The story of why I live on my own again
So. I finally typed up what happened. Why I'm now living in my own apartment again (and, uh. If you didn't know...that's. that's where I am? Surprise?). This is a much shortened, summarized version of what happened. The shit that involves Cassandra alone is several thousand words worth of explanation. This is the background, the event, and the fall out, as clear as I can make it. It's...well, this is not a short read. Nor am I at all offended if you. Y'know. Don't read it. However, if you come back and ask me what happened...I'm gonna point you here? This is frankly exhausting to talk about right now, so going over it again and again is just not something I want to do. I will, however, answer questions as best I can? Please be patient, though. And no chorus of, "DUMP HIM!" because...I've chosen my path and while that may be the end result, I'm choosing right now to work it out.
When I introduced Matthew to Cassandra, it was done as, "Matthew, my friend would like to learn how to flirt. She is very bad at it. You are very good at it. Would you be comfortable being the safe space that Cassandra can practice in?" He said yes (in hindsight clarity, introducing people to flirt when one of them has never had a romantic partner before...of course this went the way it did. Duh.). So I introduced Matthew to Cassandra and didn't think twice about it.
Fast forward a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and now I'm being told that they're attracted to each other and they'd like to have a relationship, this is what they're doing, here you go. Now, being poly, it doesn't bother me that they want to form a relationship. What bothers me is that this is not what the situation was understood to be, this was not how we had agreed things would progress. I felt very blindsided, even when I was supposed to be included in a three-way poly triad. We tried that for a while, and it did not work for a myriad of reasons. I eventually couldn't deal with it anymore and pulled myself out. The problems really started deepening here. I should not have been the only one to pull back. When it didn't work as a triad like it was supposed to, then that should have been it. There should have been no further romantic relationships, at the very least without further severe and deep discussion. That didn't happen, though. Matthew and Cassandra continued on their way, without acknowledging me, the problems that I was having, how rude and disrespectful it was, and so on. (Yes, I am leaving a SIGNIFICANT portion of information out, but it's not really relevant, so.)
Eventually, once I was in therapy and properly medicated, I started to recognize that what matthew was essentially doing was cheating on me. In poly, it's harder to cheat, since the usual definitions don't apply, but still possible. In this, he was cheating on me in the sense that I did not agree to the situation, I didn't agree that this was the way things could go, I was simply being forced to accept the status quo. At the time, I didn't really have a place I could go (again, in hindsight, I could have gone back to Florida; I did have options), plus I love the asshole and when Cassandra's not involved, we're good together, so I wanted to make it work. The problem was, there were now significant problems between him and I that stemmed from the catalyst of Cassandra but were no longer related to her. There were/are other problems as well completely separate from her, things that need to be worked out before this can work in any kind of capacity that will be tenable long term.
In September, Cassandra took Matthew on ANOTHER weekend trip (she'd taken him on several. I'd gotten none. His reason was because of finances. Remember this; it's important). They went downtown and stayed at the Drake hotel. There was a particular reason they went there and that she booked the trip, though I don't remember it off the top of my head. Suffice it to say that it was a fancy weekend and yet another reason for me to be frustrated, annoyed, and hurt. Matthew came home, life continued on as usual, and that included--approximately two weeks later--me opening up a particular credit card statement to pay it, as I'd taken it over several months before. Right at the top of said credit card statement is a $150 meal at the Drake.
So, to sum up this little punch to the gut: he charged a meal at an expensive hotel restaurant with a woman that he knows I have many problems with to the credit card I paid after telling me we didn't have the money to go away for weekends ourselves.
I am not sure why I didn't pack up and walk out right then, other than I was very much broke and couldn't even have paid my gas to drive down to florida at the time. I did, however, decide that I was going to Florida in October to visit my family, and fuck the man that had refused to commit to the trip. I went without him. The month or so leading up to that trip was... tense. I started pulling away from him, confused and sad. He continued to treat me as someone he had to take care of, someone he resented and like burden he didn't want.
