I Don't Want To Share

[00:00:17] Hey there, this is Tracy with flirting after 40. [00:00:21] I'm here to get you guys caught up on the emotional wreck. I was the last, the last podcast. I am in a much better spot now. However, it was a hard couple days and, and it's still kind of hard. [00:00:41] After I received a text from Sparky, who I was dating, who in the text said that he went on a date with someone else but still wanted to celebrate my birthday with me. I, I, I spun out a little bit. It was really hard. That was a really hard thing to hear. And my last podcast, you guys heard about that. [00:01:07] So what does one do when they are sad and hurt? [00:01:12] They go to therapy. [00:01:14] Fortunately, I have the best therapist. And if you don't, I suggest you find one. Um, I've been seeing my therapist for a, almost eight years. I, I saw her when I was married. I saw her through my divorce. I've seen her at least I would say once, twice a month for the last seven years, if not more. And why I love her is that she knows me. She knows every story, she knows every trigger, every, you know, every bad and good thing that has happened on my, on my journey to find love. [00:01:57] So I, I, I actually had an imm. I had an appointment with her before I knew what was happening before the Wednesday text. [00:02:08] So I saw her on Thursday and she was just what I needed, I needed to say the things I said out loud to everyone here. [00:02:19] But she has the history to know why I was struggling. [00:02:27] Where I'm going to go with this story today is that I, I have been in poly, polyamorous, ethically non monogamous relationships. I have been in relationships where people have been married, they're open, I've dated them or someone in the, in the relationship. The idea of someone saying to me that they went on a date with somebody else normally wouldn't be a, it wouldn't be a big trigger. Except I've been there and I've done that. How? I asked Sparky if he had a good date and he wanted to see the woman again. And his response was that he would like to see her again. [00:03:10] When I was telling that part of the story to her, she perked up a little bit and, and she reminded me that, Tracy, you've been there, you've done that. That's not, that was not your goal for this relationship to share. That was not your goal for this relationship to be open. Your goal and what you're looking for is a monogamous, dedicated partner. [00:03:37] And dedicated partners don't go on Other dates with other people. And while I have this podcast, started to find love and I was dating Sparky. Maybe I was doing that because I knew that relationship wasn't gonna work. Maybe I knew deep down that. [00:04:01] Well, I had heard that he wasn't looking for a big commitment. [00:04:08] Sometimes it takes a while to catch up. And that text of saying he wants to see her again was slap in the face back to reality that I needed that. Our relationship, we weren't committed and it's not the right relationship for me at this time. And that's okay. [00:04:35] So find a therapist and find a therapist that you can truly be yourself with because I'm telling you it's. It's a game changer. [00:04:46] So from there went upon the next couple days and Sparky and I had a conversation on Friday night. And y'all know I don't love talking on the phone, but this was necessary and very much appreciated. And we both had the opportunity to share where we were, our own vulnerabilities. Just truly put it all on the table. [00:05:12] A very grown up breakup indeed. [00:05:17] And it was sad. It was because I, I really like him and I know he really likes me too. And the fact that this is just not the right time, he's not in the right place is not an excuse. It's truly what it is. And if I can provide some grace to him to go work on himself and find that, to get to that place where he is comfortable in his past and his present and able to give someone the love that they deserve, I want to give him that grace. I want to give him that time. I want to show up however I can to support that. And maybe that's me being a little naive, but I don't, I don't think so. I think it's just fundamentally who I am. [00:06:24] And you know what? I really am in it with somebody and I really love them and I'm their friend. I will continue to show up. [00:06:34] And now I'm not going to show up in the capacity that I had Ben. But I can show up as a friend and I can support him. So do I like how it all happened? No. Am I still hurt? Yes. [00:06:51] But the closure that I received was. [00:06:56] Was good for me and was needed. [00:07:00] So I spent my birthday not with him, but with my fabulous friends. I have, I've said this, but I am extremely fortunate to have the circle of people that I have in my life and they didn't let me wallow. I. [00:07:19] I jokingly said on Wednesday night as I was sad and moping around that I just wanted to stay home and smoke a joint and cry. [00:07:34] My friend would not allow that. She dragged my ass out of the house on Wednesday night. I went out on Saturday with good friends and then Sunday was my birthday and some of my closest girlfriends showed up for and it was a brunch, football, I don't know, cake sliders, bagel fest. [00:08:03] We drank a bunch of bubbles and wine and sat around and talked. It was really nice and it allowed me a little bit of time to heal. [00:08:15] Their, their presence shows me what, you know, what I want out of a. From a partner. They show up for me the way that I want somebody to show up for