinced that this time you’re going to stay together longer.  that there will be a few years at least before you consider ending things and moving on.  that maybe even perhaps magically like you might like each other enough to like stay hooked up.

i have a sense that this is a pretty normal feeling for anyone embarking on any kind of relationship that isn’t a poly secondary type of thing.  and even then i think sometimes people believe they’ve found long term seconds.  in fact i know of one woman who had a second who came to dinner with her family on a regular basis.

for ten years.

so you know, people connect with each other and layer expectations all over those connections and never more so than in the dating realm.  i know this isn’t true for everyone and i certainly don’t apply it to anyone i don’t know damn well but i’m putting it out there for y’all.

anyway we connect and expect and then split up, and the splitting is always a surprise even when you see the split coming in advance.  you find yourself back in this place of single and not coupled or triaded or whatevered and you’re shocked one day to find that that’s it, no more with that person nope.

off the train!

so then you try another train.  you explore it’s cars and realize that it might be okay too…

but man is it ever weird for just a moment or three…