I got me a Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale...
So, recently I put out on Twitter that the reason I haven’t really written much on the blog lately is that I’ve had a bit of writer’s block. Over the many years there has always been something in the news or some topic that captured my attention which I wanted to sound off on, but lately it has been a bit quiet.
I’m kind of burned out on all the VR hype, the progression of Second Life hasn’t really gotten me excited, at least enough to write a whole post about it...
Though I was interested in the demo for mirrors that Adeon Writer put up on his Youtube account awhile back, but there isn’t a point in rehashing a topic that I had already written about countless times before (Mirrors, Weather and Zones in Second Life).
As a result, I decided to ask my Twitter followers what they think I should write about on this post, and (not surprisingly) Noir Genesis @palecrane replied that they wanted me to do a post about my love life.
*gag me with a spoon*
Not exactly the sort of thing that I am prone to writing about, but I do on occasion. After checking with my current girlfriend to make sure it was alright with her (after all, this is about her too) and getting a green light, I find myself sitting down and typing these words.
A Little Perspective
I think it best suits the narrative to begin with a past overview leading up to today in order to give a better understanding, so with that I’ll start.
You may find it somewhat surprising that my love life is riddled with just as many train wrecks as you would expect from any other person. I’m just an average guy and by no means am I perfect. There is just as much fallibility and drama, and I would contend that my love life is on the whole pretty boring.
Growing up, I’ve always had a mentality of being older than my physical age would convey, and as such my ability to “jive” with people around my own age never materialized. I was always the quiet one who detested partying and would instead rather a quiet night reading a book or watching some anime. I had my hobbies which kept me occupied, such as programming. But even as early as third grade it was discovered that I had a much higher than average intelligence and I was reading and comprehending at a college level with ease.
While the other kids were happy playing G.I. Joes and watching cartoons, I was doing a report on a book called Blueprints (human genome and evolution) for my class. Of course, that book now isn’t entirely high grade material past early college, but for a third grader this was rocket science and it even went over my teacher’s head for some of it. Which of course led me straight into GT testing... Gifted and Talented... how I hated that. I felt like a lab rat with them constantly pulling me out of class to test me across the board. When they got done, they realized I was a third grader predominantly thinking on a college level but due to my age, all they could do was suggest bumping me up to the fifth grade.
My mother at the time simply left that up to me, and I had declined. I just wanted to be “normal” like the other kids.
I was way out of their league even then, and it definitely distanced me from my peers. There was no way around that reality, and it would be something that I had to deal with my entire childhood and life. I suspect this is an underlying reason why I ended up becoming such an introvert, and likely a full blown INTJ personality type. Reality hit hard as a kid (for many reasons), and the blissful ignorance of being a kid didn’t really last long. We’re talking about a kid who figured out my mother was actually Santa Clause at about age 6.
That isn’t to say I didn’t like cartoons or some of the typical kid stuff... because Danger Mouse was (and still is) the greatest secret agent in the world. I watched a lot of MTV and Nickelodeon growing up (back when MTV played nothing but music videos and Nickelodeon had great shows like Today’s Special, You Can’t Do That On Television and David The Gnome). But along side that, I was also into a lot of Discovery channel, Bill Nye The Science Guy, and shows on PBS (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and other educational shows).
I was a strange sort of kid and the same was true as I got older. In my early twenties I was better suited hanging around people in their thirties and forties while my friends in their early twenties just couldn’t get a grip on my personality.
Why wasn’t I interested in the things they were? They listened to the latest music and I loved classic rock and oldies. The girls I did date back then were always just interested in short term having fun and had no concept of a future. Let’s just party, get drunk, smoke pot and have sex... That never seemed like something I was interested in even back then as I would be in the husband material mindset while they were in the quick fix mindset.
Effectively, I was an old soul in a young body. It came with benefits but at a very high price.
That (again) isn’t to say that I didn’t spend time partying in my early to mid twenties. It’s just that I was trying to comprehend it and figure out why I should. Like a lot of teens and young adults, I smoked a hell of a lot of pot and drank myself under the table. I could be the life of the party, and even then there wasn’t a want for women... I was just as (if not more) fawned after and I very well could have had my pick. I just chose not to, because well... I didn’t see the point in hookups and one night stands. It had gotten most (if not all) of my friends into some serious shit (a disproportionately high amount of baby mama drama).
Plus, that nagging conscience of mine just kept telling me it wasn’t right, and that ultimately it was a hollow existence to fill a hole with short term lust and trade off love to get it. So I decided that what I really wanted was love, the real deal. It’s just how I’m wired in my head... the whole settling down, getting married and having kids.
Even my friends who did end up getting married and having kids with their high school sweethearts, ended up in similar train wrecks later. Lying, cheating, divorced... I think that really screwed up my perception of things over the years, because I started wondering if anyone could ever just be honest, caring and faithful or if it was really a total lost cause.
