Interval

I've noticed I'm writing here a lot more regularly. I used to write about once a month, but now it's more like once a week or more... there must be more on my mind.

Well... I've been man-free for two+ weeks. Not long. As much as I'd like to crawl into the comfort of someone's arms, I see that the strings involved would tie me up and generate some kind of flight reflex.

And I also keep thinking about TCMT. I keep thinking that cutting him loose was the first smart thing I've done since the divorce. The fact is... I really think I don't want him. I may've wanted what I imagined he was, but when I got to know him better, I found he's not that. He starts out as that, a gentlemanly adult man -- a man -- with a sense of the aesthetic, but once we got closer, I found things about him that bothered me. Those things about him are part of who he is, they're not just behaviors he could modify for my sake out of courtesy. That doesn't work; people don't change. I couldn't change to be what the HL seems to expect from the woman of his life, and over time I faulted him for his shallow, immoral, and even judgemental values, as they obscured his vision of what is actually terrific about me. As for TCMT, it's the same thing... he has a lovely home (he struggles to keep in budget), a good job (that he complains about incessantly), few friends (and palpable neediness), a solid income (that is stretched to screaming), and definite views and attitudes (with traces of inflexibility).

I like competent people. While the HL has obvious faults, and so does my ex-husband, both are fundamentally competent people who didn't need a person in their lives to make up for practical weaknesses. Of course, they didn't need me at all, since both have foresaken me (of course, the HL does have a need for sex on a regular basis, which is why he always has a woman handy... but beyond that, he doesn't really need her), but the point is that I don't want to be needed because some man can't function, can't flourish, on his way through the world. I felt like the TCMT might become that. He ran out of gas for god's sake one time when he was driving back to town from an out-of-town inservice. Who does that? And he was altogether to willing to cede to me some caretaking... and he wanted to take care of me in turn, but I don't need that. I don't need someone to mow my yard or whatever; I am competent too.