I went to Florida. I had some long talks with my mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend. Close to the end of the trip, Matthew was returning from a business trip, and told Twitter he was back on the ground ten full minutes before he texted me. Generally, I wouldn't give two shits about this. I don't care in what order people tell the world they've finished a flight. In this case, however, I cared because 1) he'd conditioned me to expect a text as soon as he was on the ground, 2) he was responding to tweets, not just tweeting that he'd landed, so it was more he was taking his sweet ass time, and 3)...I happen to know he texted Cassandra first.
I may have completely lost my shit. To the point that my brother, who is not a physically demonstrative person, was hugging me.
I spent the rest of that trip having some very deep thinky thoughts, trying to reach out and talk to him and being COMPLETELY rebuffed, and having a...basically 24 hour panic attack on the drive home because I didn't know if I was coming home to packed bags or what. I also didn't really know what I was going to do, so there were a lot of those thinky thoughts.
I came to the conclusion that I was done with trying to deal with him. I was going to take care of me, do the things I needed to do, including developing new relationships with people because obviously, I wasn't going to get what I wanted or needed out of him. So...I did just that. I tried to tell him, but he blew me off, so I didn't really pursue it (again, in hindsight, I should have tried harder, made sure he heard me. In that, i'm at fault.), and went about finding new friends for myself.
I found one fairly quickly on Tinder, a man named Eric. Now, don't get me wrong; Eric will never be anything more than a friend. The man's an asshole, but He's exactly what I needed at the time, so I've maintained the friendship. He's also what I need *NOW*, in terms of calling me on my shit and pointing out when I'm being a fucking idiot. He's a friend. A friend that I occasionally fuck, but a friend. I told Matthew that I had found this new friend--because I wasn't trying to hide anything and I wasn't about to fall into that particular trip. We may have been struggling and having problems, but I was still going to hold up my end of the bargain and tell him when I was doing things.
It took Matthew about...eh, three days to really register what was going on and figure out what, exactly, that meant. In his mind, it meant that he was losing me (he was, though not the way he thought), and it freaked him out. And the man...he honestly did a 180. HIs behavior changed, he started treating me better than he ever had, he had a lot of serious thoughts and conversations with me, we talked about Cassandra and what needed to happen there, just...tons of shit. I was thrilled, because it meant he was ready to work on things, but cautious. As I told him, I was cautiously optimistic. Weeell, apparently I shouldn't have told him that because he didn't take it well. He took it to mean that I didn't believe his behavior change, and we struggled a little over it. I pointed out that it had nothing to do with believing or not believing his behavior change but instead had everything to do with the fact that he was up against basically two years of...bullshit.
Aaaaand then everything went to absolute hell. I overdrafted my bank account by a fairly significant amount (not four figures but creeping up on), largely due to fees though that doesn't matter. Because the bank account was joint, it was slamming Matthew's credit which was already in the toilet because he'd spent the two years after his divorce basically living off credit cards (which is a different argument, but suffice it to say that I had a big problem with it). Then, I was hit in a parking lot at work and didn't notice the damage until I was leaving Eric's house many hours later. No note on my car, nothing. As I didn't get home until 2 am and Matthew was already asleep, I chose not to tell him about the damage until the next morning. I told him the first chance I got, which was, unfortunately, in the shower...in retrospect, I should have let him finish waking up first. /o\
I told him that he was going to see this damage on the car, but I would take care of it. I just wanted him to know before he walked out and saw the damage. He said okay, I saw him off to work, I went back to bed (because at that point, I'd only had like...4 hours of sleep). When I woke up, i had a series of text messages that basically said don't call in the damage, it'll just raise my insurance and I can't afford it, and let me know when you're awake, we need to talk. I'll call you.
Well... yeah. My stomach dropped. I knew damned well what that meant. and I was right. He asked me to move out because he couldn't do it, he couldn't trust me, he was having constant panic attacks over money and I was just making things worse.
He gave me until the end of January to make arrangements. We were not breaking up, but we couldn't live together. He needed to be alone to get his shit together.
