GGG- What it means to me.

[MJontheMend]

Why don't you trust him to decide whether or not you're a good partner for him?

Good question. Well, one reason I wouldn't trust him would be that he might be under the influence of sex/love chemicals. Another reason might be that I doubt whether I'm giving him adequate information to make that kind of decision because I'm in a phase of transition or identity crisis. For instance, I said that I think that he admires my cow but I don't really know what form my cow would take in a relationship in which my own children wouldn't be heavily involved.

Another question would be, is this the right time for you? RHW asked a very good question. Do you want to be in a committed relationship on the day your divorce is final?

I suspect you might prefer is what a friend of mine termed "monogamy without commitment." Some of her guidelines for MWC were no overnights, no meeting the kids, dates plentiful but not assumed, movie nights on a not infrequent basis, plenty of sex and of course, no sex with anybody but each other.

MWC sounds like the kind of relationship that would be good in theory but hard to pull off in reality, at least for me. First off, I wish you would tell me how divorced people with the usual load of adult responsibilities/commitments and custody of their children manage to have plenty of sex and still avoid meeting each others kids or staying overnight without need for the kind of serious planning that would make the dates assumed. Also, besides issues of monogamy and commitment there is also the area of "emotional connection". One problem I might have with MWC is that I wouldn't feel great about signaling to a man "Hey, remember, don't fall in love with me because you're just my "in the meantime" guy.". I would have to make a whole volume of additional rules like "Don't kiss me on the forehead.", " Don't look wistful as you wave goodbye to me from your doorway.", "Don't tell me that you like cuddling with me even better than having sex with me." and "Don't call me just to make sure I got home okay." (All the men I have had sex with since my break-up have done many things that fall under this same category thereby making it impossible for me to view them as "f*ck-buddies" and I would consider MWC without EC to be a sort of mature well-thought out conservative f*ck-buddy relationship...but maybe I'm wrong.)

My only concern with GP, and this is certainly no slight against him, is that he's very focused on being in a relationship. He's a strong leader, you're very attracted to strong leaders (especially coming out of your R with your STBX), and he's been leading you directly into a full blown R. He required some type of commitment before having sex, iirc. He has plans for merging your lives. I wonder if your willingness to follow a strong leader has gotten you in deeper than you'd really like to be. Perhaps not; I'm only wondering.

I think, as usual, my own "bunkey" self has gotten me in deeper than I'd like to be. I think I wrote in one post that I felt like GP was hypnotizing me into a relationship but girls who are likely to follow rabbits down holes are fairly easy to hypnotize.

Whatever you do, don't do anything from a mindset of scarcity. You've already seen that you can get all the dates you want and you easily get into Rs with men with whom you're very compatible. If you were guaranteed to be in a relationship with someone as great as GP a year from now, or two years from now, or five years from now, would that change how you'd like your current R with GP to be?

Well, I believe the likelihood that I could be in a relationship with someone "great" at any time is pretty much up to me so it's more like I would need a guarantee that my own functioning would be as good/better and my own desire to be in a relationship would be as good/better which would be a weird or maybe impossible thing to need to have guaranteed.

I think there's a lot to be said for a stretch of non-R time. If nothing else, it's harder to learn to self-validate when you're getting a lot of other-validation.

I half agree with you. One problem I have is that as a woman I think it's harder to get a feel for how to work on personal development while single. If I tend towards "staking my own claim", I feel like I am in a sense planning/working towards a future that doesn't include being in a relationship with a man with a strong sense of leadership. If I tend towards "filling my hope chest" or "preparing for my debut" I feel pathetic (in fact I feel pathetic even typing it). I wish I could come up with a course of action that would reflect my true post-feminist, neo-primitive desires for a relationship.