This, not surprisingly, led me into quite a lot of odd situations where women in their early forties would be hitting on me when I was 19 (and through my twenties), and it wasn’t the age gap that bugged me but the overall situation.
One of my many blessings (and curses) is that I’m a realist and a pragmatist, and so I had a hard time visualizing a long term future with anyone. At least, not the sort of long term future that I wanted. The thing about women in their forties is that more often than not they have already been married and divorced (or were still married) and had kids of their own. To me, that seemed like a horrible trade off just to be with somebody... like I’d sacrifice my own chance at something everyone else had taken for granted. And with women my own age, they more often than not turned out to be half-wits with nothing more on their mind than short-term.
Again, no shortage of getting laid if I wanted to take them up on the offers, but I simply couldn’t see myself in a hollow relationship of convenience and an eventual dead-end waiting to happen (in either route).
Much of that stemmed from my understanding of being an emotional crutch when people were feeling inadequate and insecure (co-dependency), and that it wasn’t really about being with me but instead it was about just feeling better about themselves and I was just the pawn in that situation.
I think the song Maggie May by Rod Stewart really summed that up.
Some of it over the years manifested in a lot of women (girls) who were interested in the idea of being in love but only as long as it came with no commitment. All the benefits and none of the seriousness. For them, I saw no long term future either... and that greatly troubled me. This is how one of my relationships (after four years) came to a disastrous halt.
It never occurred to me that a proper reaction to having somebody propose to you would be to break out in tears of anguish... being upset by the very idea of commitment. And yet, that’s how it turned out in the one time I bothered to propose to a woman. She liked the idea of dating but never commitment.
Four years of my life that I’ll never get back.
There have also been plenty of women who have outright lied and cheated on me, and for the most part I’ve taken a very different viewpoint of that as I have gotten older. I used to be absolutely pissed off and livid, that something so simple as just being faithful and honest could escape everyone... but then I started seeing things in a different light. Instead of being hung up on a loss, I’d assume they were still hung up on somebody else and weren’t the right woman for me to begin with, and so it was better that they moved on and didn’t waste my time.
To me, I don’t go into something like love half-assed or with partial intentions. I believe in giving my all through thick and thin. I can’t even roleplay a relationship because to be honest, I have always found that where the mind leads the heart will eventually follow. If you’re going through the motions, eventually you’re going to feel something.
Cheating on a faithful person is like throwing away a diamond for a lump of coal.
So in that respect, infidelity/cheating is a monumental killer of relationships with me. I know there’s plenty of “experts” who claim that infidelity can save a marriage or relationship, but in what I have witnessed it actually doesn’t.
Case in point, one of my long-time friends from high school is with somebody else I knew from back then (and dated). She wants a full relationship, and even marriage eventually. But he’s just cold about it. This comes from his ex-wife screwing him over and cheating on him with every dick that passed by.
So instead of letting him be a serial dater and just moving on herself, she decided that an open relationship is a good idea and will save their relationship. That over time, she is better having a fraction of his attention than none at all, and eventually she will change his ways and he’ll just ... I don’t know... turn around or something?
Well, it isn’t working out like that. He brings those girls home and screws them in front of her, invites them to dinner that she cooks, and so on. And she tries to play along and say it doesn’t bother her, and that it adds some spice to their life.
At least, that’s what she tells him... but being one of my long time friends, she tells me a whole lot different, and I know it absolutely rips her apart inside to be so desperate that she’ll pander to anything he wants just to get the time of day and a sliver of a hope in the future. Unfortunately, it’s like rubbing salt into a wound each and every time... now, that’s a woman that truly loves that man and a man that gives not a single fuck about her.
In the bigger picture, I see open relationships as nothing more than serial dating while pretending to be committed to each other. The serial dating part is accurate, but the commitment part is just something you tell each other to justify it and make it seem like you’re still together. In so many cases that I’ve come across from my friends who tried it, there has almost unanimously been at least one person in that agreement who was just trying to appease their partner in a desperate attempt to make them happy and keep them around. And to them, it absolutely hurt like hell but they put on a really good face so long as their partner was happy.
Maybe it’s different for you? I don’t know... if it is (for whatever reason) then kudos and best wishes.
But from experience and seeing so many of my friends go through similar things, I’ve become hard wired to thinking it’s simply selfish behavior on one person (or both) and the other person loving them so much that they’ll do anything to make them happy even if it destroys themselves in the process. Either that or you’re really not in a committed relationship at all and are simply serial dating, in which case just call it what it is and move on.
Duality Dilemma
Growing up, I was raised as an old fashioned gentleman. Maybe that mindset manifests as a 1950s/1940s sort of father figure in my mind. One of my biggest pet peeves is lying and cheating, and so there has never been a time in my life when I have cheated on a woman. That probably stems from my obsession in life not to be like my father (whom did cheat on my mother and lie).