My mother asked me why I didn't just flat out break up with him. I told her it's the same reason she's still with my father, 37+ years later. She didn't have an answer for that.
So... we basically spent December and January slowly separating our households. I found a place to live with my boss (which I'll go into in a moment). He's at the house. We've seen each other once, on Valentine's, actually, since I moved out. He requested the month of February to himself to get his shit together and figure stuff out. I told him fine. And...well, it is fine (except for something ELSE i'll share in a moment).
We're still together. We haven't broken up. Right now... I don't think we'll break up, at least not for a while. We're going to try and sort our shit out, make things work. But I CAN tell you that I've got a much, much lower threshold for bullshit this time, and I will not put up with much.
now. To back up a little... Cassandra's at his house right now, far as I know. She was there last night. She'll be there, apparently, until Saturday or Sunday. She was going to just pick up her dog, which Matthew was watching for her while she was Oregon for her grandmother's funeral and to sort out her affairs, but it "somehow became her staying." Now, let me remind you that he had already said he didn't want to see anyone INCLUDING CASSANDRA during the month of February while he sorted himself out. But she's there. For several days. Mmmm. Kay. Sure.
This comes after him telling me they'd broken up while I was in New York in November ("We're no longer boyfriend/girlfriend. I'm still her friend and I'll still sleep with her, but we're no longer a couple.") to a few weeks later me pointing out that basically nothing had changed as far as I could see and being told that, well, apparently he had it wrong, and they were still together.
The man is a motherfucking doormat and if he does not grow a spine, i swear to god. I am done. I cannot. Because that fucking bitch manipulates and twists him until he doesn't know which way is up, and he lets her. I'm fairly sure he likes it because it means he has other people to blame when things don't go well.
But mm, okay, fine. Something to deal with. We know it's there and we know it's a problem to deal with. Whatever. So, he also tells me that he's felt like I'm trying to replace him. First of all, HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'VE FELT, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE?! Second of all, oh my god, not even close. I have worked on making new friends, including people I sleep with, because 1) poly and 2) i need people around me that aren't going to make me feel like I'm worthless and a burden. Because guess what, Matthew, that is exactly what you do.
I have Eric and I have another new friend, Bryant. Bryant is a much more...serious relationship in that I am, in fact, falling in love with him. It's SO much healthier. There's communication and discussion and living in the moment instead of ignoring, and...yeah. This is what poly should be, and i'm enjoying myself. It's about living in the moment right now.
SO! What does all of this mean in the end? Mmm...not much, other than Matthew and I have a MOUNTAIN of issues to work on and I'm not going to be very understanding for awhile. I'm too hurt. Too angry. Too ignored and turned into someone he decided he had to take care of because he wouldn't see me for who I was. He decided, btw, that this was the first time I'd be living on my own and be able to take care of myself. He somehow never registered the TEN. FUCKING. YEARS. I lived in Florida and not only supported myself but ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.
To quickly explain why I now live with my boss--which is going swimmingly, btw--when I started trying to work out how I could make this work, how was I going to be able to support myself, I came up with upsettingly few options: 1) move back to Florida. 2) find a roommate. 3) find a place to live on my own...except 3 wasn't reaaaally viable because while I do make enough money to support myself, the area in which I work is not cheap. The closest I could get was damned near in Wisconsin, and I didn't really want that. That left roommates, and I knew Brandi needed someone, but that was far away from my current work place. This meant moving centers, as did moving to Florida. So, I went to talk to my boss about what steps were necessary to transfer centers, and never even got the question out. I told her that I needed to move out of the house and she asked me to move in with her. Like... just like that. We talked about it a little bit, and realized that it really was a viable solution, so...we did that. I've been here...eh, roughly a month, and we work well. We don't see each other a super lot because she functions on a different diurnal schedule than I do, but we keep work and home separate and we're doing fine. :)
Do I understand how toxic this all sounds? Yes. Do I also understand how much I've left out in order to keep this as succinct as possible (yes, i know, we're looking at fucking 2,500 words of explanation, but trust me. This IS the short version). Is this going to be easy? No. Is this going to be fast? No. Is this salvageable? Yes...but I'm not going to make it easy on him, nor am I going to be willing to put myself back in anything resembling the situation I got out of. And I have several people on high alert to smack me if I even get close. I'm better than this.
