Locked out

I am struck with a sudden case of melancholy. I think it comes from the rings. Every day that I age, all the appealing men that appear to find me attractive are wearing a ring. I don’t feel like I can peacefully wait for my match, because my match is already married, and he just had his second kid. My match is in the process of planning his wedding. My match and his partner just got another dog, and bought a house with a large yard together. These rings feel like a growing chain link fence, made of gold, silver and platinum circles. I am left out, and I feel like I don’t climb to the other side sometime soon, I will be completely shut out.

Of course, the chains on such fences are weak. They have a success rate of 50%, surely I will have an opportunity when these sadly inevitable links break. But what will I be acquiring, someone who has been hurt. Someone a little more jaded about love. Someone who did not successfully hold a marriage together. I may go in with a bright cheerful perspective on what a marriage can be, but I might look into my match’s eyes, and see the reflection of the much darker “reality.”

One thing for sure is I am learning I hold a lot of responsibility for the place I am. I hold men at an aloof distance, not trusting them to be strong or unselfish enough to earn my trust. I assume they will be weak, either to their own Id, or to their fears, and that they will give up in difficult times just like my father, leaving me alone to hold a burden of a life that is only half mine, if I am alone at least my full responsibility is for a life I created with my own judgment, and I am always carrying my own share.

One of the tools I use to keep men at arms length is objectifying them. I see them as sexual objects, and relate to them that way. I don’t relate well with men without some sort of flirtatious or sexual undertones to the relationship. I am a person who, if someone wants to have sex with me, and neither of us is taken, if they are remotely attractive I probably want to, and soon. I have little patience for building sexual tension. I need to get it over with so I can just relax.

Yesterday I decided to reach out to a warm French-Canadian CSA who has been repeatedly flirtatious, in a very gentlemanly way. I wrote my e-mail on a card with a joke to make my intentions less formal and more fun, but when the CSA came down the stairs, it wasn’t him, he worked the prior flight only, and I wont be going back for 2 months, at very least. I casually threw the card away, trying to tell myself “oh well, better luck next time” but I felt more disappointment, the chemistry planets aligned with no planetary rings blocking the electricity, and yet here I am again, alone.

I used to believe that my chubby body was interfering with finding my partner. I know that this is only partially right. My insecurity has no doubt interfered, but the size of my thighs and waist could only turn away the wrong men. I do want someone that I can be active with, but the last thing I want in a man is someone who could be turned off by a few extra pounds. I can’t say I like the look of a gut that sags over a waistband, but if the mental and physical connection is there, the silly gut just becomes a mushy thing to press my body against. If my husband gains weight after working hard to support me and my family, I wouldn’t want him less, and I would hope he wouldn‘t want me less, after I have given birth to 2 of his children.

What is now interfering with me finding someone is anxiety. Wow. That is really it. I am anxious he will cheat. I am anxious he will lean on me too hard. I am anxious he will not be dependable. I am anxious the sex wont keep me satisfied. I am anxious we will be too different. Even if I found someone, the anxiety keeps me from being myself. I can hardly be myself in the regular world, I am “too much” like the flamboyant gay man who had to leave his small town where he can be the big, beautiful queen that he is.

The one-two punch of losing my grandpa, and going through tonsil surgery with no-one to refill my humidifier, has made the chain-link-fence of wedding rings all too obvious to me. I am sincere in being ready to compromise, to be there to support someone else, problem is, I feel the narrow field of candidates gets smaller and smaller, and I don’t know if any of them who are left would even still match me, even if I were given the opportunity to meet each and every one of them.

I feel too weird for the normal people and too normal for the weird people. I want my partner to match me, but I feel too unusual to find a match. I have to be honest in the fact that I am losing hope, or worse, am feeling desperate. I can’t just settle for something that wont last, but I have to learn to stop seeking the perfect match, when the person I am is far too complex to classify as it is. I know this post is dark, but its just expressing the way my heart feels.