Friday, February 21, 2014

Relationship Under Review

The least cultivated relationships are often the most surprising ones.

I have been friends with him for a long time now. It starts out like any relationship I've ever had with most men: a physical relationship, and it grows overtime, there has never been a moment of feeling uncomfortable with each other, and we never ever fight, get upset with one another, so we just let it grow.

We start up as lovers, then we become good friends, we stop being lovers, and we become better friends. It is not a decision that is forced upon me, it is a choice that I made based on a multitude of reasons.
  1. We are very compatible as friends. He and work in the same industry. He is a lot younger than I, but he is mature and we had a lot in common in the mobile world. 
  2. He is my equal. He earns very good money, he is into the same kind of music, food, fashion, art and he is very comfortable in his skin. He is confident like me.
  3. I have become increasingly involved with another man and he basically does not like me dating other men. 
  4. I never felt an emotional pull with him. Because we know this is going to be short lived. He is married like me and he is happy largely in his relationship with his wife. He knows that I am married as well and have kids. He likes talking to me about them. 
With him entering into a new job with a huge upside, he is feeling more confident and he wants to be associating himself with people who are successful and riding on the technology edge. We both know that our interaction will likely to increase. In more than one occasions, he was going to take on jobs that were close to me and now he's literately moving next door. I suspect the fact that he's not moving - he was going to move to London or New York has settled our relationship dynamics slightly. It made me less concerned about him moving away and we'd continue this statue quo. It may even make him feeling less anxious about leaving. I don't know what men think. I generally do not know how they feel about me. I tend to not to think about them at all. I never really give much thought about him. It has been one of those gradual process that until recently, I did not even know that he likes me.

Status quo meant having lunches, me being introduced to his new firm (I want to go there!), and basically staying as a platonic friend. I can do that. I excel in that. He's into the late night rave parties. I like those too. He has been a long term Burner, I'm not but I don't dislike that he is. He is passionate about everything Burning Man the same way I'm passionate about SCUBA diving or trail runs. He is a trend setter. I enjoy a man who is stylish and sexually ambiguous. He's married but he likes men as well as women. It's the new generation thing. I like that a lot. He is a tall blond blue eyed Scandinavian, and has that very laid back Scandinavian attitude, where one is not puritan like an American. One gets jealous or upset with the other person. I'm not that like. I try to become jealous with men but I end up at the same place. I can't really feel that level of jealousy. It is a manufactured feeling. I do get jealous but it's not because he likes someone else and chooses to spend time with them. If that ever occurs, I just get sad and I leave. I get jealous on men's past behaviors, the way they treat others over the way they treat me. And when that feeling is experienced, I spend a day or two to adjust and then I make my exit plan. It will never be because a man is having sex with another woman that I leave him, it is when I become bored of him. I become bored of him when he ceases to serve a purpose in life. That purpose could be that he ignites me, he is good in bed, he's intellectual, he's fun and exciting, but once that purpose is gone, I am bored and I tend to move on.

In the recent weeks I have realized that he is becoming more attached to me in that the frequency of our interaction has increased. For a while he only responded to my text every other time, and he would often skip a week or two before wanting to get together for lunch. Now he aggressively asks me out for lunch or get together for a drink after. I often decline. But it's nice to be on someone's mind. At first I am thinking that he no longer wants to hang out with me, then I realize that perhaps his lack of response is work related. Now he's getting a new job, and he's no longer stressed with his old job, he's himself again.

For all of the men I have ever come to contact with, he is the only person who os the most compatible in ways that I could only describe as "the late arrival soul mate."

We loved food. Good food. We loved to travel. He had lived in Sweden and I loved that about him being so connected to his roots. He is into the same kind of Euro DJ music. We can talk about music for hours.

We often do not see each during late August and early September because he's gone to Burning Man and I've gone on my vacation. But somehow we pick up our relationship after anyhow. I realize the reason that our relationship works  well is that we were similar and we really do got along as friends. And I rather man become my friends than my lovers.

When we come into other people's lives, we actually do not know what kind of story we'd create. It's possible that we enter a relationship thinking that we want one thing but we actually prefer another. And often surprises are good.

I am always really easily bored of others. Most people bored me eventually or quickly. Besides the man who I am having a physical relationship with, he is the only equal I had. He knows that being with me means that he does not have to worry about taking care of me. I always pay half of everything, sometimes I'd pick up the tab. I do not need a man to take care of me, but if he is to be super special, I need to know that he loves and cares for me. He must treat me with respect, and ultimately be okay that I am an equal and he is not be intimidated by me.

Today as we walk around the water,  he asks me what I was going to be doing this weekend. I can't figure out why men want to know what I am doing all the time. B does the same. The more they feel they like me, they want to know what I am doing and who I am doing with. I told him that this weekend I was going to snowboarding, and next weekend to Harbin Retreat. I am going to do these alone because these are expensive events. I often do things for myself because others could not afford it to do it with me, even when I offer to pay lodging they would not want to pay for the rest. So from that perspective, I wish that he and I could have done these things. And I wish the same for B.

Perhaps a perfect relationship must involve two financially secure person who can be complimentary to each other. I am a type A. so I prefer my partner more laid back. I want to be able to go out to eat a fancy meal and not have to worry about being on a budget.  I want to be able to be spoiled and spoil the other.

I want to be able to discuss current events - Kiev, China, the latest buyout of internet darling, etc, with someone. When I was younger I was unreasonable caustic. Overtime, I've calmed down a lot. It takes someone who is intelligent to keep up with me. If there is anything I learned from my therapy, is that I need to spend less time trying to befriend people I really don't care to be friends with, and I need to spend way more time with myself doing the things I like to do. Just like when I was in my mid twenties. A perfect friend is someone who is an atheist, liberal, passionate about something, sexually liberated and not possessive. They are hard to find. I should spend more time reading, writing and seeing the world, and less time talking to people I really don't care to be friends with.

A good relationship is always hard to obtain. I have never thought we could develop such a strong relationship as friends, and I have never given any thought about when it might end, but at this juncture, it would appear that he's interested in being a friend, and I'll let it play out.

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