I’ve seen my own mother go through countless bad marriages and relationships, even up until today, and I long ago decided that what I was looking for in life was effectively the exact opposite of what she kept finding. My father, oddly (and after another marriage) ended up reforming (or so I’m told) and has been happily married for about 15 years now to his current wife Beth. Kudos to him on that.
For the longest time, I began to really think about this situation. It would seem that being in the mindset that I was would lead to two scenarios:
- I give up on trying to just settle down, have kids and get married. Throw that out the window to have a fraction of that with an older woman.
- Date within my own age bracket and just give up on having anything meaningful in terms of connection or shared interests.
I wasn’t too keen on the first option because for obvious reasons it would piss me off to have to throw out the chance at my own family and effectively settle for a divorced woman with kids. Nothing against them, but to me it seems a hell of a lot like settling for whatever was left over and discarded from some other relationship... table scraps.
I know that sounds mean, but that’s pretty much what goes through my head. I haven’t been married once, and I have no kids of my own. To effectively settle on a woman that is divorced, has kids and isn’t interested in any more is a total waste of my time and completely unfair to me.
Then, there is the second option of attempting to date in my own age bracket. Which I actually tried damned hard to do in both Second Life and real life. I effectively got the same result either way. In Second Life that more often turned out like an amplified clusterfuck of damaged goods, lying, cheating, married women, etc... and in real life it was and has been roughly the same. Except the married women part. That just seems to be the norm in Second Life.
For quite awhile, I had decided it wasn’t actually worth the effort either way because the odds of finding anyone that could be honest, faithful and have the same goals just seemed too far fetched. And even when I did decide to date, it always turned out that I was proven right (sadly). In Second Life, I was convinced by a friend named Mickey to not give up and at least try. His wording was akin to the phrase “You have to shovel a lot of coal before you find a diamond.” Sure you’re going to get really dirty, but eventually you will find what you are looking for if you keep trying.
And so I did keep trying.
Though (to be honest) I still had a semi-defeatist attitude about it. In Second Life there is a disproportionately high percentage of damaged goods (no offense), and the sort of people I ran into were simply extrapolated versions of what I had come to find in real life. Married, separated, older women pretending to be in their twenties, people lying, cheating, you name it.
That isn’t even touching on the alternative lifestyles, which I say “To each their own” but it’s just not something I’m interested in. I’m a one woman sort of man, and I’m really only interested in a one man sort of woman. So that rules out the idea of swingers and BDSM, not to mention the D/s lifestyle in general. There’s just something about having many women that is unappealing to me, especially as “slaves”. In the same notion, it doesn’t appeal to me if the woman I’m with is shared among many... something about me just doesn’t reconcile the idea of being a sometimes affection.
But of course, I’m neglecting that third option – Being the older man.
I’m going to say right out of the gate, that I had the same bias against dating younger women that I did about dating older women. It wasn’t something I seriously considered because the whole age gap thing almost always manifested in the most immature, childish and selfish behavior. It also created a guaranteed disconnect between what my goals and interests where in life and theirs.
There’s a point where being different from each other is ok, but a total generation gap usually proves to be a killer in a relationship. I had always set my range somewhere between 25 and 35, and even then I didn’t entirely think a 25 year old was going to be on the same page as I was for what they wanted. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t even found a 30-something year old on the same page, and just as immature...
I’m well past my party days and now I’m older and more mellowed out. My mentality is finally catching up to my real life age after all of these years (give or take another ten years).
So, like... OMG, Nikki Minaj and One Direction are totally NOT my thing.
I’ve had maybe... two women convince me to give them a chance when that age gap existed, and I really had misgivings about it. There is just a naïveté there that you can’t cut through. In both of those instances, it did implode in lies and idiocy on their part and one did think she was clever enough to cheat and get away with it.
Hint: She was busted long before I said anything. I just wanted to see how long she was going to keep asking for rope.
In both real life and Second Life, it had never occurred to me that being the older man was an option simply because I had zero faith in that age gap and mentality. I had (more or less) written it off and carried on, while actually shooting down a number of younger women in the process.
Lolita
And then, of course, I had to run into her.
A young woman that has the same old soul, young body situation that I did when I was younger. There was something very different about her demeanor and mentality versus what I was accustomed to for women around her age, and hell – women twice her age.
Originally she had told me she was 26, but somehow I knew better than that. She looked a lot younger and at the time (first couple of days) I was more worried about her being underage than anything.
Her mannerisms were like a 30 year old, which confused the ever living hell out of me, but then later on made me laugh a little. After remembering what I was like around her age, I can now see the confusion from the other side of the coin. How I must have messed with the older folks back then and thrown them off... being that young but holding my own around people in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s like I was just one of them.