me and the way I want to show up for others. [00:08:31] We, we didn't put any curse on Sparky or anything bad. We. We saged the house and spent some time just letting things go. It felt good. It was, it was a great way to spend my birthday. And while I am still sad, I am going to be okay and I'm going to move on, trying to move on and see what's next. [00:09:15] So with my dating history comes a lot of stories. And after I got divorced, I was not ready to jump into a traditional relationship where I believed or thought that I needed to be someone's everything. And I don't believe that anybody now could be anybody's everything. But again, how we grow up and stereotypes and assumptions that people make and assumptions that we make for our own lives. I wasn't ready to do that again. I didn't want to get married again. And so I thought, and this is through therapy that I should explore polyamory ethically non monogamous relationships. And I thought that for some reason that type of dynamic would be easier to navigate. [00:10:15] I. I was absolutely wrong. What I've learned from that is so much. But I would say those relationships were some of the most complex relationships I've ever had in my life, which taught me a lot. And it taught me how to communicate in a crazy open way that I do now. [00:10:40] So my first real relationship was we're gonna call him. It's funny, I have nicknames for everybody in my phone or people you date. But I don't have a nickname for him. So let's call him Jay. [00:10:59] So I met Jay online. [00:11:05] I don't even remember the app. And this was during COVID Can you imagine Date. Oh, well, you probably can if you're 45. Is you were dating during COVID or married during COVID and then divorced after Covid or divorced during COVID Um, but we met online during COVID and our first date was him coming to my house. Now, we had talked many times before we had FaceTimed, so it wasn't as if I was totally reckless. [00:11:41] But that's what you did during COVID Anyways, Jay is married and they have two kids. And he and his wife are polyamorous. They are kitchen table poly, meaning that we could sit around. We could all sit around a kitchen table and have a meal and hang out, Meaning they're extremely open and share what is happening in each other's lives with each other. [00:12:13] It's not a non monogamous relationship in which details are withheld. Um, I'm sure certain details are withheld, but the idea is that we're all in it together and that. And I believe this. That love. [00:12:34] That you can love multiple people. And the reason I looked to polyamory also is that I believe that not one person can fill all your buckets. It's like friendship. You know, you have a lot of different friends for different things. You might have a friend that, you know, likes to go to sporting events and one that hates fucking sports. I still, in some ways, do look at relationships this way, that not everybody's gonna be able to do all the things you want them to do and fill all the buckets. And I do believe that love is possible in multiple ways for multiple people at the same time. And there's a lot of people that might not agree with me on that, but that is the reason that I was exploring polyamory. [00:13:19] So Jay and I, we hit it off right away. We had a blast. Like, seriously would just. I mean, okay, it's Covid. We would. He would come over, we had a standing Wednesday date, and we would eat and drink and have amazing sex. And I don't know, it was. It was great. And sometimes we saw each other on the weekends, sometimes we didn't. It. It felt like we were very committed, but both had individual freedoms to do the things we wanted to do and to be the people we wanted to be. And for him, that was a husband and a father, and for me, that was a mother and just be by myself. It was a great balance of the time, of what I needed. [00:14:17] Remember the first time I met his wife? I know some of you guys that have never done this are thinking, holy shit, how. How does this work? [00:14:29] I drove to their place. She was getting ready to go. Go out on a date or go away for the weekend or something. I can't even necessarily remember all the details, but I came in, met her. [00:14:42] They also had a friend there and sat at the kitchen table with them and had conversation, had a drink. [00:14:53] Whoo. I was. I was intimidated. I was scared. She is beautiful. [00:15:01] So beautiful. It will go down as one of those moments that's just burnt in my brain of me feeling inadequate and super awkward, but it was also crazy, liberating. And it was a. It was. It was great. I learned a lot from them, probably mostly from her. [00:15:26] And it's weird. Like, that was my very first moment of acceptance and then worry, and then, holy, what am I doing? And if you can imagine all. All of the feels. [00:15:46] And now it comes back to me. She was leaving for the weekend, and she told me, like, you can sleep in my. I was staying the night. You could sleep in the bed with Jay. Like, you can sleep on my side. [00:16:05] Oh, okay. That felt a little. That felt a little intrusive to me. That felt. [00:16:12] I don't know. That felt like a lot. [00:16:17] So, anyways, our relationship continued, and as all relationships do, they evolve. [00:16:28] I definitely was more attached to Jay than he was to me. [00:16:34] I. [00:16:36] I definitely really grew fond of him and our relationship, and I never wanted him to not be with his wife. I never wanted that dynamic to change. But I did want to