A few weeks ago, after I wrote about the hot sex I had with an energy healer, a few of you left comments to the tune of: “I bet your A/C repairman is going to drop down a few notches.”
You all are very wise. My A/C repairman, with whom I’ve been sleeping for several months, did seem less interesting to me once I started having amazing sex with an energy healer.
And now, alas, we are kaput.
The full story is more complex than just “I met this other guy who is way hotter.” The full story is more along the lines of: I set important boundaries that my A/C repairman did not want to honor.
There are a few things I haven’t told you about me and my A/C repairman. Since we met this fall, he and I have been very on-again-off-again because he has a house he’s been renovating in another state. Three separate times, he left to go work on the house without giving me a heads up. Then, each time, he was gone between 4 and 7 weeks. He would text me platitudes while he was away, but I never knew how long he’d be gone for; when I would ask, he’d say “not long at all” and then weeks would go by. It was annoying, but I told myself he didn’t owe me anything. I had told him from the beginning that I didn’t want anything serious and wasn’t promising monogamy.
Still, I found it frustrating.
The last time he left, in early February, I told him that I could feel myself growing more emotionally distant as time went by. That I was likely pulling away from him to protect myself. I had set emotional boundaries to keep myself safe. I told him I wasn’t sure how I would feel when he got back in town.
Then, I went back on FEELD and met the energy healer.
It wasn’t until last week that my A/C repairman finally returned from out of town again and asked to take me out to dinner. I said okay, but I warned him — again — that I wasn’t sure how I would feel when I saw him. Here’s a text exchange that is a perfect illustration of what happens when I try to say important things to him about my feelings. He almost always dismisses them or ignores them:
Still, I said yes to dinner. Among other things, I was extremely curious about how I would feel. When the door opened and I saw him for the first time, my body was like
Hmmmmm.
He leaned in and I gave him a hug. I didn’t kiss him. He was gone for 7 weeks and I didn’t even want to kiss him! That was…. interesting.
We got into his car so he could drive us to dinner. The entire drive, he complained about his neighbors and their roosters. Didn’t ask a single question about me or how I’ve been or what’s been going on in my life. That was interesting, too.
Dinner was …. fine. But I noticed that my body wasn’t reacting to him in the ways it usually does. I wasn’t thinking I can’t wait to get home and take his clothes off, which is what I’m usually thinking when we have dinner. I wasn’t repulsed or anything, but I was definitely lukewarm. (I remember also thinking, “he seems very small!” but not in a height way. I hadn’t realized that frame is a LOT smaller than my energy healer’s.)
We got back to his place and he plopped down on his bed. I joined him, and we started kissing. And … I didn’t really enjoy it. It felt weird. I remember thinking that I didn’t actually want his tongue in my mouth. I used to love his kisses!! Nevertheless, my body slowly responded and I got turned on.
But I had to stop him. I needed to tell him we had to use condoms.
At a certain point last fall, we had stopped using condoms because we’d both been tested. He told me that he was being monogamous, and I believed him; I told him that I was not promising to be monogamous (though in practice I actually was), yet he still opted out of using them. But now that I was sleeping with the energy healer (using condoms, but still), I felt that it would be prudent to start using condoms with my A/C repairman, too.
This conversation, as you can imagine, did not go well. Here’s what went down:
Me: We can have sex, but I want to use condoms.
Him: What? Why?
Me: I have pulled way. I am not interested in anything serious or monogamous. And, I mean, you’ve been gone for 7 weeks… I don’t know what you’ve been up to!
Him: Well I haven’t slept with anyone else. Have you?
Me: Actually, yes, I have.
He was upset. Not angry, but sad. He said he understood and it made sense, but that he didn’t want to sleep with me if I was sleeping with other people. To which I responded: “I understand, if that’s what you want. I think we’re at an impasse then, because I’m not going to stop sleeping with other people.”
It wasn’t just about the travel, I added. He’d done a handful of hurtful things over the past few months that had caused me to pull away. An example: Another long stretch away took place immediately before we took our short vacation together. He had sworn to me that he’d be back in town long before our trip, so that we could reconnect before traveling. Yet he actually only returned the evening before our morning flight. I was livid. I told him I needed to see him that night so I could feel good about traveling with him the next day. He told me he was too tired and that he would instead come wake me up the next morning and we could connect then. He didn’t do that, either. The first time I saw him was right before we left for the airport.
I tried to let it all go so we could enjoy our trip, but it stung. And then the trip itself had its ups and downs, too.
But back to last week. Eventually, I stopped talking, and he did too. I got up and left. He texted some sad face emojis and told me that he wished we could “start over.” But he didn’t mean “start over” as in “start casually dating again.” He meant “start over” as in “please erase from your mind all the bad things I did and promise yourself to me and no one else.”
Nope.
So, it’s over. And I really don’t miss him. I do feel for him — I think he doesn’t know how to engage with women in an emotionally mature way. But he also doesn’t seem to care enough to try to work on himself and figure it out. The night we ended things, he kept saying “I never meant to hurt you.” To which I said: “I know you never intended to hurt me, but that doesn’t matter. You did, and not just once, but over and over again, even though I told you what wasn’t working and what I needed.”
The one-offs, they can be forgiven. Patterns are a different story.
Interesting that he couldn’t honor your request to communicate while he was out of town, but expected you to honor his request to be monogamous. Despite your having insisted from the beginning that you wanted a casual relationship. I think this lays bare the lie that’s at the heart of our culture’s (gendered) narrative about “fear of commitment” and “clinginess” and all that. Perhaps a lot of the time what we call “fear of commitment” is really a desire for the other person to be available for sex whenever you want, but otherwise keep quiet and don’t ask for anything from you. And “clinginess” refers to asking anything from the other person.
His monosyllabic responses remind me of an old boyfriend of mine who once said, “I don’t have time for your complex emotional bullshit.”
Too bad: relationships, especially sexual ones, are complex and emotional, even when casual and non-exclusive.
I really appreciate your ability to communicate and stick with your boundaries. You are so strong and confident in your needs! Cheers to non-monogamy!