the 60+ relationship conundrum

I am sorry I am still not writing.  It’s unlike me to set a target and not deliver, but I haven’t been able to write.

The lengthy viral infection so debilitated me that I went to possibly the darkest place within myself where I have never been before.

 

When it was there post divorce I couldn’t allow myself to go there.  On top of the darkest emotional bit there were equally more pragmatic concerns – money, the children, keeping in work.

I am finally allowing the responsibility for these things to go.  Whether I have a job now or not, I can manage.  I won’t be able to travel so much, but I will be able to pay bills and not starve.

The children are fine.  Maybe not everything in life will always turn out splendidly for them, but they all have a sufficient skill set to get meaningful work; they are in loving, long term relationships and in good health.  I stopped writing to them once a week quite recently, maybe because I don’t feel I have to do my bit to prop them up any more.  Sometimes I would like them to prop me up a bit now.

 

So I love my house.  I find my job stimulating and fulfilling.  I just would like to crack the relationship thing but I don’t think I am going to be able to.

The last bout of online dating was not good for me.  I am not going to say it was disastrous.  I had 17 dates and developed several of the contacts as far as they could go.  I just don’t think that for my emotional wellbeing I can play to an audience that feeds back and attacks where I am most vulnerable.

While overall I am not ugly, I have features I feel very conscious of.  Men can pick up on these in really cruel ways.

I can’t get the right balance about sex.  I either get incredibly aroused and get obsessed by it or it’s so awful I can’t bear physical contact.  I can’t always predict this in the first kiss although I used to think I could.  My sexual experience doesn’t feel a plus although I think it should be.  I find it a plus in men.

I am increasingly thinking I am not able to strike the right balance between independence and sharing.  Men seem to want me to do exactly what they want.  I seem able to compromise for a while, but if the relationship is not going to develop and give me more of what I want I feel unwilling to compromise endlessly.  I don’t think this is unreasonable.

Most recently, I have certainly been scammed which must be the nadir of anything genuine.

I have a mantra I am telling myself many times a day.

‘You can make good things happen for yourself’.  usually it’s ‘only you can make good things happen for your self’.

 

I am beginning to feel that my body is too aged to offer anything to a physical relationship anymore and to be honest it has been too unremittingly painful trying.

 

Perhaps the challenge of the 4th stage is to live by myself and just have male friends.  I can do that.  I know I am a good friend.

 

It’s missing the intimacy and the sharing of plans/adventures that causes me anguish.