O, what has become of this poor girl?
Just a meager few years ago, I was pretty confident in just about everything. In my job, in my classes in college, and especially in my relationships. You see, I have always had this "I'm number one! I'm number one!" feeling with all of the men I date. I had unshakeable confidence that no matter who my man looked at, spent time with, hell, even was attracted to, I was always going to come out on top. Girl A might have bigger boobs, girl B might be smarter, but my total package was always going to win out. And this was true for a long, long time.
And then Vince and I got together.
(Vince, dear, if you're reading this, ha ha, take this with a grain of salt, and besides, it's not like I'm saying anything I haven't said to you already. I love you.)
In any case, Vince and I got together, and things were great, and we were in love. Then he proposed his idea for an open relationship to me. The thing about Vince is, he's great with words. He has some amazing argument-making skills. So Vince's idea of an open relationship went like this: "You have lots of people that you love, and you do fun things with them like go to movies and tell jokes and such. Then there is the one person you are in love with, and you go to movies and joke with them too, but you ONLY have sex with that person. Therefore, your love has been reduced to sex, because that is the only action that distinguishes that person from all the other people you love. In sum, you should not restrict sex to this one person, because when you take that ban away it leaves the in-love-ness you have with this person to stand by itself." And this made sense to me. (I guess I should point out at this juncture that I was a cheater for a long, long time, and had broken a lot of hearts that way, and some hearts more than once -- but I maintain I had broken that habit by this point. And this proposition frightened me, because I was adamantly done cheating on my boyfriends, and meanwhile Vince says "Go fuck other people and come back and cuddle with me!" But I was willing to try it because it was what he wanted and I loved him. Yes, yes, I should have noticed the warning bells at the time, thank you.)
In any case, we tentatively began allowing other people into the picture -- and frankly, I think I went about it all wrong from the very beginning. He wanted the freedom -- for both of us, let's be fair -- to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, and I just couldn't accept that, although I tried and tried and tried. So we attempted to fool around with other people exactly as much as the other person was fooling around -- he had an evening of wine and making out with one girl, which was roughly equal to the quickie blowjob given to a guy I worked with a few nights later. Needless to say, this hardly ever worked out the way I wanted it to. I kept trying to force myself to feel okay about it, and therefore I would martyr it up and say "go, go and do what you like, heed not my tears!" And then I would feel terrible and we'd fight about it and man, this happened way too much. Pretty much the only times I was okay with the open relationship were when we were both in the same room with different people, or at least in the same house, and both participating. Otherwise I was a basketcase.
This had an even more unfortunate consequence. This open/ajar/whatever relationship we had destroyed my confidence in my number one-ness. There was a long period when we were living in Chicago that I could barely stand to have one of our closest friends, Maggie, over because I was sure Vince wanted her more than me. To this day I'm not entirely sure how right I was; all I know is Vince I were fighting a lot -- a LOT -- during that time period, and I was constantly dressed in frumpy pajamas, and Maggie showed up once a month looking beautiful and being fun and interesting, and meanwhile they'd wanted each other off and on since before I ever showed up on the scene. (For the record, Vince and Maggie never had sex [once or twice due only to the lack of condom but I digress], and this is all thoroughly water under the bridge with everyone involved; I merely tell this as backstory to my current worry.) This feeling continued, and worsened, culminating in an awful experience in Phoenix last Christmas with Vince's friend Rachel. My martyr-behavior reached an appalling climax as I repeatedly, snidely, bitchily prodded Vince to go get his freak on with Rachel, and then when they actually did spend an evening groping each other (all but sex) I burst into tears, hated him, hated myself. This, arguably, was the beginning of the end, as we began discussing our breakup within the next few weeks, even though it didn't happen until June.
The good news is, I WILL NOT attempt to force my feelings one way or another any longer. That had entirely too disastrous consequences and generally my saying "go and do what you like" and then crying about it when it actually happened caused a whole lot more fights than saying "y'know what? I don't like that and I wish you wouldn't" would have. The bad news is, this jealousy thing does not seem to have gone away with Vince's and my breakup. I am still single (technically) but I do happen to be in love. And this poor guy I'm in love with is having to put up with my insecure tendencies. Dammit, I thought they'd have disappeared! But instead I find myself uncertain, even scared, as to whether I'm interesting enough to keep him around long-term, questioning other women's feelings toward him, worrying all over again about my ichibanicity, and fuck, we're not even together. What has become of me? Where is that ridiculously confident girl?
Of course, it is possible to say that I was
overly confident in the past -- not, of course, that I was wrong about my top status, but that it might have shown I didn't care enough about the other person's feelings, that I wasn't interested enough in maintaining the interesting bits that made that person fall for me in the first place.
In any case, I am annoyed that I still have this gut-twist reaction. Hopefully I can work my way towards a happy medium. It is good to wish to keep oneself interesting and new and all; stagnation is no fun. It is bad to have this "OH?????" reaction whenever another woman is brought up. I do think that will go away with time.
Perhaps these particular trials and tribulations of the last three years, difficult though they often were, really did help me become a better person. Perhaps this jealousy I occasionally feel -- and please don't believe it's crazily overwhelming; the fact that it's present is what bothers me -- is a sign of health rather than illness. I don't know. I suppose we'll find out.
