"Sharks and fish can be friends" from Finding Nemo

[AntoniaB]

I just poured some wine. Ha!

From my perspective, I can tell you that "security" is part of it, but it's not financial security at all. I have that down. I have a house, I can make the payments, I can work extra if money gets tight by teaching extra classes at my job. I can also be VERY frugal. I don't need a guy to do the yard work as I do what I can and the yard looks ok. It's not job security; I have tenure. My school has to pretty much close down to lose my job, and that's unlikely. I have a good level of seniority if we "downsize" and that counts legally in my profession.

Is it emotional security? Well I dunno, I have a very supportive family and I have more friends than I've ever had in my life mainly because I started to care about other people outside myself and XH and become social. I have much deeper relationships than I did.

So what gets under my skin, then, or keeps me up at night?

I do think that not having a man here makes me jumpy/nervous on some very low level, maybe biological. This has been really eating at me since my boy cat died a month ago. That little cat would have run for the hills if an intruder came, but I felt a "masculine presence" here. All my friends locally are women. My brother and father live in another state. No adult men have entered my house in 17 months but for XH on his very rare visits to pick stuff up or bury the cat, which was "the last time" he was coming ever, or my brother when he came to cut a tree down. It's all estrogen, all the time ;-) It feels unbalanced. I don't know how to fix it. It feels "off" or "wrong" to me. It feels like it will be this way FOREVER. THAT is what rattles me. The feeling that it will always feel "off."

What else do I want a rel. for? I can't stand it that no one ever touches me anymore. I don't even crave sex so much as just a backrub or a hug or the smell of a man's neck when he has the perfect cologne for him, or just got out of the shower. I feel the lack of touch in my skin. It "hurts."

Does it hurt enough to go pick some guy up? No. I don't think I ever see me doing that. I have one single male friend, and if he threw a FWB invitation my way, I'd probably say yes, knowing I do not have feelings for him other than friendship. He and I flirt like crazy....we're downright raunchy...but he works with me and doesn't want to have something going that would complicate our work relationship, and I get that. He knows I've had one guy my whole life, and he probably thinks I'd get attached to him even if I said I wouldn't.

I think mainly my problem is jealousy. I'm jealous that every time I go out alone, I am surrounded by people who are coupled up. On the alt too, I see so many people just seemingly easily in these long-term relationships. And I was once one of them and lost it all in a heartbeat, and some of them are SO mean to their spouses (male or female) and SO seemingly undeserving of a person who just lives for them, and here I was, a good wife, yeah, I had my issues, but I was a good wife and I didn't publicly belittle my XH as I so often see people do with their spouses, and I didn't sit around and talk about how awful my spouse was as I hear so often.

I am jealous that there seem to be all these people who have something who appear to be undeserving and I feel like I deserve SOMEONE to care about me romantically, and it doesn't happen.

If I lived in a world where no one was coupled up, seriously? I probably wouldn't care. My own jealousy is what's destroying me.

Sorry that was so long. It was the wine/whine ;-)