revelation(ettes) and epiphany(ettes)

A very long weekend. knowing that over there is a woman who is able to completely put me out of her life, despite everything we've shared and come to know about each other.

had some interesting revelation-ettes this weekend. can't call 'em revelations or epiphanies yet because i'm still not sure what they mean completely.

B's hurt stems a great deal from me doing things that were "ours". (and from lying about it). she reminded me of a couple of things from the past where she had done things that i'd considered "ours" and how much i'd been hurt by them.

as in the past, i hadn't seen that perspective on my actions until afterward, until after i'd already caused the hurt. (is that a guy thing or just me?)

revelationette 1: i went to a bar saturday night. it was kinda crowded, a youngish crowd, loud music and then live music. it was fun, in a way, to watch it. after a while, it was also sad because i knew it wasn't me. i think i'd had (not dreams, maybe) visions? that i'd be able to hang in a club, having a good time, meeting people. women. couples. finding fuck buddies even? why would i think that? i've never been able to meet women in a club before. never. why would i be able to now? but truthfully, that wasn't even the point. i'd had visions of B and I in clubs, having fun. She'd be much more at home in that element than I. She's much younger, more vivacious. Besides, she's a young, beautiful, outgoing woman. Everywhere she goes, people want to meet -her-.

revelationette 2: i'd gone out late saturday afternoon, just to get out. i'd intended to do so earlier but between being hung over and still crushed by B walking away from me (the effects and pain of which will be around for long into the foreseeable future), i was simply unable to get out of the house. so i loaded the bike in the car with the intent of going to the lake and riding the bike trails i'd heard about. i couldn't find the bike trails, but i did find something else: an rc airplane flying field. i'd been involved in the hobby years ago and loved it. there were only two guys there, but i watched them fly for a while. it was fun to watch. i went back on sunday and there was more activity, more flyers. i talked to a few of them, got club info and the like. i immediately became interested in the hobby again and could see myself out there on the weekends flying, maybe even an occasional afternoon during the week since i can get out early.

related observation: as i was coming back from the flying field, i saw two couples on motorcycles pulling into homes in my neighborhood. couples my age, not "bikers" necessarily, but just couples out for a ride on a beautiful weekend day.

epiphaniette 1: what it is and isn't about. put all these together. let stew for a while. and then it began to take shape. i began to see the great difference in B and her life and me and mine. maybe it explains why (or at least a partial why) she couldn't leave where she was. to put it simply- you can't make sex your life. it can be a big part of it, an important part. but there has to be more. B has a life; a home, a partner, a routine, a dog, all of it. part of that life is a sex life. she wishes it were better (although it's probably gotten a whole lot better in the last week or so) and there's sex she wants that she hasn't been getting, though that might have changed too. but again, it's sex within the ?boundaries? of a -life-. if she doesn't have sex for an afternoon or a day or even a week, she still has the life. for as long as i've been separated/divorced, i've been avoiding getting a life, avoiding finding and doing those things that make up a life. sure, i've done things but never ?embraced? them, always doing them as things that had to be done, this time, to get through with it. i never took up a hobby, or found friends, or made a life. i didn't really make seeking sex my priority either though, because i had a fuck buddy. so i could go there for sex and withdraw from, or hide from, both having to get a life and having to look for sex. since i've moved here though, that balance has been upset. here, i haven't yet made a life, and although i have thought about it i've also found myself fighting it. i also was able to find sex, with a couple. finding them allowed me to take my focus off the "life" side of things and focus on the sex side. and with that focus and making that so "important" and such a large part of my being, i let myself get carried away. carried away with the excitement and the newness and the novelty without thinking about the ramifications of it all, of the effects on others in my life (especially B and my relationship with her). so here it is, epiphaniette 1: sex is a part of life, not the other way around. sex cannot be your life. it can't. at least not for me. don't get me wrong, i want it to be a big part of my life. i want to have a happy, healthy, active sex life, one that extends beyond what most peoples' does. i want the sex life that B and I always talked about having together. the difference now is that i see that that sex life is a part of a larger life, not the other way around.

and now i think i understand why B is gone. even though we were never together physically, we were "together". we had that kind of closeness, a closeness and understanding that most real couples never get to. and she looked at our relationship and the sex in it one way - that is, as sex within a life. all that we had together, talk, phones, IM, email, our conversations, those were our life. within that life was our sex. and the sex included things we wanted to do between us and to do with others. and i think because she wouldn't give me her life, wouldn't give me anything besides our conversation time and phone and im and email, and sex, i think i looked at it as though the sex -was- our life. that's not quite right - maybe more like i looked at the sex as though it would be a central, majority part of our life, instead of looking at it as it should be, which is that it would have been an important part of our life. a subtle difference, but huge really.

so if you look at what's happened between B and i in the last week or so (and probably back to -all- our incidents), it's easy to see why she's upset, why she hates me, why she feels betrayed, why she left. boil it down, and it's plain to see: i cheated on her. i took things that belonged to a very important part of our life/relationship (things that were special to us in our sex) and i took those elsewhere. i took things that were -ours- and i took them elsewhere. i cheated on her. betrayed her. and as usually happens in a betrayal, i lied to her. again. and i justified the betrayal by saying "but she won't be physical/real with me". and i justified the lying by saying it was to keep from hurting her. neither was a justification. and in the end, i cheated on the woman i love. period. even though our relationship has some unique aspects to it, it's still a relationship. she gave me her trust and her intimacy and her love. and i betrayed her. and lied to her.

epiphaniette 2: wow. writing it out has triggered another. B has told me often that when we weren't so focused on "us" that we were better, that she was more attracted to me when i had my own life. now i get it. and i see that as i pulled away from my life, from having my own life, and began to focus more and more on "us", making her my life, the major part of my life, and making (or trying to make) our sex the major part of our relationship (instead of just letting it happen as a natural consequence of our relationship, which it would have) - that coincided with the ?conflict? in our relationship. she was right all along when she told me, time and again, to just "be", to just let us happen, to not focus on us so much and so hard, and to just let us have our time together. the other part of that, though i don't know that either of us put it together then, was that i needed to get a life, find interests and things to do, outside of the "us" and our time together. she told me that too. many times. i didn't want to do it because i didn't want anything to come between us, didn't want anything to distract me from her (although i think i was more scared that she, seeing me have a life, would think i was loosing interest in her and that she would then lose interest).





now what?

now i have some knowledge of myself that i didn't have before. but the fact is that i've still lost her, driven her away.

how do you integrate life truths into your life when you can see the woman you want to share you life with walking away? my one, the one.

what's the point of even going on?