When I introduced Matthew to Cassandra, it was done as, "Matthew, my friend would like to learn how to flirt. She is very bad at it. You are very good at it. Would you be comfortable being the safe space that Cassandra can practice in?" He said yes (in hindsight clarity, introducing people to flirt when one of them has never had a romantic partner before...of course this went the way it did. Duh.). So I introduced Matthew to Cassandra and didn't think twice about it.
Fast forward a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and now I'm being told that they're attracted to each other and they'd like to have a relationship, this is what they're doing, here you go. Now, being poly, it doesn't bother me that they want to form a relationship. What bothers me is that this is not what the situation was understood to be, this was not how we had agreed things would progress. I felt very blindsided, even when I was supposed to be included in a three-way poly triad. We tried that for a while, and it did not work for a myriad of reasons. I eventually couldn't deal with it anymore and pulled myself out. The problems really started deepening here. I should not have been the only one to pull back. When it didn't work as a triad like it was supposed to, then that should have been it. There should have been no further romantic relationships, at the very least without further severe and deep discussion. That didn't happen, though. Matthew and Cassandra continued on their way, without acknowledging me, the problems that I was having, how rude and disrespectful it was, and so on. (Yes, I am leaving a SIGNIFICANT portion of information out, but it's not really relevant, so.)
Eventually, once I was in therapy and properly medicated, I started to recognize that what matthew was essentially doing was cheating on me. In poly, it's harder to cheat, since the usual definitions don't apply, but still possible. In this, he was cheating on me in the sense that I did not agree to the situation, I didn't agree that this was the way things could go, I was simply being forced to accept the status quo. At the time, I didn't really have a place I could go (again, in hindsight, I could have gone back to Florida; I did have options), plus I love the asshole and when Cassandra's not involved, we're good together, so I wanted to make it work. The problem was, there were now significant problems between him and I that stemmed from the catalyst of Cassandra but were no longer related to her. There were/are other problems as well completely separate from her, things that need to be worked out before this can work in any kind of capacity that will be tenable long term.
In September, Cassandra took Matthew on ANOTHER weekend trip (she'd taken him on several. I'd gotten none. His reason was because of finances. Remember this; it's important). They went downtown and stayed at the Drake hotel. There was a particular reason they went there and that she booked the trip, though I don't remember it off the top of my head. Suffice it to say that it was a fancy weekend and yet another reason for me to be frustrated, annoyed, and hurt. Matthew came home, life continued on as usual, and that included--approximately two weeks later--me opening up a particular credit card statement to pay it, as I'd taken it over several months before. Right at the top of said credit card statement is a $150 meal at the Drake.
So, to sum up this little punch to the gut: he charged a meal at an expensive hotel restaurant with a woman that he knows I have many problems with to the credit card I paid after telling me we didn't have the money to go away for weekends ourselves.
I am not sure why I didn't pack up and walk out right then, other than I was very much broke and couldn't even have paid my gas to drive down to florida at the time. I did, however, decide that I was going to Florida in October to visit my family, and fuck the man that had refused to commit to the trip. I went without him. The month or so leading up to that trip was... tense. I started pulling away from him, confused and sad. He continued to treat me as someone he had to take care of, someone he resented and like burden he didn't want.
I went to Florida. I had some long talks with my mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend. Close to the end of the trip, Matthew was returning from a business trip, and told Twitter he was back on the ground ten full minutes before he texted me. Generally, I wouldn't give two shits about this. I don't care in what order people tell the world they've finished a flight. In this case, however, I cared because 1) he'd conditioned me to expect a text as soon as he was on the ground, 2) he was responding to tweets, not just tweeting that he'd landed, so it was more he was taking his sweet ass time, and 3)...I happen to know he texted Cassandra first.
