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the best of a bad set of options
Nov. 30th, 2020 11:04 amYesterday I had to have a talk with a good friend that boiled down to "I think you're a super cool person and I like you a lot and yes I'm attracted to you but my gut tells me I can't give you what you're looking for in a relationship right now."
She...didn't take it well.
I know I did the right thing—I've never been less than upfront about my relationship status, and while our interactions have always had an element of flirtation, I've been very careful to be clear about what I can and can't offer. And while she says she'd be happy for things to basically remain as they are (where we text frequently and occasionally watch a movie online together), I'm incredibly leery of slapping a "partner" label on them, because that comes with additional expectations of emotional labor that I'm frankly not in a place to fulfill. Especially for someone inexperienced with polyamory.
Which makes me wonder if I'm a jerk for flirting with her in the first place. I wasn't trying to lead her on! My interest wasn't faked, nor was I trying to manipulate her. It just...became clear as we got to know each other that, to her, a partner is someone who can prioritize her and her needs, and I already have two other partners and a fairly busy life (and, y'know, live several states away). She accused me of being emotionally uninvested in the people I flirt with, which I don't think is true—I don't get jealous when I see them flirting with other people because I understand that they're separate people with their own lives, not because I don't care about them. Hell, if I didn't care about her I wouldn't have spent hours on the phone doing emotional labor trying to sort out our respective feelings.
In short...grah. Feelings are complicated, and sometimes the kind thing to do doesn't feel kind in the moment. Which is a bummer, but here we are.
In other news, we're having emergency renovations done on our tiny cramped downstairs bathroom. Which, in fairness, needed to be done anyway, but was very much not what we wanted to do during a pandemic. This being 2020, however, things rapidly tipped over from "not great but serviceable" to "nope, gotta rip the drywall out":
( Pictures of the terrible bathroom! )
So anyway, now I've got a bunch of strange people going in and out of our downstairs, tearing out drywall and fixtures and the linen closet. And I'm doing my best to stay upstairs and wear a mask and keep the central air fan going all day and cross my fingers that nobody's coming to work sick/asymptomatic. It's not great, but it's the best of a bad set of options.
I am looking forward to when it's done—at the very least, we should have a little more room in there. More importantly, I trust our project manager—he's done a number of projects for our building, and he managed the minor miracle of pulling together the demolition guys, a plumber, an installer for the concrete board and the pocket door, a tiling guy, a flooring guy, and a painter to do the work within a week, in the midst of a pandemic-related labor shortage. Assuming it's up to the quality of the other stuff he's done, I'm going to be damned impressed.
Now to navigate this next week without going entirely mad...
She...didn't take it well.
I know I did the right thing—I've never been less than upfront about my relationship status, and while our interactions have always had an element of flirtation, I've been very careful to be clear about what I can and can't offer. And while she says she'd be happy for things to basically remain as they are (where we text frequently and occasionally watch a movie online together), I'm incredibly leery of slapping a "partner" label on them, because that comes with additional expectations of emotional labor that I'm frankly not in a place to fulfill. Especially for someone inexperienced with polyamory.
Which makes me wonder if I'm a jerk for flirting with her in the first place. I wasn't trying to lead her on! My interest wasn't faked, nor was I trying to manipulate her. It just...became clear as we got to know each other that, to her, a partner is someone who can prioritize her and her needs, and I already have two other partners and a fairly busy life (and, y'know, live several states away). She accused me of being emotionally uninvested in the people I flirt with, which I don't think is true—I don't get jealous when I see them flirting with other people because I understand that they're separate people with their own lives, not because I don't care about them. Hell, if I didn't care about her I wouldn't have spent hours on the phone doing emotional labor trying to sort out our respective feelings.
In short...grah. Feelings are complicated, and sometimes the kind thing to do doesn't feel kind in the moment. Which is a bummer, but here we are.
In other news, we're having emergency renovations done on our tiny cramped downstairs bathroom. Which, in fairness, needed to be done anyway, but was very much not what we wanted to do during a pandemic. This being 2020, however, things rapidly tipped over from "not great but serviceable" to "nope, gotta rip the drywall out":
( Pictures of the terrible bathroom! )
So anyway, now I've got a bunch of strange people going in and out of our downstairs, tearing out drywall and fixtures and the linen closet. And I'm doing my best to stay upstairs and wear a mask and keep the central air fan going all day and cross my fingers that nobody's coming to work sick/asymptomatic. It's not great, but it's the best of a bad set of options.
I am looking forward to when it's done—at the very least, we should have a little more room in there. More importantly, I trust our project manager—he's done a number of projects for our building, and he managed the minor miracle of pulling together the demolition guys, a plumber, an installer for the concrete board and the pocket door, a tiling guy, a flooring guy, and a painter to do the work within a week, in the midst of a pandemic-related labor shortage. Assuming it's up to the quality of the other stuff he's done, I'm going to be damned impressed.
Now to navigate this next week without going entirely mad...