maintain my purpose with him and to not share even more. [00:17:06] And here we come back to therapy. The sharing. There was never rules put on of how many people you could date or who you can date. There was. There was. There's no rules. It was just be open and honest to communicate with your partners about where you are, what you're doing, a lot about health, you know, like, if you're sleeping with other people, we need to all make sure we're taking precautions and being safe. [00:17:30] So Jay started seeing a considerably younger woman, and I had a really hard time with that. I want to say she's probably 12 years younger than him, probably 10 years younger than me, you know, So I couldn't understand why wasn't I enough? Wasn't his wife enough? [00:17:57] And that is not the point of being poly. It's not. It's not to judge others. And that. That was really hard for me. And I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted and how I wanted maybe my poly lifestyle to look, which is different for everybody. And I just was not comfortable with that. And I would say that was kind of the beginning of the end for us. [00:18:25] So when I knew with Jay we weren't going to work, was. [00:18:32] I had an oral surgeon appointment, and I needed someone to drive Me, they were going to put me out, put me under whatever and remove a mass that I had in my jaw. [00:18:46] And I asked Jay to drive me and he said, I don't do that kind of stuff. [00:18:58] Okay. I don't know what that means, but what it meant was that I could be his partner as long as I didn't require anything from him more than he wanted to give. [00:19:12] So not really a partner, just a person he hung out with. So between that and the younger woman, I saw the writing on the wall and knew we were pretty much done. [00:19:27] And that was really sad too. That was, I mean, we had, we dated, I would say a good year. During kind of the ending of my relationship with Jay, I met Matt. And you will hear a lot about Matt. And it's funny because Matt was also dating, or talking, I should say talking, not dating, was also talking to Jay's wife. Okay, so I'm going to paint the picture back for you guys. Jay, his wife, me, Matt, me, Matt, Jay's wife. [00:20:10] Yeah, it's. It's one of those small worlds. [00:20:14] So that story is for another time. [00:20:17] However, this was the first poly relationship where I started to learn that I didn't want to share. And you can't really be poly or non monogamous without sharing. [00:20:35] And I did work on it. Jealousy is something that you can work on. But my reaction to Sparky's text that he went on on a date was very triggering because I have shared and every time I've shared, I've been burnt. [00:20:56] Every time I've shared, I don't end up with the person, I end up alone. [00:21:04] So do I want to do it again? Fuck no, I don't want to do it again. So I'm back on the horse. Not literally, but I'm back on the sites. I'm putting in the time, trying to meet some new people and so far so good. I would say have a date lined up for next Friday, which we're talking a whole like week and a half away. But seemingly like a nice man I have met on Bumble. We're going to call him Ginger. He's a cutie with some fair skin. I don't normally date gingers, so we'll see. That's nothing, nothing negative to be said about gingers. I just tend to go for darker, complex, complected men, typically. [00:21:55] But we've been talking for a couple days and he seems like a nice guy. So we'll keep talking and we'll see if we actually meet. [00:22:05] I was also talking with. We'll call him T from Tinder. He is definitely more looking for, I think probably somebody to have more of a play with play with than a relationship. But I don't know, there's something intriguing about him. He is in the kink or has been in the kink lifestyle and that doesn't scare me. I'm pretty open when it comes to things like that. And so we're working on trying to figure out a time that works to meet as well. So maybe in the next week I will have, I will have a couple dates. [00:22:44] Gotta, gotta put yourself out there. So your funny dating profile, you guys, I can't make this stuff up. [00:22:53] This is from a 50 year old man. [00:22:57] Word for word. I'm a selfish prick, a hot intellectual with a big D and a marathon tongue. I'm young enough to do it often and old enough to do it right. I don't have time for petty drama or emotional hysterics. I do what I want, when I want. I'm only giving this app a week. Oh my God. Like I, I genuinely want to know. Is that, does that get good responses? Does that, I mean, there's somebody probably that that works for and no, I mean go you. I just, I don't, I don't understand that. I just don't understand how that is appealing. And he's not saying he's looking for short term. I mean, I get it if you're just on a nap and you're like, hey, I'm just, I'm here to get some totally fine but emotional hysterics. Hmm, probably wouldn't like me. [00:24:01] No, I'm just joking. But if you like that kind of thing, I would love to know. [00:24:08] Maybe I'm missing out. I don't know. [00:24:13] Well, please find me on Instagram, Facebook, follow along. I try to post some of these funnies of people's dating apps and some inspirational things to keep us going. And please follow along on the podcast. I. [00:24:28] The feedback I have received is phenomenal and I appreciate everybody that listens and takes time out of their day for this. [00:24:36] And with that, have a great night. Thank you for listening.