Open relationships

I went to a bar with my statistics class some time ago. And the conversation turned to the topic of open relationships. Most of my comrades are around 21/22, and many have been in relationships for more than a year. I've noticed this trend among my friends before. I think my generation is into serial monogamy.

So many of them are considering at one point opening up their relationships. Mostly the girls, because they have been their boyfriends' first girlfriends, and feel that they cheated them from the normal playing around boys do(Yes, for French girls playing around is a boy thing). One girl told me as we sipped lemonade: "I feel that I would be able to control his cheating if I supervised it."
"But if you're opening up your relationship, it's not cheating, though, is it?"
She giggled.
"It's Cheating Prevention Tactic! It's a genius idea: you get to spy on him under the pretense of being open-minded.Hopefully I could choose girls that are almost as good as me, but not quite." She smiled evilly.

I come from a family where almost everyone has been divorced, even my grandparents. However I am not a relationship skeptic, on the contrary. I've had two serious, long-term relationships and I wouldn't say they were failures at all, or wastes of my time. But I find it difficult to believe that most people are brave enough or willing enough to put enough energy and effort into something once it stops being fun and effortless. I often see one person doing all the work, and getting discouraged, and that leads to separation.

I have no idea if I'll ever be in another serious relationship. But I've been thinking about what would prevent me from having an open one, and it boils down to this: I don't feel attracted to people only on a physical level, even very beautiful people. This would make it difficult for me to separate the physical from the emotional. And I think I would feel judged and compared to other women/men.

In fact, this second problem has nothing to do with open relationships, it has to do with me-my self-esteem, my confidence. Working on it!

The conversation ended on a funny note: a girl told me about her failed attempts to open her relationship for the summer, because she wanted her boyfriend to have more experience. He spent the entire month griping that no one was attractive/funny/interesting enough. He then realised how much he cared for her, and proposed.

Awwwww.

Things change

Things change, baby.

Almost seven months after the break-up, I'm calling my ex my friend, because he is. I'm going on dates and trying to feel single again. As predicted in May, I'm no longer in the noisy despair stage: pain happens, but the main mode is numbness and quiet indifference.

So a lot has changed in a way. Has it?

Depression makes you wary of trying to define yourself by your behaviour. I am not my depression. It is a part of me, but I don't want it to define me. I want my good traits to define me, but depression makes it hard sometimes to define those.

When I was X's girlfriend, he would often complain about my tendency to "fish" for compliments. I did. I needed an exterior eye to correct my deformed inner one. I am acutely aware that my vision of myself is flawed. But see, I am flawed too. And this break-up has made me realize some things that I always feared to articulate, in case they would be self-fulfilling prophecies.

I was always scared that "the real me" would be repulsive to others (friends, family, boyfriends). And then I met X. He loved me despite my defects. I told him about my depression, my eating disorder, my insecurities and yet, he loved me.

Until he didn't.

I entirely accept what happened, and in a way, this acceptance is my problem. Because if a man tells me that I am too dark, too heavy, too difficult, he will be telling me what I already feel, what I already know. That ultimately, my good qualities cannot compensate for the bad ones. When X told me he felt trapped, I understood that I was the problem. When, you know, it's always more complicated than that.

So as I gingerly dip a toe in the murky waters of flirtation and seduction after years of coupledom, I've consciously or not defined what is palatable and what is not. It's OK for me to complain laughingly about feeling under the weather and then switch the topic to something general. It's not OK to say what I really feel. Because that would be scary. And in the end, it's my own fucking responsability, no one else's.

At the moment, someone must have given me a Love Magnet, because I am being propositioned all the time. My stock is up. Yet something holds me back-and that something is the fear that once again, I am misleading these people into something they may not want to handle. I told X about my problems, but he didn't believe me, as he later admitted. Damned if I show my true colors, damned if I don't.

It's exhausting to live with demons on your shoulder. We all have those, although they may differ. Jealousy, greed, anger, sadness. Pick your poison. It's so exhausting to pretent they don't exist.

I knew I wasn't going to react to this break-up the way it was expected of me. My anger was short-lived. My bitterness almost non-existent. My affection and respect for my ex did not dissolve into ether, they morphed into something else.
I came to see myself as a list of pros and cons, the way X saw me, with the column of cons outweighing the pros.

Sometimes I still do.

And I want that to change.

Hard to please

I tentatively went on another "date". It wasn't a date in the French way- it was a pizza with a guy from my economics class. But I know he's interested. So in a way it was a date.
Anyhow, it went well compared to my Groping Misadventure. He's polite and well-spoken. He helped me in and out of my coat. He pulled my chair back for me. He opens doors. He gave me a ride home. He asked me thoughtful questions about political topics; we're both history nerds and he is a musician. We even like the same kind of rock and roll.

So why am I complaining?

I'm not. He was nice. But he had no edge to him. He was too slow for me. It felt like driving a Moped after being used to a Yamaha. He didn't see ahead in the conversation, didn't see the jokes, wasn't funny or witty. I was in control of the evening, and I like being surprised once in a while.

Anyhow, definite upgrade from last time. He invited me to go to an open-mike jazz evening where he will be playing with his band. I may go.

But I'm hard to please, clearly. X is a hard act to follow.

Good conversations

We know them when we have them, but how do we get them, exactly?
I always think about good conversation as a matter of rythm. Ping-Ping. Pingping-Ping. Like a tennis match. I can hear the ball cross the net and BAAM! Back at you. Yet it's more complex than that. I remember an amazing conversation with someone in Germany: we were constantly interrupting each other (with that greatest of gestures, the conciliatory hand patting the knee as you break someone's flow just to say sorry, nothing against you doll but I need to say this) yet it felt unrushed, perfect, exhilarating. Another interruption-ridden conversation I recall was just bad-we weren't listening to each other. It was forced. We both knew how bad the conversation was, I seem to remember that one of us just halted and said ruefully :"This is a terrible conversation." And so we stopped it.

As a bad-listener-trying-to-improve, I love hearing good conversations. I try to understand what makes them interesting, try to implement my findings in my own life. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Because conversation is a lot of good manners, a lot of passion and hopefully chemistry. We all know great people to talk to, as opposed to great people to talk at.

Ping. Ping. Pingpingpingping. You start the conversation and it works. You're communicating, arguing, laughing or staying serious, but the rythm is there, the sparkle is there. I'm ready for all these good conversations please.