I may have completely lost my shit. To the point that my brother, who is not a physically demonstrative person, was hugging me.
I spent the rest of that trip having some very deep thinky thoughts, trying to reach out and talk to him and being COMPLETELY rebuffed, and having a...basically 24 hour panic attack on the drive home because I didn't know if I was coming home to packed bags or what. I also didn't really know what I was going to do, so there were a lot of those thinky thoughts.
I came to the conclusion that I was done with trying to deal with him. I was going to take care of me, do the things I needed to do, including developing new relationships with people because obviously, I wasn't going to get what I wanted or needed out of him. So...I did just that. I tried to tell him, but he blew me off, so I didn't really pursue it (again, in hindsight, I should have tried harder, made sure he heard me. In that, i'm at fault.), and went about finding new friends for myself.
I found one fairly quickly on Tinder, a man named Eric. Now, don't get me wrong; Eric will never be anything more than a friend. The man's an asshole, but He's exactly what I needed at the time, so I've maintained the friendship. He's also what I need *NOW*, in terms of calling me on my shit and pointing out when I'm being a fucking idiot. He's a friend. A friend that I occasionally fuck, but a friend. I told Matthew that I had found this new friend--because I wasn't trying to hide anything and I wasn't about to fall into that particular trip. We may have been struggling and having problems, but I was still going to hold up my end of the bargain and tell him when I was doing things.
It took Matthew about...eh, three days to really register what was going on and figure out what, exactly, that meant. In his mind, it meant that he was losing me (he was, though not the way he thought), and it freaked him out. And the man...he honestly did a 180. HIs behavior changed, he started treating me better than he ever had, he had a lot of serious thoughts and conversations with me, we talked about Cassandra and what needed to happen there, just...tons of shit. I was thrilled, because it meant he was ready to work on things, but cautious. As I told him, I was cautiously optimistic. Weeell, apparently I shouldn't have told him that because he didn't take it well. He took it to mean that I didn't believe his behavior change, and we struggled a little over it. I pointed out that it had nothing to do with believing or not believing his behavior change but instead had everything to do with the fact that he was up against basically two years of...bullshit.
Aaaaand then everything went to absolute hell. I overdrafted my bank account by a fairly significant amount (not four figures but creeping up on), largely due to fees though that doesn't matter. Because the bank account was joint, it was slamming Matthew's credit which was already in the toilet because he'd spent the two years after his divorce basically living off credit cards (which is a different argument, but suffice it to say that I had a big problem with it). Then, I was hit in a parking lot at work and didn't notice the damage until I was leaving Eric's house many hours later. No note on my car, nothing. As I didn't get home until 2 am and Matthew was already asleep, I chose not to tell him about the damage until the next morning. I told him the first chance I got, which was, unfortunately, in the shower...in retrospect, I should have let him finish waking up first. /o\
I told him that he was going to see this damage on the car, but I would take care of it. I just wanted him to know before he walked out and saw the damage. He said okay, I saw him off to work, I went back to bed (because at that point, I'd only had like...4 hours of sleep). When I woke up, i had a series of text messages that basically said don't call in the damage, it'll just raise my insurance and I can't afford it, and let me know when you're awake, we need to talk. I'll call you.
Well... yeah. My stomach dropped. I knew damned well what that meant. and I was right. He asked me to move out because he couldn't do it, he couldn't trust me, he was having constant panic attacks over money and I was just making things worse.
He gave me until the end of January to make arrangements. We were not breaking up, but we couldn't live together. He needed to be alone to get his shit together.
My mother asked me why I didn't just flat out break up with him. I told her it's the same reason she's still with my father, 37+ years later. She didn't have an answer for that.
So... we basically spent December and January slowly separating our households. I found a place to live with my boss (which I'll go into in a moment). He's at the house. We've seen each other once, on Valentine's, actually, since I moved out. He requested the month of February to himself to get his shit together and figure stuff out. I told him fine. And...well, it is fine (except for something ELSE i'll share in a moment).
