So I went on a couple dates with this guy I was pretty sure I didn’t really want to date but I thought what the hell. And we wound up having a surprisingly hot encounter (soon before I was supposed to start a FWB relationship with someone I’d dated; that did happen but fell apart; we’re still friends) and figured we’d try again, even though some things were depressing from the start.
NOW I understand the concept of one-night-stands, which have never appealed to me (except perhaps on vacation)–we could have just left it that. But we did want to go further, and did, and some of that was quite good. (You’d think I wouldn’t be vague in a pseudonymous blog, but hey, I’m new and nervous.) We were trying to “go all the way” (if you understand what a prolonged adolescence my life has been, you’ll forgive my use of that phrase) but it just didn’t work, and after a while, I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble with him. (Intercourse is a confusing, painful ordeal I’m saving for people I really care about.) And I wasn’t touching him very much, not that I was unwilling to… So the physical aspect wasn’t spectacular.
And we weren’t friends–we were friendly to each other, but I couldn’t imagine inviting him to meet anyone I knew, or to an event I was enthusiastic about, or just talking to him on the phone. I won’t say anything identifying about him (I’m saving those details for future short stories, maybe). We were able to be friends with benefits because we weren’t really friends and in danger of having real feelings for each other–but not being friends made it a little too sordid.
One unbearable detail that’d made me want to end it–this guy is well into his 30s and doesn’t have a full-size bed. He doesn’t have a big or fancy apartment, which is fine, but c’mon–if you want to have adult relationships, you need an adult bed. I didn’t want to sleep over anymore, because one of us would sleep in the bed and one on the lounger, no cuddling. And we’d have to fool around on the floor, which is fine as an occasional passionate thing, but not all the time, not if you’ve got a lot of back pain which is almost certainly related to the pelvic pain you can’t afford to treat.
But I’d held on to this, out of laziness, or from not wanting to hurt him. This is the only relationship I’ve ever had where I felt I was the less enthusiastic partner. He initiated nearly all the phone calls, I always went to his place, he’d ask what I was doing for some holiday months from now, he’d say “thank you” at the end every time I returned a phone call. It seemed like it was all up to me to accept/reject him. Maybe I held on to this just to be able to be the one to end it.
Of course there’s a punchline–a couple weeks ago, when we’d barely seen each other all month, we were meeting on a Saturday afternoon. I thought maybe he wanted to fool around that afternoon or evening. But I detected a tone in his voice…and we met at a cafe, got as private a booth as possible, and he said he didn’t want to keep this going.I didn’t particularly want to keep it going either, but damn! I was suppose to end it! And he even used the EXACT lines I was thinking–that we weren’t really friends, and the benefits hadn’t been that great. We’ll be in touch (he still has a book of mine) but we haven’t talked since.
Posted by hazelj 
