💔 Booty call fail

And it's not all right.

I was at a bar with another poly mom friend of mine the other night.

She and I sat outside admiring the hip Kreuzköln passersby as we sipped on beer and gin & tonic, respectively.

I updated her about the guy I had been dating a few months ago, and how we’d stopped seeing each other. But I also added that more recently, after spending the day on a friend’s raft on the Spree when I was well-tipsy and stoned, I decided to give him a call.

My reasoning was this: We’d ended our fling on very specific terms and now the terms were different.

Back in March, we were going on a date every Thursday for a few weeks and texting in between.

It started to feel very relationshipy and given we were not what each other wanted long-term (you can read more about that here), it didn’t make sense to keep seeing each other as we were.

Getting dinner, sleeping with each other, making breakfast the next day was too much.

For me, I couldn’t NOT catch feelings doing this, and it started to feel like a recipe for pain in the long term.

But after taking a pause for over a month, calling him at 10pm on a Saturday — well, that felt like something completely different than what we were doing before.

We could just have a fun hook up and go our separate ways. Quick and dirty.

At least that’s what my cross-faded mind reasoned.

When he answered my call, he was just getting home. “Do you want a visitor?” I asked. He hesitated, seemed uncertain and was thinking out loud, going back and forth, while I tried being patient on the other end. Eventually he said, “I’ll think about it and call you back in five minutes. Does that work?”

“Sure.”

So I waited and decided to take the route home that would allow me the most flexibility in case he did decide to invite me over.

He called back when I was almost home and said he’d come meet me near my train stop. He said he just wanted to talk. I suggested a bar.

I guessed he didn’t feel good about me coming over.

Yet, I still had hope that we could have some fun. I mean, he was coming to meet me in the middle of the night after all.

I hoped that when he saw me he’d be so overcome by desire we’d make out at the very least.

So I was sitting there at the bar recounting this story to my friend.

“So what happened next?” she asked.

A sighed. “Well, basically we met and he said he didn’t want to hook up anymore. Not in this way. And just seeing me did not convince him otherwise. He had just wanted to say it in person.”

And as I said that to my friend, I started to feel a burning, some tightness though my chest.

My instinct was to push down the feeling immediately. A voice said, Come on Sarah, whatever. That guy wasn’t really that important. You have so many others things to focus on and love around you, like who the f*ck cares!

But then I quickly caught myself and realized despite all of the above being true, the feeling inside me right now was there. It was real.

I knew I had to give it space. So and I said to my friend, “Give me a second. I just want to feel this.” And I closed my eyes and tried my best to focus on what was happening inside of me. It was intense. Not overwhelming, but very much there.

I thought I was taking too long, so I put my hand on her leg as I felt my body.

“Take your time,” she said.

And I just felt it and tried to listen to the little girl inside who wants everyone to love her and adore her. And is wounded when they don’t.

I listened to that innocent beautiful part of me.

And eventually, even though the feelings still lingered, I opened my eyes. “I just needed to do that. Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said and smiled. I smiled, and then, only then, I allowed that other part of me to speak.

“I don’t think that we had this amazing connection. Like that our conversations were super deep or anything. He’s a nice person and I respect him. But really it was mostly lust. And I guess it still hurts to lose that.

“And if I’m really honest,” I continued. “A booty call would probably not have been so healthy. I’m not so good at having sex without feelings.”

It all would have just been a sad echo of what we had before.

It might have felt good but it probably would have also felt bad. Which is why I’d ended things in the first place.

Give your humanity space.

And this is what I mean when I talk about mindfulness.

I was “rejected” and there was a big part of me that wanted to just move on right away. A part of me that wanted to “not care.”

But that uncomfortable feeling was still there and it had a point too.

I wanted to be loved. To be desired, even if it wasn’t going anywhere.

That’s what we all want, and it’s good to feel something about that.

It doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. That I must love him. Or that I’ve made a huge mistake by letting him go. Or that I don’t appreciate what I do have if I’m still “hung up” about this.

It’s just means I’m a f*cking human.

Give your humanity space.

Give it appreciation.

Give it love.

Don’t push it down.

You can tell your friends, “Hey I need a moment,” and feel it. Maybe tears will start to flow, maybe not. It’s good to feel things.

This is the practice. This is my practice.

And this is what it means for me to love myself.

---

WHAT ELSE

1. Do I choose non-monogamy or my partner?

The last advice column is here. The next one will be this weekend!

"Do I choose non-monogamy or my partner?"

2. The masc cis het non-monogamy experience

I just finished Adam Darrow’s memoir about his “open-as-fuck” relationship with his wife: Seek the risk: One man’s journey into non-monogamy

Darrow painstakingly describes his journey as a hetero cis man, and how much protecting his masculinity plays a role in the insecurities he feels along the way.

I’ve yet to hear a man talk about this in such a brutally honest and self-reflective way. I really appreciated reading this.

Aaaand guess what? Darrow will actually be joining us for the next Community Hour (July 16 - save the date), and I’m really excited to talk about all this with him! So if this book interests you I recommend you read it now so you can come to the next CH with all your questions (and verbal fan mail.)