So after a bit of digging (which I am known to do) I did figure out how old she really was in an undeniable way. I would like to say that she cut it very close.
At the time, she had recently turned 18.
As in, roughly one month after she turned 18...
Ok, I thought... cutting it close, but she’s legal. That’s one less issue to think about.
Obviously, the next thought in my mind was simply telling her “No way, you’re way too young for me.” But she had a chance to convince me, and what she said was compelling enough that I told her that I’d give her a chance, entirely on merit alone and not looking at her age.
What she had said to me that night was this:
I don’t get along with anyone my own age. I have nothing in common with them. They party, I read... they want to go out, get drunk, high... whatever... I have no interest in that. They want to have a bunch of boyfriends, and let loose getting laid constantly with no thought about the future... so many of them have baby mama drama and are damaged goods.
But that’s not me. I listen to classic rock and oldies... I bring a book when I’m dragged to parties... I don’t want Mr. Right Now... I want the white picket fence, marriage, and kids. I want to settle down with one man, and I’m smart enough to think about that now and not after it’s too late. Because I’m serious.
The reason I told you I was 26 is because every time I told a guy I’m 18, they immediately shut me out and wouldn’t give me a chance.
When I started saying 26, they would at least listen and give me a shot.
Of course, I would ask my Lolita why in the hell she wanted to be with a 35 year old guy. That is a very large age gap as far as I am concerned. Almost twice her age... and that (I will not lie) makes me just a tad bit uncomfortable.
In this particular instance, she was the one that went through hoops just to pin me down and get a chance, to which I was very reluctant. To be honest, I really did consider saying she was too young and move along. But she made a compelling argument for why I should at least give her a chance.
I already knew why she wanted to date much older men (within reason), because it was pretty much the same reason I only seemed to get along with older women when I was the same age.
But what about that monumental age gap...?
Of course, the mantra is usually “Age is just a number”, and I give that a fair shake. In some regard, I want to say this is like a mid-life crisis thing but I never went looking for an 18 year old – she went looking for me and insisted.
I did agree to give her a chance on merit, and I am a man of my word.
So what about that monumental age gap? I really can’t tell you. She doesn’t care about it, and simply loves me. For all it matters (to her), I am the embodiment of what she wanted in a man - “Husband material”, and everything else is inconsequential.
I’d have never bothered to date somebody her age if she didn’t make the effort to pin me down and convince me. It never crossed my mind.
She’s in college now, studying for a degree in Criminology.
I feel... I dunno. Weird in one sense, and like I somehow won the lottery in the other sense. I can’t quite make up my mind... but for what it’s worth, I do love her.
She’s beautiful, intelligent, random (sometimes), serious, loving, faithful, and of course seemingly on exactly the same page across the board as I am. She may be young, but she thinks and acts like a thirty year old (at least) with the bangin’ body of an 18 year old.
We’ve been together for awhile, and so far things haven’t totally imploded or anything like that. Again, I’m a realist... so you’re not going to find any blind optimism here.
I got to thinking the other day that guys my age usually would kill to be dating a college co-ed. They don’t make porn about it for no reason, let’s be honest. But there is more than that... she wants husband material, and I was looking for wife material. I think, maybe... just maybe... things will work out for once.
I count myself lucky... and I can only hope that I make her happy.
There is that oddness from a total déjà vu with her, and that’s really the other reason I gave her a chance. As abnormal as it seems, everything about her seems very natural and normal. As if I’ve known her for a very long time.
No idea if there is some cosmic fate connection (soul mates), but she has the same déjà vu about me as well, and I take her at her word about it.
I’ll let the future tense wife tell you in her own words <3
Future Tense Wife
I’ve always had this title for any of my girlfriends that I’d be serious about, and that is the idea of “Future Tense Wife”. Essentially it means the same thing as “Girlfriend” but with potential to be more.
Sadly, every time I’ve actually used this phrase, it turns out that they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and end up lying, cheating, or just intentionally sabotaging the relationship. This time around, I’m still asking of her the same thing I’ve always asked before – Honest, Caring, Faithful. Three little things that somehow seem to be nigh impossible to find these days...
What do I think the future will hold for my love life?
I couldn’t possibly tell you. But I can tell you that I hope it is married to the woman that I adore, and who adores me just the same. Honest, faithful and loving. I hope to settle down and have kids with her, and be a proud parent.
(I’m hopeful) it’ll be the woman I am with today, Stephanie Fisher. She makes it a point to tell me that’s exactly what she wants out of a relationship, and I take her at face value.
The future, however... it isn’t written, and I’m no psychic. The future is what you make of it, and if that’s in my cards (so to speak), then we’ll have to last together long enough to see it through.
For now I take it day by day and see what happens. Hopefully very good things :)
So there you go... by request. A post about my love life (and so much more).
She’s a total package, and going to wear me out with a smile.
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