We're still together. We haven't broken up. Right now... I don't think we'll break up, at least not for a while. We're going to try and sort our shit out, make things work. But I CAN tell you that I've got a much, much lower threshold for bullshit this time, and I will not put up with much.
now. To back up a little... Cassandra's at his house right now, far as I know. She was there last night. She'll be there, apparently, until Saturday or Sunday. She was going to just pick up her dog, which Matthew was watching for her while she was Oregon for her grandmother's funeral and to sort out her affairs, but it "somehow became her staying." Now, let me remind you that he had already said he didn't want to see anyone INCLUDING CASSANDRA during the month of February while he sorted himself out. But she's there. For several days. Mmmm. Kay. Sure.
This comes after him telling me they'd broken up while I was in New York in November ("We're no longer boyfriend/girlfriend. I'm still her friend and I'll still sleep with her, but we're no longer a couple.") to a few weeks later me pointing out that basically nothing had changed as far as I could see and being told that, well, apparently he had it wrong, and they were still together.
The man is a motherfucking doormat and if he does not grow a spine, i swear to god. I am done. I cannot. Because that fucking bitch manipulates and twists him until he doesn't know which way is up, and he lets her. I'm fairly sure he likes it because it means he has other people to blame when things don't go well.
But mm, okay, fine. Something to deal with. We know it's there and we know it's a problem to deal with. Whatever. So, he also tells me that he's felt like I'm trying to replace him. First of all, HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'VE FELT, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE?! Second of all, oh my god, not even close. I have worked on making new friends, including people I sleep with, because 1) poly and 2) i need people around me that aren't going to make me feel like I'm worthless and a burden. Because guess what, Matthew, that is exactly what you do.
I have Eric and I have another new friend, Bryant. Bryant is a much more...serious relationship in that I am, in fact, falling in love with him. It's SO much healthier. There's communication and discussion and living in the moment instead of ignoring, and...yeah. This is what poly should be, and i'm enjoying myself. It's about living in the moment right now.
SO! What does all of this mean in the end? Mmm...not much, other than Matthew and I have a MOUNTAIN of issues to work on and I'm not going to be very understanding for awhile. I'm too hurt. Too angry. Too ignored and turned into someone he decided he had to take care of because he wouldn't see me for who I was. He decided, btw, that this was the first time I'd be living on my own and be able to take care of myself. He somehow never registered the TEN. FUCKING. YEARS. I lived in Florida and not only supported myself but ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.
To quickly explain why I now live with my boss--which is going swimmingly, btw--when I started trying to work out how I could make this work, how was I going to be able to support myself, I came up with upsettingly few options: 1) move back to Florida. 2) find a roommate. 3) find a place to live on my own...except 3 wasn't reaaaally viable because while I do make enough money to support myself, the area in which I work is not cheap. The closest I could get was damned near in Wisconsin, and I didn't really want that. That left roommates, and I knew Brandi needed someone, but that was far away from my current work place. This meant moving centers, as did moving to Florida. So, I went to talk to my boss about what steps were necessary to transfer centers, and never even got the question out. I told her that I needed to move out of the house and she asked me to move in with her. Like... just like that. We talked about it a little bit, and realized that it really was a viable solution, so...we did that. I've been here...eh, roughly a month, and we work well. We don't see each other a super lot because she functions on a different diurnal schedule than I do, but we keep work and home separate and we're doing fine. :)
Do I understand how toxic this all sounds? Yes. Do I also understand how much I've left out in order to keep this as succinct as possible (yes, i know, we're looking at fucking 2,500 words of explanation, but trust me. This IS the short version). Is this going to be easy? No. Is this going to be fast? No. Is this salvageable? Yes...but I'm not going to make it easy on him, nor am I going to be willing to put myself back in anything resembling the situation I got out of. And I have several people on high alert to smack me if I even get close. I'm better than this.